This week’s featured missing person (sorry, I forgot to do it yesterday and earlier today) is Benjamin Franklin Gray, a 50-year-old man who disappeared from Montrose, Colorado on May 30, 1978. He was a rancher and he and a friend went out to lease some cattle that night. His friend said he dropped Gray off at a Montrose bar in the early hours of May 31. He has never been heard from again. After his disappearance, his checkbook was found on a mesa near his family’s ranch.
I find it strange that Gray’s friend lawyered up and wouldn’t cooperate with the investigation after the initial interview with police. But no one has been named as a suspect and authorities have found no hard evidence of foul play… and no evidence supporting any other theory either. Gray was just gone.
He’d be 93 years old today.
The Charley Project Blog 
Don’t think his friend’s behavior was strange, a good legal advice is that if you sense police suspect you involve in a potentially a crime, you should immediately stop talking to them and find yourself a lawyer.
I know it’s good legal advice but it’s unusual for someone who didn’t do anything wrong to behave that way.
Say you and your friend went out, and then he disappeared, even you did not have anything to do with that, don’t you sense you are in trouble in the eyes of police and the relatives of him? The more you do and the more you say, the deeper sh*t you would be in.
If your friend’s disappearance became a priority case, then Police would talk you many times, they want to check every little detail, you think this would be good for you? Are you sure every single details you provide would be consistent in dozens of interview ? If not, would Cop asks you why you could not make your story straight? what are you hiding? then your friend’s relatives would come to bang your door, begging you “telling them the truth” and “they only want him back”,
It’s one thing to get an attorney to help represent you during questioning. It’s another to refuse to cooperate with the police at all during an investigation. If you’re innocent, you don’t do the later.
May people got into deep trouble exactly because they think “I am innocent, so why not talking to police”, well as I said, I do not oppose to talk to police, but when you sense police treat you as suspect, even just a little bit, stop talking immediately.
Somebody else claiming to be a missing child… oof.
https://www.dailydot.com/irl/sofia-juarez-missing-persons-case-reopened-tiktok/
While it’s not mentioned in this entry, and maybe not publicly anywhere, I wonder if he wasn’t involved with some mining activities that could have gone awry. Owning a cattle ranch provides a lot of ground for prospecting, and maybe he was involved with something like that. Not saying it’s right or wrong, just that it could possibly point towards motive.
Hi Meaghan! – This is unrelated but I believe charleyproject.org is down right now, not sure if you knew or not but I thought I’d let you know so you could get that taken care of.
It’s back up now; not sure what was going on.