[narrator reading]
[trooper Cristobal Flores] Oh, there's a wallet.
He's completely naked wherever he's at.
[Kent Landry] To get a 2:00 a.m. phone call from a highway patrolman,
that changes your life forever.
[narrator] His family is desperate for answers.
[Kent] I was the only one looking for Jason.
And the car ran off the road right around this curb.
Found his wrecked car.
God, please be with him.
[narrator reading]
retraces Jason's last known steps.
Why did he miss that turn?
Did something nefarious happen to him?
[Jeff Ferry] It really is two separate questions.
What happened to Jason?
And where is Jason?
[Kent] Words can't describe...
that living hell...
thinking, "Is he lying in some shallow grave somewhere?"
That's all you can think about.
[narrator] The more people who know Jason's story,
the greater the chance of bringing him home.
[narrator reading]
Help find him.
Have you seen Jason Landry?
[Kent] I'm Jason Landry's father.
Every college student is different but,
Jason has always been...
He's always been strong-willed.
He's always been courageous.
He just would always strike out on an adventure.
He would do anything.
He was always incredibly optimistic.
He always figured everything would be okay in the end.
Lisa and I have been married 31 years.
We have three kids, Jason's our youngest.
My wife's the musician, I can't carry a tune in a bucket.
But he's always wanted to play any instrument.
He's always loved it.
Growing up in a church family isn't a normal family.
Being a preacher's kid is, is difficult.
So, whoo-whoo-whoo.
[all laughing]
I think there's just this pressure to be perfect.
Going to church is not really optional
[chuckles] when you're a preacher's kid,
and that's, uh, unusual in this day and age.
This was his first semester at Texas State.
Finals were just wrapping up...
and he was coming back for Christmas,
so, you know, kind of looking forward to the week
and, uh, all the different things you've got going on in life.
[Jack Frank] My name is Jack Frank.
I've known Jason Landry since childhood,
and he was also my next door neighbor here in college.
Jason's game plan was to go home
and then just be home for winter break.
He said, "I'm gonna hit the road back home."
And I sent him a text asking him to get some sleep
before he hit the road,
and he sent me a text saying that, "I'm all good.
I appreciate you looking out."
And that was the last I got to hear from him.
My name's Jeff Ferry.
I'm a captain of the Criminal Investigation Division
of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office.
December 13th, 2020, was a Sunday night.
A volunteer firefighter is driving down Salt Flat Road,
which is this county road in Luling...
[siren wailing]
and he encounters a vehicle
with its driver's side against tree line, a fence line.
[volunteer] Got some driver's side damage.
Headlights are on, see that it's unoccupied.
[volunteer] Apparently the driver was able
to kick out the window in the back.
[Jeff] The volunteer calls the Caldwell County dispatch.
In our county, Texas Highway Patrol works all motor vehicle collisions.
And so, a Texas Highway Patrol trooper
ends up responding about an hour later.
He kind of drove up and down the road
looking for the driver of this vehicle...
making sure there's nobody who's hurt.
And maybe he wandered off from the car,
and now he's laying in a ditch
and he needs medical aid. We have to find him.
Especially because temperatures are dropping.
It's cold. We've got a pretty significant weather event blowing in that night.
But he doesn't find anybody.
So, Highway Patrol shows up at that accident scene.
-[volunteer speaking] -[highway patrolman] Oh, there.
He does encounter some clothes,
which is very unusual.
The clothes are about 900 feet to the south,
going towards Luling from the collision scene.
He's completely naked wherever he's at.
Those articles of clothes are strewn about the roadway
in sequence consistent with voluntarily disrobing.
Then he finds a backpack.
[highway patrolman] Oh, there's a wallet.
[Jeff] At this point, our deputy arrives
at the vehicle collision scene.
[highway patrolman] White male. Probably a college kid.
Oh, my goodness!
Thinking approximately 10 marijuana blunts
located inside a prescription bottle.
[Jeff] Certainly, the narcotics we think played a factor.
There was no indication there had been a loss of life as a result of that collision.
All the evidence was that this was an intoxicated person,
you know, college kid out of Texas State,
goofing off, and had a collision.
Why does he take his clothes off?
I don't know.
[indistinct speaking on radio]
[trooper Flores] Last name Landry.
First name Jason.
[Jeff] And our trooper radios a driver's number in.
Then ends up calling Mr. Landry...
[phone ringing]
and Mrs. Landry, who are the registered owners of the vehicle
that's left abandoned.
- [Lisa Landry] Hello? - [trooper Flores] Mrs. Landry?
- [Lisa] Yeah? - [trooper Flores] My name is Trooper Flores
- with the Texas Highway Patrol. - [Lisa] Okay.
[trooper Flores] The reason I'm calling is I'm currently at a, uh, crash scene
- involving a 2003 Nissan Altima... - [Lisa] Uh-huh.
- Golden color. - [Lisa] Okay.
[trooper Flores] I suspect Jason may have been driving this vehicle.
[Lisa] Oh, my gosh. Okay.
[Kent] To get a 2:00 a.m. phone call and be
a highway patrolman on the other end of the line,
it's just...
Well, you just can't imagine it.
That changes your life forever.
[Lisa] How bad was the car?
[trooper Flores] Yeah, he crashed into, uh,
some trees and a private fence.
[Lisa] Oh, my gosh. Okay.
[trooper Flores] Have you been in contact with him this evening?
[Lisa] I have not.
- [Kent] Are you able to find his phone? - [trooper Flores] No.
[Kent] So, should I head...
What should we do?
- [trooper Flores] Well... - [Kent] [indistinct]
[Lisa] Yeah, we're in Houston.
[trooper Flores] No, I understand. I understand.
I'll be back in touch with you momentarily, okay?
[Kent] I wouldn't say they were nonchalant,
but they found his wrecked car,
and they were looking for him.
And really, kind of, that was about it.
I don't know how long I waited before I left,
but it wasn't too long.
And then I hit the road.
I'm driving to Luling from Houston,
and I was just gonna help search
and do whatever it needed to be to find my son.
You know, frankly, I was driving along thinking at any minute
I'm gonna see Jason just walking along the road,
and I get to choke him and hug him at the same time.
But there's nothing on this dark highway.
You know, I'm almost to Luling,
and I figure there are people searching.
I figure there are sirens,
there's cops walking around with... with spotlights on.
There's nothing out there.
My wife Lisa calls me and says,
"They towed the car."
I'm like, "Can you call the highway patrolman and get the exact location?"
She called the highway patrolman,
and then she woke him up 'cause he had gone home and gone to bed.
So, she gave me the exact location off of Salt Flat Road.
When I found the accident site...
These are the track marks, and you go down here,
and you can see where the car went off,
and you see the wheels, and hit down here by this tree and fence.
And that's when I found his clothes.
See, those are two pair of socks,
socks, shorts.
[Jeff] Mr. Landry sees socks,
and they're kind of goofy socks,
and he knows [clicks fingers]
immediately,
those are my son's.
[Kent] I mean, I was a lawyer.
I'm not stupid.
I know what evidence could be,
but they don't work the scene.
That's my personal opinion.
They don't do what everyone has seen
that they do at an accident site.
You know, put the tape up,
measure the tire tracks,
pick up the evidence that literally is laying in front of you.
But I don't know why they don't pick up his clothes.
I'm about 20 feet ahead, and this is his flip flops.
And this is his T-shirt.
Thankfully, Mr. Landry documents that prior to picking them up.
He takes video of all that.
[Kent] This is his toiletry bag.
And the car ran off the road right around this curve.
So this is, you know, maybe a football field,
and maybe a little bit more where I found his clothes laying in the road.
This still pisses me off, to be honest.
It's your job to do the most basic thing.
But from the very beginning,
highway patrolmen thought this was nothing other than a one-car accident
with some college student who smoked pot,
and he is just wondering around out in the woods.
Well, if you believe that that's true in 30-degree weather
with 20-knot winds,
and, literally, there's a full set of clothes lying on the road.
You at least go find the lost person,
wrap a blanket around him, give him some hot soup,
and then sort out the details as to what happened.
But I was the only one looking for Jason.
I had Find My Phone for Jason,
so I could see that his phone was at the tow lot
where the highway patrolman said the car was towed.
I don't know what the heck happened back here.
When I found his wrecked car,
it's just kind of chaos,
in a sense of your emotion,
your emotions.
Oh, God, please be with him.
I knew his phone was in there.
It had slid down kind of between the seat and the armrest.
I had to go from the backseat, kinda behind it,
and I was able to get it.
Not that I could unlock it, it's just, I had his phone.
[Jeff] There's no evidence of where Jason is.
And so, there's nobody looking for Jason.
And so, Mr. Landry does what anybody does,
calls the police and says, "Hey, what's going on?"
Texas Highway Patrol then realizes,
"Hey, we should get a search team together."
[Luz Moreno-Lozano] On December 14th,
they bring in Texas Search and Rescue,
aka TEXSAR.
And they're a non-profit that comes in for smaller communities
who don't just have the resources to dedicate to large searches like this.
And they search several acres of land.
Usually, they do by ground,
they do it by horse,
they also do aerial, um, searches as well.
Texas Search and Rescue were out there searching around the crash site for him.
Right near where the car was wrecked, there's a hillside,
and on the other side of the hill
is a retention pond that's maybe a half-acre big.
And all the search dogs keep hinting that he went into that pond.
[Jeff] They brought in some swiftwater rescue guys,
some dive teams to search this pond.
They brought out sonar imaging to image the pond.
[Kent] They get permission from this owner
to actually drain the entire pond.
And you can hear the pumps running 24 hours a day.
And every moment for the first week,
I keep expecting the director from Texas Search and Rescue
to tell us that they found our son.
Words can't, can't describe...
that living hell.
[sniffles]
[exhales]
Just waiting...
waiting for the axe to fall,
thinking any moment...
you're gonna hear...
that they found your child. [sniffles]
And all I can visualize is him floating there...
in that dirty water.
And you don't want him to be there.
And then finally when they drained the pond, he's not there.
You're thankful, but where is he?
[sniffles] Are we looking in the right places and just haven't found him?
Are we not looking in the right places
because he was never there?
Or is he lying in some shallow grave somewhere around Luling,
and we just haven't found him
'cause someone put him there?
That's all you can think about.
As a dad, you're primary responsibility is,
is to protect your kids.
And I failed.
Hello, my name is Jason Landry. [chuckles]
I saw Jason every single day
the week prior to his disappearance.
So, I, I just got out of the shower,
and you know, I was thinking,
you know, about things, as I do.
That Monday started off completely normal,
like he was the person I'd known him to be,
and was just doing his day to day routine.
He spent a lot of time in his bedroom,
especially just with online school.
Our campus life was just looking at a monitor that semester.
Our social life was, uh, pretty lackluster.
I started noticing Jason was relying
a lot more on smoking,
and the more he ended up smoking,
the more off-rails his thought process started, started going.
The weed's good in a sense that it...
gives you great ideas and everything,
but it's hard to focus as well.
I'm not naive.
I went through college too.
And to tell me if, if I am surprised
that a 21-year-old in college smokes pot,
no, I am not surprised.
[Jack] I met Jason Landry in seventh grade,
and then as the years went by,
I got to know him a lot more.
When I got to Texas State, I was moving in,
and Jason pulls up in the house right next door to me.
He was very happy to see someone he knew as well.
And, uh, seeing him next door
gave me a lot more hope for the semester.
Jason was so excited to go to Texas State.
- [Jason] Bro. - [girl] What?
-I got accepted. -[girl gasps] You did? That's amazing!
[girl] Are you happy?
Duh.
[Kent] Of course, COVID hit,
and all the fun of going out and meeting people,
were just taken away from him.
For some people, if you're really introverted, that's a good thing.
But for an extrovert,
that's just the worst thing in the world,
to lock yourself into a room and not be able to actually connect with people.
And I think that really negatively impacted Jason.
Um...
I'm tired. I wanna go to bed.
I think Jason struggled with the life online.
He was really just in his own shell.
What I would always do is, you know,
think about all the things I have to do
and get overwhelmed by it.
[Kent] For Jason, he was still, I think,
very much in that midst of trying to sort things out,
and, uh, trying to decide what we wanted for his life.
I knew that Jason, over the days up until that point,
hadn't been sleeping and eating properly,
and had only been smoking.
That's when I started having concerns for him.
But Jason was still completely coherent and cognitive.
The night he left, that was the last time I texted Jason.
[Jeff] So, Saturday, after Jason's disappearance,
the search continued with TEXSAR.
Helicopters went up.
Fixed-wing aircraft has gone out.
K-9 teams have gone out.
Drone assets were deployed.
And we used hundreds of thousands of drone images that were taken.
That first week was, was pretty intense.
- [helicopter whirring] - [Kent] We're seeing the helicopters fly in
and the dog teams.
I can't even begin to imagine how many dog teams have searched for Jason.
It seems like every dog in half the United States has been searching for Jason.
I'm like, "Why haven't we found him or any trace of him?
Have we been searching in the right place?"
After Saturday, we said, "Hey, if we have not found anything by now,
let's cease search operations
until we have evidence of one thing or another."
We hadn't even built a timeline by that point,
so we requested TEXSAR to cease all search operations.
And then we started doing the forensics on the car.
Our detectives processed that vehicle.
They went through every piece of evidence.
We collected DNA swabs.
We fingerprinted the outside of the car
to see if there had been any other, uh,
potentially viable latent prints that we can retrieve and process.
We became very aggressive in our investigation,
and started looking from video,
from anybody or anything that was in the area.
We're pulling game cameras.
We're reaching out to property owners
and seeing if they have hidden cameras on their property.
We're looking for video from convenience stores.
Maybe something happened on the drive
from the apartment in San Marcos to the area of the crash.
Maybe something happened on the road in between the two.
But we were really left with nothing on the video side.
We did rely on traditional police work,
and we also relied heavily on Jason's digital data.
We knew early on, one of the key things we wanted was Waze,
which has his geolocation data.
He was driving through Luling...
and it certainly appears that during that travel,
he's using Waze for directions.
[Luz] When you're using apps like Waze,
they, like, pinging you, like, every time you pass a tower,
and so they can see minute by minute where you are.
And the thing about using technology
is that you can also see when they close it out.
And I think that's really been a game-changer for investigators.
[Jeff] It appears that he minimizes Waze and opens up Snapchat.
He's looking at a story on his phone...
and he misses his turn.
He should turn right.
He proceeds straight.
Looking at all the evidence we've collected,
we can document every second of Jason's travel
from his apartment in San Marcos, the entire route,
into Luling, where we believe he misses his turn.
We have every second accounted for.
[indistinct speaking on radio]
[Jeff] And then Jason has a single-vehicle collision,
but we don't know why.
What contributed to that collision?
Could a deer, or a hog, or something jumped out on the road
and he overcorrected? Could have.
Could it have been Jason dropped his phone?
If he's digging around for his phone, overcorrected,
had a single-vehicle collision,
and then left the vehicle on his own?
Certainly feels like that's the most plausible.
It really is two separate questions, though.
You know, what happened to Jason?
And where is Jason?
This is America, and you're allowed to disappear.
If you want to start another life, you can do that.
That's not something we've encountered.
But it is a possibility.
So, is this an involuntary missing?
Is this a voluntary missing?
Fast forward a couple of months,
now there's these creations of these Facebook groups.
Now the media's heavily involved.
[reporter] A missing person billboard can now be found
along Highway 183 going from Luling to Lockhart,
in hopes of bringing home missing Texas State student Jason Landry.
[Luz] I've been covering this since December of 2020
when we learned that Jason had gone missing.
This case seemed to resonate with the community,
more than any other case that I've seen.
People see something like this happen and they're like,
"Oh, my gosh. That could literally be my kid."
[Kent] You can't imagine.
You're waiting for a phone call but you dread a phone call.
And then you wonder how long are you going to be waiting.
And it just...
Every day is another day.
[Jeff] It's likely that Jason wanders into the woods.
I do believe firmly that we just haven't found him.
We know that the area where Jason goes missing
has a lot of wild hogs.
And these are 200, 300-pound critters.
[Luz] We know that there is a wild hog problem in Central Texas.
Wild hogs can destroy thousands of dollars
of crops and property.
And so, if Jason was somewhere in the woods unconscious,
I think there's a possibility that wildlife could have gotten to his body.
[Jeff] When there's a scarcity of food,
hogs will not miss a meal,
especially in December, January, February.
Is it possible that that's why we've not been able to find a body?
Maybe.
It's possible he's gone.
[Kent] In my opinion, Caldwell County Sheriff's Office
don't seem to want to think about a possibility
that it's anything other than a one-car accident,
and that Jason wandered off in the field
and got eaten by feral hogs.
Period.
There's nothing to be done in their mind 'cause,
you know...
there's nothing left of Jason. "Too bad, so sad."
But maybe it's not a single-car accident.
Let's broaden the scope.
Let's use all the tools that are available.
[Abel Pena] My name is Abel Pena.
I'm retired from the FBI after 26-and-a-half years.
I've worked, uh, a number of missing persons cases,
uh, while employed with the FBI.
My daughter attends Texas State,
and she called me about a friend of hers that, um, was, was missing.
It hit close to home.
Jason was characterized by my daughter as just
a very pleasant,
very happy-go-lucky free spirit,
but a very warm and loving person.
My daughter used to date his best friend,
and so, there was this closeness that they had.
Jason was just one of those people that was kind of a,
I think a glue person
that keeps a group of people together.
He was one that had a lot of good friends and impacted a lot of lives.
And it was a friend of his who told her dad,
"Hey, Dad, have you heard about this one?"
And he contacted us and said,
"Hey, I think, I think I might be able to help you."
[Abel] We're a part of Project Absentis which is non-profit.
We got a team of retired FBI agents, border patrol.
We've got some other intel folks.
So we're there to kind of provide that bridge
between the family, uh, of the missing,
and be there for, um, assistance to, to local or state authorities.
We offered our services free of charge to the Landry family.
[Kent] To have someone else
besides Caldwell County Sheriff's Office looking at it
makes us happy.
Put a different set of eyes on this,
maybe they can look at the same facts
and get a different conclusion.
[Abel] I reached out to the Caldwell County Sheriff's Department,
and it can be a little bit of a, um, a balancing act
where you don't wanna appear like you're, you're trying to take over.
What we wanted to do was work together trying to locate Jason.
We felt comfortable sharing information,
um, 'cause we were all working towards the same goal,
finding Jason, getting answers.
When we first started this investigation,
um, you know, you wanna look at the victim.
From that picture, you can determine his habits, his behavior.
The Sheriff's Department believed that Jason was so high
he crashed that vehicle.
But most college kids, they smoke marijuana, they get high.
And so, by all accounts, Jason was a normal college kid,
experimented with marijuana.
As an investigator,
you wanna make sure you allow, uh, other possibilities.
Initially, I felt a bit critical about the way it was handled.
The red flag, for many of us, would have been the clothes,
just to see the clothes laid out the way they were along the road.
The whole area was trampled on, tampered with,
and the vehicle was towed immediately.
If there was any evidence left behind, it was destroyed.
We also had a lot of questions to why Jason drove down Salt Flat Road.
You know, why did he miss that turn?
Was he distracted? Was he lost?
Did somebody guide him down that road?
We started going door-to-door along Salt Flat Road
and also along Austin and Magnolia at the intersection.
So we start talking to people.
And while it didn't really get us too much,
it still gave us an understanding of the area
and some of the neighbors, some of the people in the town.
We start learning that there is a drug problem out there,
a major drug problem.
Drugs just are wreaking havoc on Luling.
So we learned that there is, um, some bad people.
[Jeff] Recently, we've had an uptick in violent crime,
a lot more violent encounters,
a lot more murder cases.
Certainly, it's been more violent than it has been
any other time in my 19-year career.
But you're gonna have bad people all over the, the country.
[Abel] As we continued knocking on doors,
a lot of people in Luling were very forthcoming with us.
We continue to follow the disappearance
of Texas State student Jason Landry.
[reporter 2] Jason Landry disappeared in December of 2020
on his way back from his college in San Marcos
to his home near Houston for Christmas break.
Law enforcement say his car was found crashed in Luling
with Jason nowhere to be found.
And I don't think he walked away from his life just like that.
And so, somebody knows something,
and we think it's local.
Many, however, were reluctant.
They would say they know things,
but were just too afraid to talk
because of drug dealers nearby.
[Abel] We felt it was beneficial,
uh, to set up a tip line
to receive incoming calls from people
that felt uncomfortable calling the police.
I mean, they're deathly scared of what could happen
if these people learned
that they were involved in telling us who was involved.
We didn't feel that the tip line was gonna receive a lot of calls.
[phone ringing]
- [Abel] But we did. - [phone ringing]
And the consistency of calls about what happened to Jason that night
was too overwhelming to ignore.
The information we received is that something nefarious happened to him.
[narrator] Jason Landry was last seen December 13th, 2020.
[narrator reading]
[Abel] Any tip we received, we vetted out.
There was a sighting of Jason near Dallas.
We traveled up there and knocked on the door, and we met with the person
that they believed was Jason. It wasn't obviously Jason.
We sent people out to Austin 'cause there were sightings at some of the homeless camps.
A sighting here in San Antonio. Uh, we checked that out.
We traveled and we vetted a lot of these leads
in the hope that Jason was there, was out there.
And so, we continued pressing forward,
talking to more and more people from our anonymous tip line.
The information we were receiving...
is that Jason encountered individuals
at that intersection of Magnolia and Austin Street,
and something happened to him.
We're not sure what at this point.
But something, we believe, nefarious happened to him.
And we were told he may not have been driving the vehicle.
From the intersection to where the vehicle was found
down Salt Flat Road, roughly 4 miles away...
...somebody may have driven that vehicle and crashed that vehicle...
purposely.
[Kent] See, those are two pair of socks.
Socks, shorts.
[Abel] And then thrown his clothes around
to make it look like something had happened there,
which steered the investigation at the onset.
[volunteer] I can see where he went sideways.
[Kent] But the crazy thing about this case
is it's all reduced down to one hour.
What happened between 11:30 and 12:30,
between that point at Luling
and Salt Flat Road?
What happened in one hour over about a three-mile stretch of road?
I wanna be careful what I say here.
We received several names from these anonymous calls
of the people that would say they were involved,
or may have knowledge of Jason's disappearance.
They said Jason was accosted by individuals at that location.
But they're saying that even if these guys are arrested,
they're worried about the families and just the repercussions
that result, uh, in them being considered,
um, snitches.
[Luz] Luling is a small rural community
where folks have been for generations.
And when it comes to talking about the cops,
I think there's always a fear when some kind of case is being investigated.
[Abel] I received a letter at my home address.
It was a bit creepy receiving a letter
that I had no clue who it was from.
But it described in fairly good detail
everything we've been hearing on our anonymous tip line.
If they were making this up,
I do not believe they would go through the effort to find my home address.
They wanted to make sure that that information got specifically to me.
And it was received.
We are familiar with the information
that the private investigators were able to collect,
and we're familiar with some of their beliefs.
But people have different motivations for sharing information.
People say things 'cause there's no consequences, right?
Well, then you hear that, and then you tell somebody,
and then it's that classic telephone game, right?
All of which makes investigations difficult.
[Kent] Some crazy person sent me an email saying
that Jason was disposed of by a woodchipper,
like in the movie Fargo.
And to think that they would send that to me.
Then you visualize that happening to your child.
And I pray that that's not true.
[Jeff] We try to make this story make sense
with the information we have.
I mean, I guess, if I'm a 21-year-old coming from a college town
which is full of narcotics,
I guess it's possible you could stop in Luling, Texas
at 11:30 at night,
and randomly encounter convicts on the corner,
and that they would force your vehicle off the road, or kill you,
and then stage the single vehicle collision...
which we don't believe happened.
But that's what was getting said,
and that's what the PIs kept hearing,
and so, "By God, it's gotta be true
'cause people keep telling us."
Well, it's my opinion,
the only way the private investigators' theories can flesh out
is if you discount all of the hard evidence.
And that, that's really when we stopped having a relationship
with the private investigator.
[Abel] If you believed that Jason just walked off and disappeared,
uh, in my opinion, there's not gonna be much effort
in trying to look at this case
as anything other than a missing persons case.
And it's important as an investigator to explore really all options.
And that's to look at the possibility that something,
uh, criminal could have happened to Jason.
So they're treating this as a missing persons case.
But there was DNA, uh, samples taken
as well as fingerprints from Jason's car.
You can process the prints.
You can try to run it through the, the system
and see if it matches with any known prints.
I've tried enough cases in criminal court and civil court
to know that there's so many databases and stuff that you can search for.
If you have the DNA material, you can search for a, a hit.
[Jeff] That DNA evidence is not really evidence of anything.
I mean, it's evidence that somebody else is in the car.
Well, how many people have ever been in your car?
We have to have evidence of a crime.
And if we thought for a second
that DNA evidence would get us any closer
to what had happened to Jason Landry,
whole-heartedly and assuredly we would do that.
But, you know, it gets to a point
where we don't have anything else to update.
So, that's frustrating.
We don't ever hang it up, right?
We just continue to trudge on. We continue to work.
I just want them to do their job and find answers.
[reporter] Since Jason's disappearance six months ago,
the Landry family has become no stranger to the city of Luling.
When we come here...
...it's a, what that makes me think of is it's so hard every time
- we leave again without him. - Yep.
[reporter] And they say they'll keep coming
until they find out what happened to their son.
Just help us find him. We just wanna find him.
If someone hurt Jason, or did something to Jason,
then they, they better be brought to justice.
And first tonight, a prayer vigil in Missouri City
for 21-year old Jason Landry.
The student at Texas State has now been missing for one year.
Fox 26's Matthew Seedorff is live outside
Southminster Presbyterian Church tonight
where a vigil for Jason just wrapped up. Matthew.
An emotional night for family and friends here.
[Kent] There's one here at the church.
And the one in Luling was set up by some of the locals there.
My family did attend the candlelight ceremony.
I wasn't able to make it myself because of my work schedule,
which I do think about a lot.
I feel like that was a very important thing to be present for.
Jason was always known for wearing his silly socks.
And so, I was texting his mom,
and I was just saying, "I'm wearing my silly socks
and here thinking about y'all."
[Kent] It's amazing how many people turned out for both of those.
And to be honest, I wasn't at either one.
I stayed out all night,
um, by where the accident was...
just by myself and Jason.
And there's no good reason why.
I just needed to.
It's the same reason why you go put flowers on a loved one's grave,
on their birthday, or on the anniversary of their death.
You just...
You need to...
be there in that space.
[Jeff] At the one-year mark, we're still actively investigating.
We're still looking for information.
And we were made available to the Landry's
if they have questions, but...
...I think our relationship is strained.
[Luz] The Attorney General's office opened up a Cold Case Unit
at the end of 2021.
They just took the Landry case on in December, I believe.
For the Landry family, it means that there is gonna be a fresh set of eyes
and a fresh set of investigators
taking on Jason's case,
looking at all of the evidence.
Maybe looking at something that the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office missed,
or the private investigator might have missed.
And hopefully we find an answer that wasn't there before,
and can give the Landry family
the closure that they're looking for.
[Jeff] The Texas Attorney General's Missing Person Unit
did not exist when Jason went missing.
I'm hopeful that the AG's office
has another technique, or another tool.
So, the fact that they were willing to step up and go,
"Yeah, we'll take a crack at it,"
we're very appreciative of that.
[Abel] I believe it is a turning point.
I believe it is good for the case
to again look at it from a different set of eyes.
The Attorney General's investigator is aware of the people
and the witnesses.
And we're grateful that they've reached out to us
and consider us a resource.
That's what we're here for.
Hopefully, the Attorney General's office
might be able to break through that impasse,
and maybe get some new, useful information and crack the case.
[Jeff] The people in our community want to know,
is there a bad guy out there?
Is there some nefarious character that's visiting harm
to our friends and our family and our community?
Well, we can say with confidence is,
is that we don't think so, right?
We don't, we don't believe that to be true.
I maintain, and this is a tragedy,
but it's not a crime.
There's no reason to believe that anybody in the world
has information on Jason Landry,
except Jason Landry.
Jason resonated with, with many of the people in a special way.
I mean, strangers around the country that speak of Jason.
There's Facebook pages,
and their sole purpose is to find Jason.
I, I hear the passion in their posts about,
you know, Jason being just like their son.
[Jack] I do hold out hope.
I, I hope that for his family's sake
there is an answer.
A day doesn't go by where I don't think about the friend that I lost
and how hard it's been since then.
He was a really good person and a good friend.
I thank God for Jason...
for the man he was, and is,
and the impact that he has had on so many people's lives.
Last time I saw him in person was,
he was walking out the door for Thanksgiving,
and he's heading back to school.
And I remember telling him, "Well, I'll see you
in a couple of weeks for Christmas.
You know, It doesn't seem worth it to give you a hug,"
but I'm so thankful I did, you know.
I'm so thankful I told him I loved him.
[sniffles]
We've still got Christmas presents from 2020.
[sighs]
What do you do with those?