We’ve all done it: Google an old flame or a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while.
You may be able to find their digital footprint on their social media accounts where they share life updates, work announcements, photos, and more.
But no one would expect anything terrible to have happened to that person.
But that’s exactly what David Ockmond found when he tried to search for his old school friend, Tanya Mae. “I Googled her name and the first thing that came up was about her death. I thought, ‘Oh my God,'” David says. “It was a huge shock.”
Taniya’s body was found on September 27, 2007, about 15 miles north of Fort Stockton, Texas. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety cold case website, the 26-year-old Taniya was last seen on September 17 in Odessa, less than an hour away. Her boyfriend reported her missing the next day. When authorities found Taniya’s body, it was “under a mesquite tree about 50 feet from an oil field road” and had “been stabbed multiple times.” The Texas Department of Public Safety site said the body “appeared to have been dragged off a dirt road in an attempt to hide the body.” Dateline has reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety for an update on the investigation, but has not yet heard back.
David said he tried to find as much information as he could about what happened to his old friend, but there wasn’t much. “The more I looked into it, the more they were like, ‘Oh, it’s still not solved,'” he said. “And they didn’t really know what actually happened.”
David couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt the sweet girl he’d met in Baytown, a small town just outside of Houston. “I first met Tanya in middle school, and we were just friends,” he says. “I think eventually we started hanging out as much as we could as middle schoolers.”
“She was very, well, soft-spoken,” David says. They spent a lot of time together, often at his house. Tanya eventually moved to another city in Texas, and although they initially kept in touch, the relationship ended when she met someone else and decided she didn’t want to do long-distance anymore.
But David says he held no grudge. A few years later, when he learned of Tanya’s fate, he decided to do something about it. “I ended up posting about it on Facebook,” David says. Then he got a message from Jaime Villanueva, a woman who’d gone to high school with Tanya. “She saw it and reached out to me.” The two talked about what they knew about Tanya and her case.
“It seems like no one knew about her,” Jaime Villanueva told Dateline. “It’s such a small town. It’s like, ‘There’s no way we don’t have any clue what happened.'”
Jamie also remembers Tanya as a soft-spoken person. “She was a very sweet person. She never drew attention to herself,” she said. “If anyone needed help, she was happy to help.”
So Jamie, who works as an “internet detective” investigating cases in her spare time, also tried to advocate for Tanya’s case. “My view is that in that situation, someone would help you, but she had very little support,” Jamie says. “I just jumped in there, saying, ‘Hey, send me what you have and I’ll look into it.'” She began gathering all the information she could find on the internet and tried to contact authorities, but in the end, it wasn’t enough to solve the case.
Jamie worries that Tanya’s case is falling into disuse. “A lot of cases that get solved are only solved because of the media coverage and attention they get,” she says. “It feels like Tanya’s case is just falling into the spotlight, and I don’t think that’s right.”
Neither Jamie nor David Ocmond have been in contact with Tanya’s family, and Dateline has been unable to locate them.
David just wants justice for his childhood friend. “No one has been held accountable,” he said, and he hopes someone with information will come forward.
“Maybe they had something to say, but they kept it quiet for so long that now it seems like it’s in the past,” David said. “So maybe if it gets more attention, it’ll come back to their minds.”
Texas Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $3,000 to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the murder of Tanya Mae. To receive the cash reward, people must call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-252-TIPS (8477). They may remain anonymous.
You can also call the Texas Rangers at 1-800-346-3243 or file a report online . You can also contact Odessa Crime Stoppers at 432-333-TIPS or submit an anonymous tip on their website
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