The morning of March 14, 1998, began quietly on the ranch just outside Strong City, Oklahoma. Leonard Dirickson and his sixteen-year-old son, Jared, had finished breakfast around 9 a.m. when a white pickup truck pulled into the driveway.
The man driving the truck did not get out, and Jared watched from inside the house as his father walked outside and spoke with the driver through the open window for less than a minute.
Leonard then came back into the house and told Jared the man had come to look at a horse. He said they were heading to both Elk City and Mobeetie, Texas, where Leonard kept horses at two different locations.
He promised Jared he would be back that afternoon. Before leaving, he asked his son to go pick up feed for their pigs before the store closed at noon. Then he climbed into the truck and left.
He never came home.
Jared waited all afternoon. When night fell and there was still no sign of his father, he began to worry. Leonard had not said anything about staying overnight. Jared knew his father well and believed he would have called if something had come up. Leonard had always made sure to check in.
Jared contacted his grandparents, who lived in Elk City, and asked if they had heard from him. When it became clear that Leonard had not reached out to anyone, his parents reported him missing the following morning.
Leonard Dirickson was 39 years old when he disappeared. He had lived in western Oklahoma his entire life and had been running a ranch in Strong City, raising pigs, cattle, and a group of horses that he split between properties. He and his son shared an 800-acre property where they managed the animals together.
Most of Leonard’s horses were kept in Elk City, while at least one was boarded in Mobeetie. He never advertised them for sale. It remains unclear whether the man in the truck was a stranger or someone Leonard had met before.
Jared could not say for sure, but he remembered that his father seemed calm and at ease as he left. Leonard had also specifically asked Jared to stay behind and run an errand, which might have been a way to keep him safely out of whatever was coming.
When Jared described the truck to investigators, he said it was a mid-1990s white Ford F-150 with an extended cab. He thought he saw a yellow license plate on the front bumper that looked like it came from New Mexico, though that raised questions of its own.
New Mexico did not issue front plates at the time, which meant it was either from another state or something else entirely. Jared also mentioned that the driver had a reddish-brown beard but could not provide further details, since the man never stepped out of the truck.
Strong City was a place where people still trusted strangers. Leonard’s house was set far back from the road, not visible to passersby, and few people ever showed up uninvited. Detectives would later point out that the man who picked up Leonard had to have known exactly where to go.
Leonard’s disappearance was deeply out of character. He was not known to drink or use drugs, and he had never gone off without letting someone know where he was going.
Sheriff Joe Hay told reporters, “This is very unusual for this guy. Occasionally, you have a guy who twists off and goes away for a while, but that’s not this guy.” The sheriff added that Leonard had a solid reputation, a strong work ethic, and no known enemies.
The search for Leonard began right away. Deputies searched the roads leading to both Elk City and Mobeetie, by air and by ground, hoping to find signs of an accident or a truck that had gone off the road. They found nothing. Investigators also searched Leonard’s property but uncovered very little.
The one clue they recovered was a discarded Marlboro Light cigarette butt near the driveway. Leonard did not smoke that brand. Investigators believed it belonged to the man in the truck, but it did not help them determine who he was or where he had gone.
As the days passed, the case drew attention from nearby towns and eventually the state. A waitress at the Kettle Diner in Elk City came forward to say she had seen Leonard at the diner around 11 a.m. on the day he went missing. She said he had been with another man who matched Jared’s description of the driver.
The waitress described the companion as a white man, around forty years old, with a reddish-brown beard and brown hair. He stood about six feet two inches tall and weighed around 210 pounds.
He had been wearing a Western-style striped shirt, blue jeans, a blue jacket, and a black baseball cap with “No Fear” written on it in red letters.
Her description was specific enough that investigators were able to create a composite sketch, which was widely distributed alongside missing person posters.
Still, nothing came of it.
The disappearance quickly became one of the most perplexing cases in Roger Mills County. Leonard was the first person to go missing in the area since 1981, and detectives were determined to follow every lead.
Missing person posters were circulated throughout western Oklahoma and Texas, but none of the tips that came in could be confirmed.
Investigators interviewed more than seventy people. Everyone they spoke with described Leonard as dependable and decent, the kind of man who always followed through on his word. His neighbors could not believe he would have left his son alone voluntarily. His family insisted he would never have staged his own disappearance.
They were certain that something had happened to him.
Leonard’s personal history provided few answers. He had married his high school sweetheart, Kathy, and they had two children together before divorcing in 1996. The split had been difficult. A bitter custody dispute followed, with Kathy receiving custody of their daughter Connie and Leonard retaining custody of Jared.
In December 1997, Leonard sold the dairy business he had been running. He had not wanted to, but it was becoming financially impossible to sustain. The cost of cattle feed had gone up, and milk prices had dropped.
After the sale, Leonard began working for a metal company in Elk City and quickly found that he enjoyed the work. His father, Don Dirickson, even considered purchasing the business so Leonard could run it full time.
Those plans never moved forward.
By all accounts, Leonard had begun to rebuild his life. He had steady work, a close relationship with his son, and a routine that gave him a sense of control after years of uncertainty. He had no financial resources to start a new life, and his bank accounts remained untouched after his disappearance.
None of his belongings were missing, and he had not withdrawn any large amounts of money.
His last paycheck remained uncashed.
Family members said he rarely carried more than a hundred dollars in cash. His credit cards had been maxed out after the divorce, and there were no signs that he had been preparing for any major life change. They were convinced that he had not left willingly.
A composite sketch of the man from the diner was shared in local papers and with news stations, but nobody recognized him. Neither friends nor relatives could identify the man, and none of Leonard’s neighbors had ever seen him before. Investigators considered the possibility that Leonard had trusted someone he should not have.
Sheriff Hay said the same, pointing out that people in that part of the country were raised to be open and polite. A stranger offering to buy a horse might not have seemed like a threat. But Leonard had never advertised any horses for sale, and no one knew of any effort on his part to arrange such a transaction.
That part of the story never made sense.
In September of that year, the case took a strange turn when a man called the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation from a bar in Amarillo, Texas. He said Leonard was there with him.
When authorities arrived, there was no sign of either man. Investigators staked out the bar for several nights, hoping Leonard would return, but he never did.
The call led nowhere.
After months of searching, the case began to slip from public view. Jared moved in with his grandparents in Elk City. He was not speaking to his mother at the time, and he found comfort in the photos of his father that filled the house. He never gave up hope that Leonard might come home.
Don and Norma Dirickson also held on, though they admitted the chances were fading. Norma told a reporter, “In my heart, I know something bad has happened. He wouldn’t have left Jared. They were just too close.”
Sheriff Hay admitted that he was no closer to knowing what had happened than he had been on the first day. He said, “We don’t know if he’s still alive, but I’m convinced that he’s still out there somewhere.” With no body, there was still a chance. That was all they had left.
Years passed. The man in the sketch was never identified. The tip from the bar in Amarillo was never verified. No one ever came forward with new information. And the one person who might have explained it all—the man in the white pickup truck—was never seen again.
Leonard Neal Dirickson was five foot ten, weighed about 200 pounds, and had gray eyes and brown hair. He was last seen wearing green jeans, a faded black Carhartt hooded jacket, and a brown baseball cap with a green bill that read “ACCO FEEDS.”
If you have information about Leonard Dirickson or the man last seen with him, contact the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation at 800–522–8017.
His son is still waiting.
