Detective Sergeant Dustin Weir
Appearances
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
I will not sit here and try to be an anthropologist and try to tell you how old I think it is. Speaking with the coroner, he believes that it's another very old skull. And when I said, so like before 2018, he said, oh yeah. So it's just one of the things we just have to keep looking into and keep investigating.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
And once we hear back from the state medical examiner's office, we should know a little bit more. It could be months to a few years.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
It's weird, and we don't have an answer to it. It's just kind of, we don't know why it's happening, where it's coming from. But it's definitely weird that it's so close in such a short period of time.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
I think it's one of these things where we just, we're trying to get more information and just kind of stuck. We have the skull, but we still have nothing else. The way that I feel is when I have a case like this and I have a family that I haven't been able to give answers to. That's the hardest part of this job is we have a lot of cases that we just can't solve. And it's not for lack of trying.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
You know, most of the time it's just lack of information, lack of leads. In this case, we just don't have a lot of information coming in. And I think the biggest issue on a personal level is that we can't tell the family what happened.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
I know that somebody knows something. Somebody's talked to him that we haven't talked to. And somebody has information that we haven't talked to. And so I'm hopeful that once this gets out, once we start talking about it more and this gets more press, that somebody will come forward after all this time and give us something to work with.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
You know, Crime Stoppers has these playing cards, and of course he's featured on them, and hopefully somebody will see it and somebody will know something. That way we can try to figure out what happened and give the family some answers. I understand that in larger agencies and other investigations, you can get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tips.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
We're not that big, so if I get 50 rumors, give them to me. You know, we'll gladly take them.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
So at that time, we took the report, we issued a BOLO, put him on NCIS, he was a missing person. And then after that, we spoke with Jeff's mom, and she did give us some other names of people that he might have been involved with, as far as his wife, who he was separated from, and some friends. It looks like there was a recent relapse, which could have led to some marital problems.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
There could have been some other problems in the home, which we see a lot. But we do know that from talking to family and friends that there was a lot of depression over just losing his wife and kids.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
We did talk to his wife quite a bit, and she just relayed the same thing, you know, that he was depressed and had substance issue problems. She did say that she was able to get into his Google account at one point. He was searching for free places to camp on the beach.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
She basically said that he had texted her, said that he was staying under a bridge, just sleeping under the bridge or hanging out under the bridge. That's kind of where he stayed, according to his wife.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
There's a park underneath the bridge, which is where she thought that he might have gone. We went over there, and we searched under the bridge. We searched near the bridge, down the beach, but we just couldn't locate him at that time.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
A lot of the times when we investigate these cases, if we can get a hold of a victim's phone, if they leave it at home, we'll take those phones and we'll do search warrants on them because you can learn a lot from that. A lot of the times, though, they'll be Googling things and sending text messages or, you know, different things like that.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
In this case specifically, they did find his phone outside. It had been rained on. We did take that phone and attempt to get forensics done on that phone. However, it was destroyed by the rain. We weren't able to get anything out of it.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
Especially in this day and age, you don't just go missing and law enforcement or somebody not be able to find you or find any trace of you. You can't leave without a trace anymore. When you have a case like this, where yes, we know by what's been told to us, he left on his own, he was upset, mad, whatever it be, there's not really suspected foul play.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
Until there comes a point where nobody's heard from this guy, we can't find him. There's no bank records. There's no phone calls. There's no social media. There's nothing to say that this guy's alive, which is when we have to look into it more. And that's when we, you know, we have to speculate that something happened to this guy.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
That's when we, you know, we have to speculate that something happened to this guy.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
We hear Simon City Royals a lot. They are known for a lot of violence, specifically that gang. And really, that's one of the only ones that we really hear about over here.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
But a lot of the times, drugs will do it. Drugs will get you in contact with these people and you'll either make a decision or just get brought into it.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
A friend had contacted her and gave her the name, a name of a gang member, and said that this guy's murdered people in the past, he's gotten away with it, and she was unaware of any direct threats, but she was worried because she knew that he had been hanging out with this gang member.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
We did look into this guy. He has an extensive criminal history. I know they did several search warrants, several court orders, trying to get any information they can to connect this guy. Now, we know that he and Jeff were associated. We can speculate all day long. In this case, there just wasn't anything to prove that he had anything to do with Jeff's disappearance.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
In August 2019, so it would have been a year and a month, we kind of ran out of places to go. And at that time, it was suspended and considered a cold case.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
Of course, we responded out there, and it's just the skull. There's no jawbone. There's no other bones around it that we located. We know, obviously, that it could be connected to missing persons. We also know that in that area there is a lot of homeless that frequent that area. And the issue with that area is in Bay St. Louis it floods often and bad.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
And so a lot of the times some of these bones can be disturbed by flood water so they can be moved over extended lengths. So we just don't know. Yeah, I mean, we always hope, you know, it's obviously not any outcome that we want, but we need answers and the family deserves answers either way.
The Deck
Jefferson West (King of Diamonds, Mississippi)
We hope when something like this happens that, you know, for the family's sake that we can give them some answers. And in this case, it didn't pan out.