Pod Insights Park Predators The Meeting About this episode When a young mother disappears and her truck is found abandoned at a popular river access in Ozark National Scenic Riverways her family and authorities suspect the worst. A person close to her makes statements that cause investigators to take a second look. What they find is a predator at the heart of their investigation and a crime that spans across a national park and a national forest.
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0:30 Speaker 02 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia Diambra. The case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in the Mark Twain National Forest and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, both of which are in Missouri. According to the US Forest Service, Mark Twain National Forest touches 29 different counties and covers a whopping 1.5 million acres. If you visit, you can kayak, camp, river float, ride mountain bikes, horseback ride, or walk the park's more than 750 miles of trails. From what I read about the national forest and Ozark National Scenic Riverways, they both seem like great places to take a day trip if you live in an area within driving distance.
1:13 Speaker 02 One of the largest predators found in these parts is the black bear, followed by a variety of venomous snakes. And lastly, a pesky nuisance animal known as the feral hog. Yeah, you heard me right. I said hog, as in oink-oink. These critters are perhaps the most harmful type of wildlife to that area because they constantly are rooting around, tearing up native plants. They abound in large numbers, and some can weigh as much as 300 to 400 pounds. The precious ecosystems they destroy are dwindling far quicker than wildlife conservationists would like. And the economic and environmental damage they cause in the United States every year is estimated to be about $1.5 billion.
1:58 Speaker 02 In May of 2020, though, it wasn't the feral hogs that fractured the sanctity and solitude of Ozark National Scenic Riverways, or Mark Twain National Forest. It was a human predator, a man, who took a mother away from her children and the peace of mind out of many people's lives. This is Park Predators.
3:00 Speaker 02 At 1:30 in the afternoon on Thursday, May 21, 2020, park rangers for the Ozark National Scenic Riverways were riding around, patrolling in a popular recreation area off of Missouri Highway 17 North. The spot was Buck Hollow, and when they got there, they noticed something out of the ordinary: an empty pickup truck just sitting by itself near the Jacks Fork River. To quickly paint a picture of what Buck Hollow is, it's a well-known spot in Ozark National Scenic Riverways that you can get to if you take an exit off the main highway and drive down toward the river. So think of it like a pull-off area that you see in a lot of national parks, but this one's not directly adjacent to the highway. It's sort of back and down a little ways.
3:44 Speaker 02 I've posted a picture of the Google Maps street view of Buck Hollow in the blog post for this episode, so definitely go take a look if you want to get a better sense of what I'm describing. Anyway, when the rangers checked on the truck, I imagine they made sure that no one was inside, and they walked around it to see if they could assess how long it had been there, or, I don't know, maybe they were looking for signs that it had broken down or something. That detail of the story is a little unclear, but what I do know is that not long after the rangers approached the truck, they spotted something ominous right outside the driver's side front door that made them stop cold in their tracks. There, on the ground, were two pools of blood and a pair of eyeglasses.
4:26 Speaker 02 In a piece Michael Dear reported for KY3 News, it stated that traces of blood were also visible on the outside of the pickup. Now, the source material doesn't explicitly say this, but I have to assume the next thing the Rangers did was check the truck's license plate information to see whose it was. Because according to all of the news coverage on this case, they were able to determine it belonged to 29-year-old Brittany Gorman, who lived in the nearby town of Mountainview, Missouri, which is like a 10-minute drive south of Buck Hollow, so very, very close. When the Rangers ran Brittany's name and information, they determined there was no missing persons report or anything like that for her in their system, which meant no one had reported her as missing.
5:09 Speaker 02 Still, her truck being by itself with the pools of blood on the ground next to it and her not being anywhere nearby just didn't sit right with the park rangers. They weren't exactly sure what they were dealing with, so in an abundance of caution, they immediately got in touch with the Texas County Missouri Sheriff's Department and the Missouri State Highway Patrol to come help assist them. The brief description that went out about Brittany said that she was 5 feet 2 inches tall, had blond hair, and green eyes. It didn't take long before law enforcement was with her family members in the nearby town of Mountainview, who told them that the last time they'd seen Brittany was the day before, Wednesday, May 20th. She'd visited with them for a little bit and left sometime between 3 and 4 o'clock
5:53 Speaker 02 in the afternoon. Before heading out, she mentioned that she was going to the nearby town of Winona, Missouri, which is only like 25 minutes east from Mountainview. The available source material isn't 100% clear on this, but I think it was maybe during those interviews with Brittany's relatives that investigators showed the family those eyeglasses that had been discovered near her truck. Because several news publications stated that the eyeglasses were determined to be ones that Brittany wore often. And I don't know how else detectives would have come to learn that unless they saw a picture of her somewhere with them on, or someone who knew her well had positively identified them.
6:34 Speaker 02 Authorities’ next move was to mobilize a ground search at Buck Hollow, starting at the spot where Brittany’s truck had been left abandoned. By nighttime on Thursday, word of what was going on at the river was all over social media, thanks in big part to people like Brittany’s sister, Megan, who posted about the disappearance online. According to reporting by Jesse Dreckman for the Ozark County Times, Megan wrote a post asking for the public’s help in locating her sister. She begged anyone who’d seen or heard from Brittany in the last 24 hours to come forward. That specific post ended up being shared by almost 1,000 people, but I’m not sure if anyone came forward that night or not. The next morning, Friday, May 22, Brittany’s aunt and uncle, Kathy and Joseph Spence,
7:19 Speaker 02 as well as her current boyfriend, a guy named Gene Roberts, joined search crews at Buck Hollow. They spoke with KY3 reporter Michael Dear, and Gene appeared to be really shaken up by the whole situation. He told the news that one time not long before Brittany’s disappearance, she’d slept overnight in her truck at the river access point, but as far as he knew, that had only happened once. To his knowledge, she hadn’t made any plans to stay there overnight on Wednesday. Gene made a pretty heart-wrenching plea in the news segment, saying, quote, “Brittany, if you are out there, we are looking for you. We won’t stop until we find you. We love you.” End quote. Now, you might be wondering, just like I was, why would Brittany have been sleeping
8:04 Speaker 02 in her car by the river, even if it was just that one time, like Gene said? Well, the answer to that question is hard to answer. None of the source material goes into detail about whether Brittany was struggling with housing at the time of her disappearance, or if camping out overnight in her car was just something she liked to do. But based on Gene’s comments to KY3 News, it seems like maybe Brittany just had moments where she just needed to get away for a quick sec. One possible reason for her wanting to find some peace alone was because she was in the midst of a stressful, intense co-parenting relationship with her estranged husband, 28-year-old Dylan Hanger. The two were not together at the time, but her family told KY3 News source that the couple hadn’t gone through a formal divorce yet.
8:50 Speaker 02 Dylan was also reportedly dating someone else, just like Brittany was in a relationship with Jean. But he still lived in Mountain View, which was convenient because he and Brittany shared three young children together. Their ages ranged from five to 10 years old, and in May of 2020, Brittany had her hands full as a stay-at-home mom, caring for them. I couldn't find any reporting that explained where her kids were when she vanished, but I have to assume they were with her family members in Mountain View that she'd seen earlier in the day on May 20. Her family and close friends said that even though things between her and Dylan were tense, their kids were her entire world. It wouldn't be like her to just disappear and leave them behind. But until investigators could learn more about what exactly was going on and what Brittany
9:35 Speaker 02 had been up to right before going missing, they couldn't rule any theories out. The next person they set their sights on after gathering information from Jean and the rest of Brittany's family was Dylan. He agreed to speak with investigators on Friday, May 22nd, the same day the searches for his ex were underway. He told detectives that the last time he'd seen Brittany was on Wednesday. They'd met up at a Signal convenience store in Mountain View so that he could give her a $2,000 check for her portion of their federal stimulus economic impact payment that the US government was doling out in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. After March 2020, the United States Treasury Department began sending stimulus checks
10:16 Speaker 02 to adults and families who needed help shouldering the impacts of layoffs, lost hours, and financial difficulty as a result of coronavirus. Some families with multiple children got several hundred dollars per kid in relief payments. And since Dylan and Brittany shared three kids together, part of their co-parenting relationship still meant they had to divvy up things like this. So him meeting up with his estranged wife wasn't unusual in that sense. He went on to tell detectives that before parting ways with Brittany, he'd filled up her truck with gas. The authorities wanted to be extra sure, though, that he wasn't lying to them or trying to hide anything. So they pressed him a little bit more about whether he'd been at Buck Hollow on Wednesday or Thursday.
10:59 Speaker 02 He told them, no, he hadn't been. So for the time being, investigators were sort of back to square one in terms of figuring out where Brittany was. But thankfully, the lead they desperately needed landed in their laps. A couple of people who'd been at Buck Hollow on the night of May 20th had come forward, and man, did they have a story to share.
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13:09 Speaker 02 According to Jesse Dreckman's piece for the Ozark County Times and reporting by the Houston Herald, on Wednesday, May 27th, one week after Brittany was reported missing, NPS investigators made contact with three people who said they'd visited Buck Hollow around 8 o'clock at night on Wednesday, May 20th. These witnesses all described seeing the same strange thing: a younger-looking white man with no shirt on, standing next to the passenger side of a parked pickup truck. When detectives showed the witnesses pictures of Brittany's truck, they identified it as the same one they'd seen the guy standing next to. They described how when they got closer to the shirtless man, he'd realized they'd
13:50 Speaker 02 noticed him, and then he abruptly walked over to a white Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV and sped out of the area. At some point during these interviews, I think police showed these witnesses a photo of Dylan Hanger. Because reporting on this part of the story states that they identified him as the man they saw standing next to Brittany's truck. So naturally, with this new information in hand, law enforcement knew they had to bring Dylan in for a second interview. Everything he'd told them when he'd spoken to them the first time completely contradicted what these three witnesses said they'd seen. So around 3:00 PM on Saturday, May 30th, three days after interviewing the people who'd been at the river, detectives sat Dylan down to have another chat.
14:35 Speaker 02 Right out the gate, he told police that he didn't know where Brittany was, and he had nothing to do with why she was missing. But detectives kept the pressure on and confronted him with the information they'd gotten from other people. And slowly but surely, Dylan's story began to change drastically. He ended up admitting that, yes, he and Brittany had actually met up at Buck Hollow on May 20th, several hours after their exchange at the convenience store in Mountain View. He said they'd gotten into an argument about their kids, and Brittany had pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the shoulder. In retaliation, he'd fought back and placed her in a chokehold until she lost consciousness. He estimated the total time he'd had her in a headlock was about 1 to 2 minutes.
15:21 Speaker 02 He claimed that after she stopped moving, he let go of her body and they both kind of collapsed to the ground. When he realized she wasn't breathing, he went to reposition her, but saw blood, which he told investigators had come from her falling on the knife when they both went down to the ground together. I know, major eye roll, but that was his story. When police asked him what he did next, Dylan said he quickly packed her lifeless body into the trunk of his Trailblazer and drove away. He kept driving for several miles until he got to an area known as West Plains. Then he turned off onto another highway and drove a little further until he found a remote spot in Mark Twain National Forest to dispose of her. After giving investigators his confession,
16:06 Speaker 02 Dylan agreed to navigate them to the exact spot where he dumped Brittany's remains. That very same day, he took law enforcement on a trip into nearby Ozark County and led them to a gravel turnaround inside Mark Twain National Forest. Next to the trailhead road, he directed them to look in some woods about 30 yards off the roadway. Investigators quickly found what was left of Brittany. She'd been decomposing out in the elements for more than a week, which meant not much of her was left. But reading between the lines of some of the source material, there seemed to be at least enough there to confirm her ID. After Dylan was arrested and formally taken into custody, he told detectives that he tossed the knife used in the incident into a ditch somewhere between Buck Hollow and the National Forest.
16:51 Speaker 02 I couldn't find anywhere in the source material that stated whether or not investigators were ever able to retrieve it. The day after Dylan's arrest, the NPS released a statement announcing that the Texas County Prosecutor's Office would be charging him with second-degree murder and tampering with evidence. Both charges came with the possibility of spending life in prison. Local authorities kept Dylan in jail without bond for the time being, but according to Harrison Keegan's reporting for the Springfield News Leader, he was eventually transferred into a federal court after it was determined Brittany's death had actually occurred on federal land. On the heels of authorities announcing the arrest, Brittany's family issued a statement that said, "Please say a prayer for us.
17:36 Speaker 02 We would like to gratefully thank all the agencies who worked tirelessly on Brittany's case and for the great outpouring of kindness and support from family, friends, and even strangers."
17:49 Speaker 02 On June 6th, about a week after her body was found, loved ones held a memorial service for her at Shenandoah Community Church and laid her to rest in Patterson Cemetery. According to Brittany's obituary, a lot of her siblings, parents, and extended family attended the event and celebrated her legacy as a loving mother, daughter, sister, and friend. She was from Timber, Missouri, which is a town about 50 minutes to an hour north of where she'd last been seen alive. She'd grown up spending time outdoors with her family, going on trips, and doing water sports on local rivers. After graduating from high school in 2010, she'd started attending classes at Southwestern Baptist University. The source material doesn't exactly say this, but my best guess is that it was around
18:34 Speaker 02 this time when she either met Dylan or they realized they were expecting their oldest child. Because if you do the math, their eldest was 10 years old in 2020, so that would mean they would have had to have her sometime in 2010. At some point after becoming a mother, Brittany fully embraced the role of being a stay-at-home mom, and her loved ones said she really thrived in that area of her life. On May 5th, 2021, almost a year after the murder, a federal grand jury indicted Dylan for second-degree murder and interstate domestic violence. He pled not guilty to all the charges against him. On May 10th, 2022, more than a whole year later, prosecutors steering the case toward trial decided to abruptly change course.
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20:28 Speaker 02 The federal government offered Dylan a chance to spare Brittany's family the ordeal of going through a lengthy trial. They put a plea deal on the table, and he took it. The felony count against him for interstate domestic violence was dropped, and the US Attorney's Office only moved forward with the second-degree murder charge, which still carried a potential sentence of life in prison, but more than likely, he would get far less time. According to court documents filed in the case, as part of the plea deal, Dylan admitted to some basic facts. He said he had met up with Brittany at Buck Hollow River Access Area on May 20th. Not long after they started talking, their conversation turned into an argument regarding
21:09 Speaker 02 their kids, and who was going to get the funds from their joint federal stimulus check. Which, just a side note, indicates to me that the story he first told investigators about giving Brittany that $2,000 check at the convenience store was all a lie. Anyway, he admitted that at some point while they were arguing by the river, things got so heated between them that he pulled out a knife and stabbed Brittany at least four times in the chest. What's really interesting to me, though, is that all the important stuff law enforcement had dug up on Dylan during their investigation also came to light in court filings submitted after he took his plea deal. For example, the record stated that detectives had learned that all the way back in January
21:50 Speaker 02 2020, so like four months before Brittany's murder, Dylan had had a conversation with a friend of his about wanting to kill her. This friend, who is only referred to in the court documents by the initials TC, said that Dylan told them he'd been planning to kill his estranged wife for a while. In fact, he'd mapped out the specific day and time he was going to do it. Investigators had also spent some time combing through Dylan's online activity. In March of 2020, a few weeks after having that conversation with TC about wanting to kill Brittany, but mere weeks before he went through with the killing, Dylan had looked into purchasing a gun. However, I guess the words or phrases you need to type into
22:34 Speaker 02 your keyboard to like actually go through with buying a firearm online, Dylan had refrained from punching in. The court document about this says he quote, "did not want to type into Facebook why he wanted it," end quote. I looked into this a little more because I was genuinely curious about why the court documents were so vague. And according to Facebook's official policy on firearms, gun sales between private citizens, which also includes ammunition and explosives, are not allowed on the site. However, gun stores and online gun sellers can promote products and services on the social media platform, and there are no barriers to them linking out to their retail sites.
23:15 Speaker 02 So I'm not sure if this was the kind of suspicious stuff investigators found on Dylan's devices, but one scenario might be that he could have followed a link to a firearm retailer's website, but then when it came time for him to answer the questions about why he was purchasing a gun, he realized he didn't want to leave a digital trail of his activity. Like I said, I don't know for sure because it's hard to tell from the available source material. But what I can tell you is that Dylan's deceitful and manipulative behavior didn't stop there.
23:46 Speaker 02 Court records show that investigators also determined he'd removed the murder weapon from his house prior to the crime, and he tried to line up two alibis for himself for the timeframe of the murder. After killing Brittany, he'd gone to see one of his friends who court filings only identified by the initials NB. Dylan asked NB to vouch for him for the night of Wednesday, May 20. Then, the next day, Dylan went to see his friend TC again. And while they were together, he asked TC to tell anyone who asked that he was at TC's house until 10:30 PM on the night of Wednesday, May 20. The court documents also explain that for nine days, Dylan fed into the narrative that
24:27 Speaker 02 Brittany was missing, when all along, he knew he was the one who'd killed her. He did things like suggest to her family that whatever had happened to her was because she'd gotten involved in drugs or was connected to people in the drug world. Pretty heartless. When it came time for him to be sentenced, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, a woman named Josephine Stockard, asked the judge to sentence Dylan to 25 years in prison. Her reason for requesting such a specific amount of time was simple. She believed that what Dylan had done was not only a horrific act against his estranged wife, but it would have long-lasting effects on the couple's young children. Essentially, the government's goal was to make sure that by the time Dylan got out of prison,
25:12 Speaker 02 his youngest child, who was only five when the murder occurred, would be well into adulthood and ideally capable of handling the complexities of navigating an in-person relationship with him. Basically, it was a built-in protection mechanism for the youngest kid to even have a shot at reconciling with what happened. Assistant U.S. Attorney Stockard wrote in her sentencing memorandum, quote, "For the rest of their lives, they will have to live without their mother and deal with the fact that their father murdered their mother. There are no good answers to the questions they will ask. There are no answers at all." She later continued in part, quote, "The defendant's actions in planning this crime, following through with it, and then covering it up for days
25:56 Speaker 02 while his wife's worried family sat and waited, is horrendous. The defendant may have faced difficulties with Gorman, money, and the situation of his life. But those are excuses for an act that can never be undone and an act the resulting harm from which will never stop making itself known to his children and family." End quote. Stockard expressed that any good memories the kids had made with Brittany would now likely always be paired with terrible memories of her murder. And I want to just take a moment here to really address this because I feel like a lot of times with stories like this, the children can just sort of get forgotten. But we should all remember, they are the ones who have literally lost everything in this scenario.
26:42 Speaker 02 In February 2023, Dylan Hanger was sentenced to 21 years and 10 months in prison. According to an article by Harrison Keegan for the Springfield News Leader, Dylan and Brittany's three children are now being cared for by Brittany's family members. I hope that despite enduring this horrific tragedy, they'll receive the resources they need to heal in their own time and in their own way.
27:07 Speaker 02 Something I read while putting this episode together is that during the week or so that Brittany was missing, but before Dylan confessed, he'd been sharing her family's social media posts about the efforts to find her. He saw her sister Megan's cries for help and promoted them, when all the while he knew what he'd done. He also made posts of his own, one of which went out on May 26, nearly a week after he murdered Brittany. The photo in the post showed his children sitting in front of a TV watching an animated movie. The caption read, quote, "To help keep minds off of all the craziness that's been happening, we're having a movie night. Little bit of popcorn and a new cartoon put their minds at ease." End quote.
27:58 Speaker 02 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @ParkPredators.
28:15 Speaker 02 So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?
28:23 Speaker 04 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
28:43 Speaker 05 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory. A baby factory.
28:50 Speaker 04 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
28:58 Speaker 06 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp. That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then
29:04 Speaker 07 he pulled out a gun. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
29:11 Speaker 04 I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
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