Holding on to hope, families await news
Houston-area friends haven’t been seen since beginning of the month
Whenit rains, Helen Ware wonders if her son’s remains are lying in the woods somewhere getting wet. When her cellphone rings, she hopes it is he finally calling.
And when she awakens and realizes it is not just a bad dream, she braces herself for another day.
“I’m like, ‘Lord, have mercy,’ ” she said. “Nobody knows what happened to Sunny.”
She understands that two adults — longtime friends with responsible jobs and young children — don’t just disappear for three weeks and counting.
But she is still hoping for answers as to what has become of her son, Sidney Taylor, and his friend, Krislyn Gibson, both from the Houston area.
They vanished the weekend of April 1 during a trip to Austin for the Urban Music Festival.
Although they made it to Austin, Taylor’s black 2010 Dodge Charger was
found the following Monday, abandoned in Houston’s Midtown.
It was parked three blocks from a bus station, with the keys inside. Traces of blood were also found inside the vehicle, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Houston homicide investigator Willis Huff has been working with Austin police but said the case is now back in their hands.
“We have pretty much done everything that could be done,” Huff said. “This case is going to be made in Austin.”
Still, he asked that anyone who has a tip contact police.
A Texas EquuSearch mission drew dozens of volunteers to Harris County’s Bear Creek Pioneers Park earlier this month but came up empty. The search, prompted by a possible cellphone ping in the wooded area, has been suspended.
“Somebody does know something,” EquuSearch’s Tim Miller said. “They didn’t run off together, I can pretty much guarantee that.” Desk still untouched
The pair, both 35 years old, have known each other since they were students at Aldine High School in North Houston.
Taylor is a supervisor at a railroad company and works out of a Baytown rail yard. He is married with four children, ranging in age from 1 to 12, and has a degree in criminal justice from Prairie View A&M University, where he played football.
Gibson works for Exxon Mobil in The Woodlands, where the company said she remains on the payroll and her desk remains untouched.
She is single with an 8-year-old son and earned a bachelor of science degree from Sam Houston State University.
The pair was last seen Friday, April 1, about 11 p.m., when they dropped their bags at a friend’s home before heading to a nightclub. Their last known contact was a telephone call at 3:08 a.m. Saturday, April 2.
A longtime friend, who asked not to be identified out of concern for his safety, told the Chronicle the pair was going out to the Landing Strip, an Austin gentlemen’s club, and called to check on them at 3:08 a.m.
“Let me call y’all back, man. Let me show these people how to start this fire,” Taylor said, according to the friend.
Taylor never called back. When the friend tried to reach him again later, he got no answer.
The friend, who said he has known Taylor since they played football together in college, said he has spoken with police on multiple occasions and is considered a witness.
“I’m the last person to talk to him,” he said. “If I knew where he was, we’d have a case.”
The manager of the Landing Strip said he does not know if Taylor and Gibson were there that night but said investigators are welcome to review security camera footage. But they’ll need to hurry, he said — the system automatically will start recording over the old footage beginning Monday. ‘A holding pattern’
Family and friends, meanwhile, are holding out hope.
Gibson’s father, Josh Gibson, said his life is in limbo while investigators probe the case.
“It is like they have you in a holding pattern,” he said. “The airplane is circling around but hasn’t landed yet. They tell me they are working hard, and doing such and such a thing, but no major updates.”
As for Ware, she has tried to stay strong, even as a Texas Ranger earlier this week came to her home to take DNA swabs from inside her mouth. It was protocol, the ranger told her, just in case.
She has hoped and prayed, and last weekend she went to Austin with other family to post handbills in restaurants, stores and bars seeking help from the public.
The Taylor and Gibson families are offering rewards for information leading to the missing pair. They have launched websites to gather donations to build up the rewards, and Taylor’s father’s co-workers at the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County have a barbecue fundraiser scheduled for 10 a.m. April 30 in a parking lot at 74 Aldine Bender in Houston. ‘Not going to stop’
Taylor’s younger cousin, Cathleen Bazaldua, drives around Houston with “#BringSidneyTaylorHome” scrawled in shoe polish across the rear window of her car. She has become her family’s voice on Facebook and other social media.
“His family wants him home, and we are not going to stop until he is found,” said Bazaldua, who said Taylor was her protector as she grew up.
Bazaldua said she is certain he would not have tried to run away from his life, let alone done so without calling his mother to say he is OK.
She said as she searches for answers, her heart drops whenever she hears on the news that a body has been found. She also has thought over and over about what could have gone wrong that weekend when Taylor and Gibson disappeared.
“I wonder if it was people who he thought were his friends and something went wrong, something was said wrong,” she said. “Were they his true friends? Were they friends of friends?”
Taylor’s mother, Ware, said she has to believe he is still alive, even though 21 days have passed without a word from her son.
“I wonder if he has passed and I say, ‘No,’ ” she said. “I say this in mymind, I say this in private: ‘Sunny, tell me where you are; let me help you.’ ” But she also worries. “I know that if something bad has happened to him, it is God’s will,” she said. “I know the devil walks this earth just like God does.”