The Dark History of Wharton County Part Two
Gone Cold - Texas True Crime
Vincent Strange
4.4 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The episode begins in Ganado, Texas, with the unsolved 1999 murder of beloved English teacher Jean Schoeneberg. A respected educator known for her high standards and daily morning walks, Jean was found brutally murdered along a quiet rural road near her home. Despite decades of investigation, DNA testing, and renewed leads, her killer has never been identified.
Next, we explore the 2014 disappearance of Mitchelle Deborah Hicks, a 25-year-old mother of two who vanished after leaving a residence in Wharton. Investigators believe she may have been taken against her will, but more than a decade later, few details have been released publicly, and her family is still waiting for answers.
Finally, we follow the remarkable identification of Wharton County Jane Doe, whose skeletal remains were discovered in a remote field in 2021. For four years she had no name, until advances in forensic genetic genealogy revealed she was sixteen-year-old Yeimy Maciela Beltrand. Her identification led investigators to name a suspect in her murder, but he fled before he could be arrested and remains a fugitive.
These cases span more than twenty-five years, yet they share the same painful reality: families whose lives were forever changed, investigations that remain incomplete, and the enduring hope that someone, somewhere, still knows the truth.
If you have any information about the murder of Jean Schoeneberg or the whereabouts of Luis Omar Beltran-Mendoza, suspected in the murder of Yeimy Maciela Beltrand, please contact the Wharton County Sheriff’s Office at (979) 532-1550.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Mitchelle Deborah Hicks, please call the Wharton Police Department at (979) 532-3131.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. Ganado, Texas sits on the western edge of Wharton County's rice country, a small farming |
| 0:25.0 | community where agriculture remains the backbone of the local economy. The town is a little |
| 0:31.6 | more than 90 miles southwest of Houston and about 36 miles northeast of Victoria. It's a place where the rice |
| 0:40.5 | fields stretch to the horizon. Grain elevators rise above the flat prairies, and many of the county |
| 0:47.8 | roads are little more than narrow two-lane stitches connecting scattered farms and ranches. It's the kind of place where the usual |
| 0:56.8 | and familiar blends in and sometimes goes unnoticed, while strangers always get a second glance, |
| 1:05.8 | not because they're unwelcome, but simply because they're often unexpected. |
| 1:17.8 | Barbara Jean Schoenberg, who went by her middle name, was one of the familiar faces. |
| 1:25.7 | Her maiden name, Thonsguard, is Danish and harkens back to some of the area's oldest communities. |
| 1:30.5 | She was born and raised in Wharton County and graduated from El Campo High School in the town of the same name. By 1999, Jean had spent many years teaching English |
| 1:39.1 | at Ganado High School. According to some accounts, she wasn't the type of instructor who would let you slip through |
| 1:46.4 | easily, but instead she graded harshly, expecting the most, the best, out of her students. Faculty remembers |
| 1:56.0 | Jean as meticulously well-dressed, a person who carried herself well, and as a good friend. |
| 2:04.1 | Jean was also a wife, the mother of two children, a son and a daughter, and a well-known |
| 2:09.9 | member of the community. |
| 2:12.6 | On the morning of Thursday, August 5, 1999, the 57-year-old left her home for her walk, |
| 2:21.0 | something she did almost every day. Her route followed Country Road 311, just outside Gannado, |
| 2:29.2 | where the road stretched between rice and open pasture for miles. The property surrounding her usual path was |
| 2:37.4 | mostly owned by family members. That morning, Jean never returned home. Later that day, |
| 2:45.6 | a farm worker discovered her bloodied body beside the road. Investigators quickly determined she had been murdered. |
| 2:54.0 | Her throat had been cut twice. |
| 2:57.3 | They noted some evidence of a struggle on the road, though would not specify exactly what it was. |
... |
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