A 1991 disappearance, traced through one night in custody.
Buried is KETR public radio's investigation into Carey Mae Parker, who disappeared from south Hunt County, Texas, in early 1991, shortly after a night in jail over unpaid traffic tickets. Reporter George Hale follows that detention outward, into a Quinlan Justice of the Peace office, a prison visiting room and sheriff-led property searches.
PRESS PLAY
Buried is an investigative series from 88.9 KETR, the public radio station in Commerce, Texas, about Carey Mae Parker. She has been missing from her home in south Hunt County since 1991. George Hale is the host and principal reporter, with Jared Knight as executive producer and production help from Emma Anderson. The case hinges on something small. On February 21, 1991, Parker was arrested over a couple of unpaid traffic tickets and held overnight, and her mugshot from that arrest may be one of the last photographs ever taken of her. Hale describes the series as being about her disappearance and also about the people she encountered in the custody of the Hunt County Sheriff's Office. That second half gives the show its shape. The cold open of 'Buried Episode 15: The Black World' says plainly that it is about the people who put her in jail, and its tape includes a speaker recounting seven default judgments against people who said they were never served, followed by a complaint to the Judicial Review Commission. Hale narrates in the first person and puts himself inside the scene. In July 2017 he walked into the Justice of the Peace office in downtown Quinlan, hoping someone could explain the charges on Parker's record. The recordings keep the ordinary texture of that kind of reporting: a table set up in a hallway, chairs carried in, a librarian named Lisa Gunter helping pull out newspapers from 1991. Another scene takes place in a prison visiting room, where Hale and Billy Givens talk over wall phones on either side of thick glass. Givens also gets an extended bonus interview. In it, the FBI term clearance rate comes up, along with the incentive it can create to pin similar crimes on someone already under suspicion. Hale notes there that he met Givens in 2017 without expecting to still be reporting on Parker in early 2019. The physical search for Parker gets coverage too. In a station news update, Mark Haslett talks with Hale about sheriff's deputies bringing a dog-search group and ground-penetrating radar to three properties on the state highway through Quinlan. Tape from that update includes someone who guesses Parker lies beneath concrete and rock that nobody could dig through by accident. In The Buried Lede, Hale and Knight talk through episodes 13, 14 and 15, and the question of who was paying for the dog searches comes up. The episodes run without ad breaks, supported by donations to the station. What a listener gets is a missing-person case read through one Texas county's records, officials and land.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants true crime built from documents, location tape and patient local reporting. It also suits someone as curious about how a small county's sheriff's office and courts handled a case as about the case itself.
What sets it apart: Buried is made by the public radio station for northeast Texas about a case from that same region. It gives as much attention to the county system around Carey Mae Parker as to her disappearance: the traffic-ticket warrant and overnight jailing, the local justice of the peace, and the sheriff's property searches.
Carey Mae Parker has been missing from northeast Texas since 1991. People go missing every day, but there's something unusual about Carey's case. After two decades without answers, family members made a shocking discovery: Police never launched an investigation. We spent a year searching for clues about Carey's disappearance. And about the people who let it happen.
One night in jail, and suddenly you care a lot about the paperwork.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brief jail stay reveals the people and power around Carrie Mae Parker before she disappeared.
Buried uses Carrie Mae Parker's brief arrest as a fixed point in the uncertain weeks before her disappearance. Her mugshot, the timing of her release, and the people around her during 18 hours in Hunt County custody give the story a firmer frame.
An official search, old rumors, a prison map, and conflicting memories give Buried a sharper but still cautious update.
Buried returns to the Carrie Mae Parker case with what George Hale describes as the first official search he knows of at property once tied to Parker's ex-boyfriend's family.
A dismissed charge leads Carrie Mae Parker's case into Quinlan offices, old newspapers, and unresolved questions.
Buried follows Carrie Mae Parker's disappearance through the kind of ordinary paperwork that can keep a case quietly unsettled. A 1991 arrest for unpaid traffic tickets led to a short overnight jail stay, but a later failure-to-appear charge shows up on Parker's record after she…
Billy Givens's account gives this interview a personal, unsettled weight.
Billy Givens Extended Interview shifts attention from Buried's Carrie Mae Parker reporting to a man caught inside its harder, less settled questions.
A search for Cody leads into a prison interview where access, audio, and testimony shape the story.
A Buried episode begins in uneasy pursuit of Cody, with the host weighing Mike's Handy Stop, a friend's house, and the risk of approaching someone's parents.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
A former cop's DNA, a dropped case, unreliable memories.
Buried's The Buried Lede revisits episodes 13, 14, and 15 after the show moved to buried.simplecast.com.
Buried opens with one of the last known photos of Carrie Mae Parker, a mugshot from her February 1991 arrest in Quinlan, Texas.
Buried reports on May 2019 searches of three Quinlan properties connected to Carrie Mae Parker’s former boyfriend, Cody Songer.
George Hale follows Carrie Mae Parker's missing-person paper trail in Quinlan, where a 1993 dismissal survives even though her family says she disappeared in 1991.
Billy says Cody described Carrie Mae Parker leaving a bar with somebody else and then used the line 'no body, no crime.' George Hale frames Buried Bonus: Billy Givens Extended Interview as a 2017 prison recording from the Allred unit, with Billy tied to Cody and the Parker case.
Buried Episode 13 follows George Hale's attempts in Oklahoma to locate Cody, Janice's former boyfriend connected to the 1991 disappearance of Carrie Mae Parker.
Jared Knight and George Hale review Buried episodes 10, 11, and 12, covering Carrie’s suspected burial site, George’s Hunt County Sheriff’s Office interrogation, and his phone call with Cody in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.
Buried Episode 12 follows the host’s effort to locate Cody Songer in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, after comparing his account with recordings, Janice’s recollections, and Sgt.
George Hale releases an extended 2017 conversation with Jeff Haines, the detective investigating Carrie Mae Parker's disappearance, recorded inside the Hunt County Sheriff's Office.
An extended interview with Cody's ex-girlfriend about his statements regarding the last time he saw missing woman Carrie Mae Parker.
The host and executive producer discuss the return of the podcast and how the investigation into Carey Mae Parker's 1991 disappearance began.