The Disappearance of Devin Williams
During the late spring of 1995, twenty-nine-year-old truck driver Devin Eugene Williams was living in Americus, Kansas, with his wife and three young children.
Having just moved into a brand-new family home, Devin’s wife would later say it was the happiest point in their marriage.
But beneath the surface, something terrible festered and unfurled.
Devin was described by friends as a patient and good-natured young man, but just weeks after beginning an exciting new chapter in his life...
…he disappeared - without a trace.
On Sunday, May 28th, of 1995, a forty-eight foot, ten-ton, eighteen-wheeler semi-truck hurtled through Arizona’s Tonto National Forest.
The roar of its engine was so loud that two campers, named Lynn and Jack Yarrington, temporarily halted their hike to see what all the commotion was.
They approached the nearest highway, then seconds later, spotted a speeding eighteen-wheeler, recklessly careening back and forth along a stretch of road it was most certainly not suited for, and all at breakneck speeds so fast it sent a shiver down the Yarrington’s spines.
Another group of hikers, this one travelling by car, suffered a hair-raisingly close call when the same eighteen-wheeler drove head on at them, following a chance encounter on the highway.
The hikers were able to swerve out of the truck’s path, and each avoided sudden and violent deaths, but later stated that the truck’s moustachioed driver had remained disturbingly expressionless despite narrowly avoiding his own complete annihilation.
Later on that day, a group on their way to a picnic spotted the stationary truck, which by that point had swerved off the road, and become stuck in a field.
After stopping their vehicle, one of the picnic-group climbed out of their car, and asked the truck driver if he needed any help.
The driver’s reply was as chilling as it was confusing.
“They made me do it”, he said, as if answering a question that hadn’t been asked.
The good Samaritan, a man named Charles Hall, reportedly asked the truck driver, “who made you do what?”
To which the driver replied in a panicked voice - “No, you can’t help, no one can, I’ll never get it out of there, I’m going to jail”.
When Charles heard the word ‘jail’ being thrown around, he realized he might’ve stumbled across something deeply sinister.
He agreed to leave the truck driver alone, but later contacted the local sheriff’s department, speaking to a Deputy Wells regarding the man’s suspicious demeanor.
Much like the campers, the deputy was confused as to why such a large vehicle would drive along unsuitable forest roads, and went to investigate.
Upon his arrival, he discovered the semi stuck in deep mud within a meadow, not far from Forest Service Road 137, in the Buck Springs area.
Once Deputy Wells looked inside the truck, he discovered the cargo within undisturbed and intact, 1,200 boxes of lettuce and strawberries, with the refrigeration still running.
The vehicle appeared completely abandoned, and the cab had been firmly locked.
Deputy Wells checked his national crime computer and learned that there were no reports submitted for either a missing truck, or a missing driver.
He also later stated that, upon peering through the window of the truck’s cab, he noted the interior was well kempt, and there were no indications that any foul-play had taken place.
Later that day, Lynn and Jack Yarrington were driving along Forest Service Road 321, when they came upon a man standing among some trees at the roadside.
According to the Yarringtons, they stopped their car, only to see that the man was kneeling on the ground, staring at a tree, and appeared to be mumbling to himself.
The couple said it was impossible to make out exactly what he was saying, and after Jack asked if the man needed any assistance, he’d replied simply - “I’ve got to light the grill”.
Moments later, Jack watched as the stranger produced a twenty-dollar bill from his shirt pocket.
The stranger then picked up a rock, held the bill to the ground, then began striking it with the stone, as if attempting to spark a flame.
Deeply alarmed by what they were seeing, the Harringtons returned to their car, only to have the stranger scream unintelligibly, before he hurled the rock in their direction. He then appeared to stumble in the Yarrington’s direction, prompting them to immediately flee the scene.
Only later was the strange man confirmed to have been truck driver, Devin Williams; and sadly, it marked the last time he was ever seen alive.
When he failed to stick to his delivery schedule, and confident in the belief he’d never willingly abandon a shipment, Devin’s coworkers reported him missing.
Investigators began to track Devin’s movements leading up to his disappearance, and learned he’d left his home on May 23rd, heading west, on a route he’d taken many times before.
He successfully delivered his haul to California, reloaded his truck for his trip back to the Midwest, then had a brief conversation with his boss, Tom Wilson.
Wilson later stated that everything seemed fine, and that Devin wasn’t acting out of the ordinary. He was punctual, seemed lucid, and gave no indications that anything was wrong.
A few nights later, on the evening of Saturday, May 27th, Devin arrived in Kingman, Arizona.
He would call his boss for the second and final time, ensuring him that he’d make it to Kansas City on schedule, but added an eerie addendum when he complained of insomnia.
His boss reportedly asked if he’d be able to complete his journey, but Devin once again assured him he’d be fine.
Yet according to police reports, Devin never even made it out of Arizona.
Arizona Missing Persons Detective, Bruce Cornish, would later state that he and his team were completely flummoxed when it came to Devin’s potential fate.
He was neither a criminal, nor a drug user, and had no history of mental health problems prior to his disappearance; meaning easy explanations were hard to come by.
This led many to theorize that Devin’s disappearance was entirely voluntary, with some pointing to the fact that certain personal items had been removed from the truck.
Nevertheless, authorities mounted a large-scale search for the missing trucker, utilizing foot patrols, search dogs, off-road vehicles, and dozens of civilian volunteers.
Search teams were told to look for scraps of clothing, and even bone fragments, but despite days of searching, not a single trace of Devin Williams was ever found.
This also made for a chilling anomaly, as up until that point, the Scottsdale based search and rescue team charged with recovering his remains had yet to come up short in the course of a long-term search.
Devin’s disappearance marked the first time they had failed to bring home a missing person, either dead or alive, which to many, was as eerie as it was perplexing.
Two years later, on May 2nd of 1997, two hikers were tracing the bottom of Gila County’s Mogollon Rim, when they stumbled upon the remains of a human skull.
Dental records would later confirm what many had first feared – the skull belonged to the missing trucker, Devin Williams.
Although the skull had been damaged, a coroner determined that it was impossible to conclude if this was the result of a deliberate, violent act, or the result of scavengers consuming a corpse following an otherwise accidental death.
Some suggested the erratic behaviour Devin displayed was the result of a diabetic episode, others argue sleep deprivation, or mental illness were to blame.
Some even purport that Devin was the victim of a slow form of carbon monoxide poisoning, following a leak in his truck’s cab; but to date, no such theory has been irrefutably confirmed.
Devin’s wife, Mary Lou Williams, still longs for a day when explanations of her husband’s fate will be beyond dispute.
But she’s also stated that, with each passing year, the hope of seeing such a day slowly and painfully decreases.
Mary Lou has said that, back when her husband was listed as a missing person, the lack of conclusive answers caused her children terrible suffering.
Yet the discovery of Devin’s skull brought only a sliver of morbid closure to the family, as many, many questions still remain.
For example, what caused Devin to stray so far from his intended route? And if his state of mind was affected, what exactly caused such a catastrophic mental break?
However, some suggest that Devin was well within his right mind when he swerved his truck off the road, as prior to its abandonment, he ensured the cab was locked.
Unless Devin suffered some kind of rabid mental breakdown in the space of just two to three hours, then something frightened him so badly that he did things that most would consider to be highly and unhealthily irrational.
Some say fear can drive a man to madness. In which case – what was Devin Williams so deathly afraid of?
And could it possibly explain why his broken skull was found, just a few years later, less than a mile away from the spot where he disappeared?