“Where Is Aubrey?” — The Disappearance and Death of Aubrey Dameron

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In the early hours of March 9, 2019, 25-year-old Aubrey Dameron walked out of her family’s home outside Grove, Oklahoma, and into the dark. It took nearly six years to find her. Most of that searching was done not by law enforcement, but by the aunt and uncle who refused to let her be forgotten.

Aubrey was a Cherokee Nation citizen, a transgender woman, and Two-Spirit. Her case sits at the intersection of everything this show exists to talk about: a missing Indigenous woman, a trans woman, a rural case, and a slow, dismissive early response. Here’s her story.

Who Was Aubrey Dameron?

Aubrey was born in 1993 and grew up in Grove, a small town in northeastern Oklahoma inside the Cherokee Nation reservation. Her loved ones called her “Shorty.” She was bullied from a young age for being different, and as a teenager she came out as transgender. The first person she told was her uncle, Christian Fencer, who is gay and only six months older than her. The two were raised more like siblings than uncle and niece.

Aubrey also identified as Two-Spirit, a term used in many Native communities for a person who carries both masculine and feminine spirits, a role traditionally held with respect. Not everyone around her understood. But her aunt, Pam Smith, has said that when people ridiculed Aubrey, she never wanted revenge. She prayed for them instead.

She graduated from Grove High School in 2012 and from Grove Beauty College in 2015. She loved rock and roll and dreamed of singing or acting. For a while she lived in New Mexico with a boyfriend, where she continued her transition. That relationship turned controlling, and according to her family, he threatened her if she left. In 2018 she came home to Oklahoma, moving in with her mother, Jennifer, and her stepfather, Mike, while she worked on her own struggles with her family’s support.

Home wasn’t calm either. Aubrey and her stepfather had a rocky relationship, and in February 2019 a physical altercation between them led to assault charges against Aubrey that were later dropped. In the months before she vanished, Pam and Christian felt her pulling away. Something seemed off.

The Night She Vanished

Around 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 9, 2019, Aubrey’s mother saw her leaving the house. Aubrey was dressed all in black: a mini-skirt, a leather jacket, black hosiery, and boots. She said she was going to meet someone, but didn’t say who. Then she walked down the long gravel driveway toward the county road.

She didn’t have a car. The area is rural, with almost no streetlights and nothing open at that hour. Aubrey had messaged friends on Facebook that night asking for a ride, but apparently no one answered in time. We still don’t know whether someone picked her up.

She left behind her purse and her epilepsy medication, which she took daily. Reports conflict on her phone. Some say she left it at home, others say she had it and it was switched off. What’s reported is that it pinged for the last time at 3:42 a.m., near a mobile home park roughly 100 yards from the house. After that, nothing.

No neighbor’s security camera caught her walking by, or a car stopping for her.

A Lost Week and a Dismissive Response

Aubrey sometimes left for a day or two, so her mother didn’t report her missing right away. On March 11, two days later, the family filed a report with the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office.

The relatives Aubrey was closest to didn’t find out for a full week. Pam, who lives in Tulsa, learned on March 16, when a friend sent her a Facebook post asking if Aubrey was missing. She called the sheriff’s office, then called her sister. She was devastated, and furious that no one had told her.

When Pam pushed for answers, she learned the sheriff himself had only just been briefed, a week after the report was filed. The lead investigator, Captain Gayle Wells, told her he didn’t believe Aubrey was really missing because of her “lifestyle.” Pam asked point-blank whether it was because Aubrey was Native, or because she was transgender. Wells denied it. But he later told a reporter what made the case unique was her lifestyle: “Not only was she transgender and very sexually active, but she was also a known drug abuser.”

In a missing persons case, the first days matter most. By the family’s account, the sheriff’s office didn’t begin actively investigating for weeks. Those days were gone.

The Family Searches on Their Own

Pam and Christian became the engine of the search. On March 23, two weeks after Aubrey vanished, they led a volunteer search with dozens of people, including dive teams checking nearby ponds. About half a mile from the house, searchers found a white sock that appeared to be bloodstained. It was sent to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI). The results were inconclusive.

The tips were not all real. Days after Aubrey disappeared, a former friend called her ex-boyfriend claiming Aubrey was being held over a drug debt and that cash would free her. He went to police instead of paying. It was a scam, and the caller was charged with extortion.

Then, on April 6, 2019, Pam says her sister told her that Mike, Aubrey’s stepfather, had confessed to killing Aubrey, and that she didn’t feel safe. Pam called the sheriff’s office. Investigators went out that day, and Mike was arrested on an unrelated DUI during a traffic stop. When deputies questioned Jennifer, she denied ever saying he confessed. With no corroboration, no body, and no physical evidence, no charges related to Aubrey followed. No one has ever been publicly named a suspect.

The searches continued. In late May 2019, a tip led the family to a shallow grave on a hill about 30 miles away, with a black leather jacket nearby. Testing later found the clothing wasn’t Aubrey’s. In November 2019, with permission, cadaver dogs searched her mother’s property and alerted to a pond and to a blue tarp in a shed that appeared stained. According to the family, it took over a month for deputies to get the tarp to the state crime lab. It never produced a lead.

Pam summed up how it felt: “It’s hard to have one hundred percent trust in them… I wish that they would have taken her case seriously from the moment she was reported missing.”

A New Investigation After McGirt

In July 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that much of eastern Oklahoma, including the Cherokee Nation reservation, remains reservation land for purposes of criminal jurisdiction. Aubrey’s case moved from the county sheriff to the Cherokee Nation Marshal Service, with the FBI involved.

The case was reclassified as a homicide. Cherokee Nation Marshal Shannon Buhl was blunt about what he inherited: “It’s a loss that now we’re playing catch up on maybe a case that… maybe could have been solved quickly — but wasn’t.”

The evidence gathered so far led nowhere. Buhl said he would need a judge’s warrant to search the family property again, because the family was no longer consenting. He told Dateline that if Aubrey was murdered, the person responsible was likely someone very close to her, and that person knows where she is.

From 2020 to 2024, there were no public breakthroughs. Pam and Christian kept Aubrey’s name in front of the public through rallies, interviews, and the 2022 Dateline: Missing in America podcast. “It’s high risk to be Native American. It’s high risk to be transgender,” Christian said. “Aubrey was both those things.”

Found Near Cardin, Six Years Later

On January 31, 2025, two people walking near an abandoned mine site found human remains near Cardin, a ghost town in rural Ottawa County, about 40 miles north of Grove. Cardin sits inside the Tar Creek Superfund area, a landscape of polluted lead and zinc mines emptied out by contamination. The Quapaw Nation Marshal Service responded.

On February 5, 2025, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office identified the remains as Aubrey. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. offered condolences to Pam and Christian, crediting them with keeping Aubrey’s case, and all Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases, at the forefront.

It isn’t publicly known how long Aubrey had been there. Her cause and manner of death have not been released. The Quapaw Nation Marshal Service, Cherokee Nation Marshal Service, the BIA Missing and Murdered Unit, and the FBI say they are working the case together. When a reporter asked the FBI about how the case was handled early on, a spokesperson declined to comment.

Memorials followed, including one in Oklahoma City hosted by the Indigenous nonprofit Matriarch. A Cherokee musician performed Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” one of Aubrey’s favorite songs.

As of this writing, no arrests have been announced and no suspect has been publicly named. Aubrey’s case is an open homicide investigation.

Why Aubrey’s Case Matters

When Aubrey went missing, her hometown paper had almost nothing on it. Many people in Grove never knew a young woman from their town had disappeared. National coverage came later, and only because her family and Native advocates kept pushing. Even when her remains were found, KOSU reported that some local residents heard only by word of mouth.

That silence is the pattern. Indigenous women, women of color, and trans women go missing and get a fraction of the attention other victims receive. Aubrey was Indigenous, trans, and from a rural town. Her family believes those facts shaped how seriously she was taken from day one.

Her family turned that grief into change. Pam and Christian helped form Northeast Oklahoma Indigenous Safety and Education (NOISE) and testified for Ida’s Law, which created a state liaison for missing Indigenous persons cases. Aubrey’s case also helped drive Oklahoma’s alert system for missing adults in danger. Lawmakers first proposed calling them “Aubrey Alerts.” According to the Cherokee Phoenix, some legislators refused to support the bill if it was named for a transgender woman. It passed as the Kasey Alert, named for Cherokee Nation citizen Russell Kasey. Pam backed it anyway, because it would protect other families.

Aubrey’s last Facebook post before she disappeared read: “You’re never too important to be nice to people.” That was who she was.

If You Know Something

Anyone with information about Aubrey Dameron’s case, no matter how small, can contact:

  • Quapaw Nation Marshal Service: 918-238-3137
  • Cherokee Nation Marshal Service: 918-207-3800
  • FBI: 1-800-CALL-FBI

Listen to Aubrey’s full episode on Vanished Voices, available on all major streaming platforms. Find us at vanishedvoicespodcast.com and follow @VanishedVoicesPod on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. If this story moved you, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so more people hear it.

Say her name: Aubrey Dameron. And refuse to let these voices vanish.

Vanished Voices is a true crime podcast dedicated to the cases that don’t get the attention they deserve — unsolved cases of people of color, LGBTQ+ victims, MMIW cases, and stories that still need tips to be solved. New episodes drop every Thursday. Subscribe and follow us anywhere and listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Have thoughts on this story or other cases you’d like to see highlighted? Share them with us in the comments or connect with us on social media. Together, we can ensure that stories like this one are never forgotten.

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Resources:

News Coverage

The 2019 Tulsa World article on the extortion arrest is also the source for the probable cause affidavit describing the alleged confession claim.

Early coverage, 2019–2021

Additional 2025 coverage

Podcasts, Video, and Books

Related context: Lissa Yellow Bird, the Arikara investigator who worked Aubrey’s case, is profiled here. These don’t cover Aubrey’s case directly.

Case Databases, Memorials, and Advocacy

Case records

Advocacy statements and independent write-ups

Organizations connected to the case

  • Northeast Oklahoma Indigenous Safety and Education (NOISE), co-founded by Aubrey’s family
  • Matriarch, Oklahoma City Indigenous nonprofit that hosted her February 2025 memorial
  • Sahnish Scouts, Lissa Yellow Bird’s volunteer search organization
  • MMIWUSA, which Pam Smith credited with helping on searches
  • Rural Oklahoma Pride and Freedom Oklahoma, LGBTQ+ groups that issued statements in 2025

Tip lines

  • Quapaw Nation Marshal Service: 918-238-3137
  • Cherokee Nation Marshal Service: 918-207-3800
  • FBI: 1-800-CALL-FBI

Legal and Policy Background

Jurisdiction

  • McGirt v. Oklahoma, 140 S. Ct. 2452 (2020). The Supreme Court ruling that moved Aubrey’s case from the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office to Cherokee Nation and federal authorities.

Ida’s Law (SB 172, 2021)

The Aubrey Alert and the Kasey Alert (HB 1077, 2023)

MMIP data

  • Urban Indian Health Institute. (2018). Missing and murdered Indigenous women & girls: A snapshot of data from 71 urban cities in the United States. Source of the NamUs vs. NCIC gap (116 vs. 5,712 reports) cited in 2019 coverage of Aubrey’s case.

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