Carina Brianne Saunders, 19, of Mustang, Oklahoma, was reported missing on October 10, 2011, after a documented series of sightings across the Oklahoma City area in the preceding weeks. She had left a substance-abuse treatment program in August 2011 and moved between several temporary addresses, including stays in Konawa and Valley Brook, before returning to family contact in late September. On September 28, 2011, she was seen at a Taco Bell near Interstate 40 and Rockwell Avenue with family before leaving with an acquaintance identified as Kenny Richards, who was driving a mid-1990s blue or gray Chevrolet Blazer. On October 6–7, 2011, a high school friend saw her at the Studio 41 Apartments near N. MacArthur Boulevard and NW 41st Street in Bethany. Surveillance video from the Newcastle Casino and Gaming Center on October 8, 2011 — cited by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation ("OSBI") as her last known location — showed her getting into a red, four-door Ford pickup truck driven by an unidentified man with full sleeve tattoos on both arms; witnesses said a group of women in a separate vehicle tried to discourage her from getting in. She was reportedly wearing a white tank top and gray sweatpants at her last sighting with family. On October 13, 2011, her dismembered remains, wrapped in plastic and divided between a black duffel bag and a laundry bag, were found in a field near NW 23rd Street and Rockwell Avenue in Bethany by volunteers setting feral-cat traps. She was identified through dental records on October 17, 2011.
The Bethany Police Department led the initial investigation and filed first-degree murder charges against Jimmy Lee Massey in December 2011 and Luis Enrique Ruiz in July 2012; both charges were dismissed in February 2013 for insufficient evidence, and neither man has been convicted in connection with Saunders' death. Massey was separately convicted on unrelated drug-trafficking charges. Several other men were investigated in the case's early stages but were never charged with her murder. Additional persons of interest, including Kenny Richards and a man who sent a threatening text message to a relative of Saunders in October 2011, have been investigated and have not been charged. The OSBI assumed the case in 2013 and has since conducted numerous interviews, search warrants, and at least one multi-day excavation of a former residence, without an arrest. In October 2020, the OSBI released a composite sketch of an unidentified man investigators hoped could provide information, and the driver of the red pickup truck and the occupants of the vehicle seen with him have never been identified. The case remains an open, unsolved homicide. The OSBI has periodically renewed a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Anyone with information is asked to contact the OSBI at 1-800-522-8017 or tips@osbi.ok.gov.
