Gone Without a Trace: Family members reflect on three who disappeared in Turley one year ago

TURLEY, Okla. — The family of two men and one woman who disappeared at a ranch in the north Tulsa community of Turley one year ago are sharing their thoughts, feelings, and even what they personally witnessed with FOX23 News in the hopes that someone will come forward with new information to close the case.

In mid-October 2021, Jack Grimes and his friends and business partner Dwayne Selby were planning to attend a show horse convention in Fort Worth, Texas, but they never made it. After days of unanswered phone calls, their family, including Dwayne’s mother Glenda “Cookie” Parton would begin looking for the men while the law enforcement search got underway.

However, Cookie herself would also disappear.

“Anything random. Nothing random makes any sense,” Carol Selby, Cookie’s daughter-in-law said. “No one would be out to hurt her. She had no enemies.”

FOX23 also spoke with Carol and Jack’s sister Nancy Clayton. Jack’s remains were found one miles west of his Turley home, but Cookie and Dwayne disappeared without a trace.

“Every time I think about it, there’s things I can’t quite get my head around,” Nancy said. “It’s probably why police are having such a hard time figuring things out too.”

In addition to the unanswered phone calls, the missing person’s case began to appear have elements of foul play when the car the men were supposed to be taking to Ft. Worth was found abandoned in Mohawk Park. Cookie’s car was found abandoned on Highway 75 in north Tulsa.

“It’s been weird from the beginning. The fact that we have a woman looking for her son and she goes missing as well, but that fact that we’ve only found Jack is very bizzare,” Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office Communications Director Casey Roebuck said.

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) told FOX23 the case is far from cold, and there have been many developments happening behind the scenes and out of public view.

“This case is far from cold,” Roebuck said. “We want the citizens of Tulsa County to know that. This isn’t in our cold case file. We don’t anticipate it going there. A lot of progress has been made over the last year.”

TCSO released a photo of a man shopping with Cookie the day she came to Tulsa to search for her son and Jack. They questioned and released him, but FOX23 is told he has not been ruled out as a suspect. TCSO did not identify the man.

However, Carol said she knows exactly who the man pictured shopping with her mother-in-law is, she told FOX23 his name is John, and he works as the men’s farm hand taking care of horses and other ranch duties. The relatives could not remember with certainty at the time of our interviews if they were ever told of John’s last name.

TCSO said they watched the entire shopping trip, and Roebuck said Cookie did not appear to be in distress or uncomfortable.

Carol said her mother-in-law had no reason not to trust that she would vanish by the next day.

“I don’t think at that moment she felt anything was wrong,” she said.

But things would take a turn that night because Carol and Jack’s sister Nancy would both report that when they last either saw or spoke with Cookie, she was left alone with John at the men’s homes.

“I heard a man’s voice on the phone, and it was his voice that was in the room with her,” Carol said about the last phone call she would have with Cookie.

Nancy said at the end of the night after a long day of searching, she would last see Cookie at the Turley ranch alone with John. The next morning, she had vanished.

“We can’t help but think she found out something or saw something. We don’t know. We hated that that happened. I tried to get her to come home with me. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay there,” Nancy said.

Nancy said she last saw Cookie’s car in the driveway of the men’s home the night she disappeared, and Carol said a family member also reported Cookie’s car was in the driveway of the Turley ranch before they went to bed. That family members lives nearby and could see the ranch out their window. No one knows how her car ended up a mile east on Highway 75, but there is suspicion that whoever caused Cookie to disappear dumped the car on the side of the highway to throw off investigators.

“She wouldn’t have gone down without a fight,” Carol said.

TCSO would not confirm if their person of interest is, in fact, farm hand John.

FOX23 is told that there is no threat to the family by whoever caused the three to disappear, and the family said they were comfortable speaking with FOX23 now that time has gone by and they don’t feel their own lives are in danger.

Jack’s remains, found in a field one mile west of the Turley ranch, are still at the State Medical Examiner’s Office, and an autopsy and toxicology report is not yet available.

Because they knew he was gone, Nancy and her family held a memorial service for Jack last December. She said while she knows her brother is gone, she still struggles with questions of why he died and if she will ever have justice.

However with there being no sign of Dwayne and Cookie, their family is struggling to even begin the process of finding some form of closure.

“We at one point had hoped they saw something, and now they were in witness protection and they just can’t talk to us for a while or come out for their safety,” Carol said.

In the end, they all want the public to know that Cookie, Dwayne, and Jack are more than just “the missing three”. They are people. They had lives. They are loved, and they each were unique and had personalities.

“We need to know what happened. We miss her,” Carol said about Cookie. “We’d really like to get answers and see justice for her.”

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office is still accepting tips in this case. The families and investigators said if anyone knows even a small morsel if information you can call the TSCO tip line at (918) 596-8836 or email tips@tsco.org.

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