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March 14, 1998

Roger Mills County, Oklahoma

39-year-old Leonard Derrickson prepares breakfast for his son Jared before a man driving a pickup truck shows up at the ranch.

When Leonard goes outside and speaks to the driver, he tells Jared that the man is interested in looking at one of his horses,

but after they leave together in the truck, Leonard does not return.

Even though there are a couple of reported sightings to suggest that Leonard might still be alive,

he cannot be found, and the driver of the pickup truck is never identified.

After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail went cold.

I'm your host Robin Warder, and today we're going to be exploring a truly perplexing missing persons case that was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, the 1998 disappearance of Leonard Derrickson.

Ever since the inception of this podcast, I've received numerous requests to cover this one, because the circumstances of what happened do not seem to make any sense.

Leonard Derrickson was a debor, say, who lived with his teenage son Jared at a ranch in rural Oklahoma, but everything changed when a pickup truck being driven by an unidentified man suddenly showed up there one morning.

Leonard and this man would have a brief conversation, and even though Jared cannot actually hear what they said,

Leonard told him that the man was interested in looking at one of his stud horses, so he would accompany him to the locations where the horses were being kept.

Leonard said that he expected to return later that day, but after he climbed into this man's truck and left the property, Leonard was never heard from again.

It's tempting to believe that the unidentified driver murdered Leonard and disposed of his body somewhere, but if so, what could the motive have been, and how did this person find Leonard's remote ranch to begin with?

But unlike most other missing persons cases, you cannot completely discount the possibility that Leonard might have disappeared voluntarily as he was suffering from serious financial problems at the time, and there would be a couple of reported sightings of him after he went missing.

...