When a Navy veteran and recent transplant to Oklahoma is found stabbed to death at a popular fishing spot, authorities are quick to investigate a mysterious angler seen fleeing the crime scene. What their investigation revealed was not what anyone expected.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-anglerPark Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck
Chapter 1: What case is discussed in this episode?
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and today's episode is about a case that most likely few of you have ever heard of. I came across it while researching an entirely different story, but when I saw it, I just knew I had to cover it here.
There was so little information about this murder in old newspapers or online, so I decided to request the court filings and sift through about 200 pages of records, court transcripts, and affidavits to understand exactly what happened. And what I discovered is a pretty tragic story.
It takes place at Fort Gibson Lake in Oklahoma, which is a recreation area in the northeast part of the state, located about an hour southeast of the city of Tulsa. The lake itself is surrounded by two state parks and a wildlife management area waterfowl refuge. According to Recreation.gov's website, the lake is known for having exceptional fishing spots and is somewhere you can visit year-round.
It has 225 miles of shoreline that touches three different counties. It's also home to the Fort Gibson Dam, which provides hydroelectric power and manages flood risks in the surrounding areas. Depending on how much flooding flows into the lake in a year, the water level can swell far beyond its normal volume and become a problem.
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Shortly after 6.30 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003, a man named Michael was four-wheeling in his Jeep looking for a place to go fishing on Fort Gibson Lake. Michael lived on a peninsula on the north side of the lake and had gone down to the shore a few times earlier that day and spoken with anglers who said the fish weren't biting.
So when evening rolled around, he decided he wanted to ride down once again to see if maybe the fishing had gotten any better. He drove for a few miles, then pulled up to a fishing area known as Topper's Point and noticed a two-door blue car parked off the gravel road by itself. Something about the vehicle just didn't seem quite right to Michael.
The driver's side door was open and lying face up slightly next to it on some grass was a man. Michael immediately sensed something was wrong, so he yelled at the guy to see if he was okay, but the man on the ground didn't respond. Michael hollered at him again, but still got nothing.
When he walked a little bit closer, Michael noticed there was blood on the man's shirt, which immediately indicated to him that something was wrong. He hightailed it up the road to a nearby convenience store and asked the clerk to call the Wagner County Sheriff's Office. The clerk then handed Michael the phone and he reported what he found.
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Chapter 2: Where did the murder take place?
And really quickly, just to give you some context of where Starla was in relation to this guy, she said she was on a hillside across the water from Topper's Point, which is technically in the Topper's Point area, but there was no land physically between her and where she saw this guy get into his car.
And actually, the exact moment she noticed him, she was sitting in her car with the door open, not like standing at the shoreline with her fishing pole in the water or whatever. Anyway, after she saw the man speed off, she didn't really think much about it. Another half an hour went by, and then she and her friend left the area.
She said she never saw any police or other cars arrive at the fishing spot across the lake. Obviously, Starla's story was of great interest to the OSBI because it kind of sounded like she may have overheard Brett's murder happening, or at a minimum, something related to it.
Because it just seemed highly unlikely that the strange things she'd witnessed shortly before Brett was discovered dead were unrelated to the crime. So with her story and Jeff's statements in hand, authorities knew it was more important than ever to find the angler who'd been seen with Brad.
So they started looking for small yellow vehicles in the local area that matched the general description of the one that had been seen leaving Topper's Point. That same day, investigators with the sheriff's office went through Brett's car at their impound lot to try and locate his wallet or anything that might be of evidentiary value, but nothing was found.
It seems like his car was pretty much a dead end at that point because the crime itself had taken place outside of the vehicle, not in it. Around the same time as when Brett's autopsy results came back and the findings indicated that he died how authorities already assumed, stabbing.
Rhett Morgan reported for Tulsa World that the wound to his neck was several inches long and fatally damaged a vein, his trachea, and a major artery. In addition to those injuries, he'd also suffered slicing wounds to his upper left chest and upper right arm.
His toxicology results showed that at the time of his death, he had a blood alcohol content of 0.15, almost twice the legal limit in Oklahoma. I imagine this finding caused authorities to speculate if perhaps whatever had happened to him might have been spurred from an argument with the unknown angler while under the influence of alcohol.
But to really get a sense of whether or not drinking while fishing was normal for Brett, investigators turned to his next of kin to learn more information. Earlier that summer in late July, Brett had left his home in Appalachia, Virginia and moved in with some relatives in Wagner, Oklahoma. The folks he was living with were named Rob and Vicky. Rob was Brett's cousin and Vicky was Rob's wife.
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