TRANSCRIPT 🔗
Hello and welcome. If you didn't know, I'm your host, Kathryn and this is Murder and Mediumship. If this is your first time listening, I am so glad you found the show.
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These are not normally so long, and I am ready to get to the case. Let’s dive in! So Aubrey Dameron spent her life making sure that others were seen and heard and that they felt accepted by someone, even if she was that only someone. She grew up in a small town of Grove, Oklahoma, on the outskirts of Cherokee Nation.
If you haven't already listened to the show's episodes of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, then go back and listen to the episode on Olivia Lone Bear or listen to Missing in Blackfeet Nation, Monica Still Smoking or the episode - Murder on Blackfeet Nation, Matthew Grant, The Disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner, Savannah LaFontaine Graywind, and Daisy May Heath. In these episodes about missing or murdered indigenous men or women, you will learn a little bit about how difficult it is to involve law enforcement in these cases with incredibly confusing jurisdictional discrepancies as well as a general lack of funding.
So just to brush up a little bit on what I'm touching on and why it's difficult in this episode, what is so frustrating about law enforcement overall when it's concerning missing and murdered indigenous women, check those episodes out. You will not be disappointed.
The small town that Aubrey grew up in honestly sounds a lot like mine. With a population of around 7,000 in a rural area, diversity just wasn't widely seen, let alone accepted. Fortunately, when Aubrey came out as gay, she had her uncle Christian to come out safely and with great support and acceptance. Christian actually also came out to her, and just as an aside, these two were actually only six months apart in age - just so you can get a better grasp of
I feel like we often hear uncle, aunt, and we're thinking they're much older, right? So she was very close in age to her uncle. They were more like brother and sister, and through much of her life, Aubrey faced some pretty intense discrimination for being gay, especially in a small town and eventually coming out as trans. She and Christian had rocks thrown at them and derogatory slurs hurled at them while leaving high school.
And her immediate family wasn't so accepting either. After coming out as gay to her family in middle school, her biological father stopped taking her out with him and would only interact with and give attention to her brother. According to an article published on Oxygen.com, Aubrey had switched to a different school due to her identity being, quote, distracting to classmates.
And this isn't decades and decades ago, friends. Aubrey disappeared in 2019 at the age of 25. If this was in high school, then it couldn't have been much longer ago than 2009.
To move a student because of their gender identity being a distraction, I just can't even imagine. But I'm sure that this isn't the only time, the first time, or the last time that it happened. According to her Uncle Christian, she had moved to New Mexico with a boyfriend in late 2017/ early 2018, but then moved back to Oklahoma in late 2018. It was rumored that there was abuse involved in this relationship, but that her boyfriend alleges that Aubrey moved back to Oklahoma to “get clean.” Which makes zero sense to me as she moved back into a trailer park with her mom, brother, and stepdad, who were all in active addiction using methamphetamine.
During her time in New Mexico, Christian maintained that Aubrey stayed in pretty much constant contact with him, as well as his sister, Pam. And these are Aubrey’s mom - Jennifer’s siblings. And I can't imagine moving back in with a woman who, according to other sources, practically disowned her own child.
That must have been so painful to begin with. Her aunt Pam and Christian said that in the weeks leading up to Aubrey's disappearance, she had kind of become a little more quiet, and she wasn't reaching out as much, which was super uncommon for her. Even through her time in New Mexico, like I said, they were in constant contact.
Drug use was allegedly a big reason for the breakup that occurred between Aubrey and her boyfriend, but according to her Aunt Pam, it sounds like it was a pretty toxic relationship and that he wasn’t all that good to her to begin with.
Aubrey was last seen on March 9, 2019, by her mom at about 3:30 in the morning. According to her mother, or at least one of her mother's stories, because there are multiple versions of events that her mother spins, she got up to use the bathroom in the
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middle of the night and saw Aubrey getting ready to leave the house. Aubrey then informed her that she was going out to meet a friend and headed out the door. She left her purse at home. This never makes sense to me when a woman disappears and we’re supposed to believe that it was of their own volition or that no foul play is involved, but they leave their purse at home. According to her mom, she was able to discern exactly what Aubrey was wearing at the time - a black skirt, black jacket, black boots, and black fishnet pantyhose. Another variation of her mother's story was that she had woken up and seen Aubrey leaving, but there was no interaction between the two of them. Yet, she was still able to discern exactly what her daughter was wearing - in the middle of the night in the dark.
Pam found out a few days later that Aubrey was missing when a friend of Aubrey’s reached out on social media asking if Aubrey was missing. After making some calls to law enforcement, she was able to confirm that her niece was missing and had not been seen since March 9th. While she was last seen by her mother, she was reported missing on the 11th by her brother’s girlfriend. Delaware County Sheriff's Office insisted that Pam call Aubrey's mother to find out more details about her disappearance.
Another friend of Aubrey's (who remains unnamed) claimed that Aubrey had been missing since the 6th of March. Aubrey's phone last pinged, though, around 100 yards away from her mother's home at 3.42 a.m on March 9th. One week later, Aubrey's aunt Pam called the sheriff's department again and was told by a sheriff that he was just being briefed on the case - a week later.
The next day, March 19th, 2019, Pam called yet again to see what was going on with Aubrey's case, and the captain got on the phone with her. Captain Wells told her that Aubrey's case was not a missing person's case. He said that due to her lifestyle, she wasn’t considered a missing person. Pam inquired as to whether or not that meant because of her being trans, and Captain Wells argued that it wasn't exactly what he meant. Aubrey being Cherokee, an Indigenous person, put her in a higher risk category to begin with. Then adding the fact that she was gay put her in yet another high-risk category for something horrific happening to her, for crimes like that happening to her, and then adding in that she was Trans again put her in yet another high-risk category.
She was in so many categories of individuals more likely to experience violence against them, and unfortunately, when adding the likelihood of drug use to the list raised that risk factor again. No matter what her gender identity was or sexual orientation or drug use status was, she deserved to be looked for. Law enforcement, as per usual, with missing Indigenous persons, they weren't doing that.
Captain Wells even confirmed this in an interview with Oxygen.com that what made this case unique was her lifestyle - not only was she transgender, but she
was a known drug abuser, which according to him, created an endless pool of miscreants for her to have come into contact with. Truthfully, even without the drug use, I feel like she would have been ignored simply because of her being trans and Indigenous.
The Missing & Murdered Indigenous crisis is gut-wrenching. Again, go back and listen to some of these other cases that I’ve covered if you haven't yet, because you will see time and time again when Indigenous persons go missing, law enforcement often looks the other way. It's not always a lack of jurisdictional understanding. Sometimes it’s as simple as they just deny the case because they don't “have enough resources,” but we've seen what happens when pretty white women go missing, right? The resources are all readily available. So it's really a load of BS, in my opinion.
Anyway, Aubrey's family was largely responsible for gathering resources, draining ponds, conducting searches, and hanging flyers. To add insult to injury, her flyers were often removed or someone would scrawl her dead name across her photograph. If you guys don't know what a dead name is, it's the name that a person is given at birth rather than the name a Trans person chooses and should be respectfully referred to by. When a Trans person chooses another name, that is their name and using their dead name is very disrespectful. Please don't come at me with hate if there's anything that I'm explaining incorrectly or needs to be explained even a little bit differently. Kindly send a message over Instagram or email and correct me please and I’ll speak on it in another episode, but do let me know because I am working so hard to educate myself about these topics to make sure that I'm delivering the information respectfully and accurately.
In the early days of the search, the first being March 23rd, a full two weeks after she was last seen, it was mentioned that there should have been more family around to help, but there wasn't. Her mom, Jennifer Bird, and stepdad didn't have much to do with the searches at all. Christian went to the home where Aubrey had been staying to look for anything that could help him out. As he got into Aubrey's room, everything had been bagged up. Her mother said that Aubrey had been looking for a specific bottle of nail polish and “cleaned up” in an effort to find it. But cleaning it up into garbage bags as if you're moving out or getting rid of everything is super peculiar..?
When he returned another day with Pam, everything had been hung up, but not at all how Aubrey would have hung it. And this is something that never sat right with them - and understandably so. The whole thing just reeks of confusion and suspicion. Three months into the search, a black leather jacket was found near what appeared to be a shallow grave.
The DNA evidence collected was reportedly inconclusive, but Pam believes that it's unreliable as her family couldn't even bother with the searches - she suspects that it’s reasonable
to deduce that they could have given law enforcement a false sample of DNA - like say a hairbrush of someone else’s instead of Aubrey’s or something like that. If you listen to the Vantage podcast episode that covered her disappearance, you also hear Christian speak a lot throughout the episode about how her family was uninvolved and how he and Pam don’t trust the DNA sample provided.
The FBI eventually stepped in, but even then, it was because of a shift in laws pertaining to jurisdiction. It wasn't because they came in willingly or that they were invited in to help. They legally, at that point, gained jurisdictional rights to Aubrey's disappearance and had to take over the case. Christian talked about how many people reported to the family that they had thought they'd seen her “so many months ago,” but when asked by Pam or Christian whether or not they’d reported it to authorities - they had not. And I can't understand why one wouldn't just report seeing her, especially with cell phones in everyone's purses, pockets, and hands it would have been reasonable to call law enforcement and let them know.
Something that struck me in this research that I wanted to learn more about was the concept of being two-spirit. So I wanted to be able to further educate where possible on things that we may not understand due to lack of exposure or for whatever reason otherwise.
According to Researching for LGBTQ2S Plus Health Community Collaboration and Change, identifying as two-spirit is a term used by some indigenous people to describe sexual gender and or spiritual identity. They further elaborate to say that some indigenous languages do not have terms to describe sexual identities such as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but are verb-focused instead, meaning that they describe what people do rather than how they identify. And this can include relationships that are considered poly, transgender persons, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, genderqueer, or have multiple gender identities.
Two-spirit isn't something new by any means whatsoever. In fact, more than 150 pre-colonial American indigenous tribes acknowledge their genders in their communities. Rigidity in gender was part of colonialism and gender fluidity was a lot more common in Native American society than it was in European society.
So not only did colonialism in their cultures marginalize based on ethnic identity, but also gender identity. And we know that children were ripped from their families in an effort to colonize indigenous persons in the U.S. and in Canada. And two-spirit leaders were seen as bridging the gap between genders.
And this is such a beautiful sentiment, one that Europeans came in and forced cultural assimilation, destroying gender identities that were different from male-female, such as being two-spirited.
Since the original recording of this episode, Aubrey’s remains were found. Human remains were found by a male and female out walking near a lagoon 50 feet from a road on January 31, 2025. The remains were found near South 565 Road and East 30 Road, in Cardin, Oklahoma - roughly 40 miles from where Aubrey had last been seen. Cardin is a literal ghost town. The town was evacuated due to environmental contamination from lead and zinc mining. The last residents of the town left in 2010.
According to the Quapaw Nation Marshal Service, forensic anthropologists with the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office responded to collect the remains and take them to the ME’s office for examination and identification. On February 5th, the Oklahoma ME Office confirmed the identity to be Aubrey Dameron.
In the official notice from the Quapaw National Marshal Service, they indicate that Aubrey had been wearing all black the last time she had been seen and that she’d left her purse at home while planning to meet someone. I roll my eyes so hard every time I see that her purse was left because like I said, it just doesn’t make sense to me that a woman would leave her purse if she were headed out to meet someone. I mean, yea sometimes I just grab my wallet, but her phone last pinged 100 yards from her mom’s house and then her purse was left there, but she left on foot? It just doesn’t make sense. Because of the condition of the remains, it was impossible to determine how long they had been at that location. Neither a cause or manner of death have been released and the investigation is cited to be ongoing.
So what happened to Aubrey?
There were a couple of sources that mentioned how there had been an argument between Aubrey and her stepfather days before her disappearance. And honestly, I feel like this is a part of it. A lot of people, including her Uncle Christian and Aunt Pam, have stated that they don’t necessarily believe Jennifer’s stories - especially since there are multiple versions of them. Many suspect that Aubrey may have fallen back into using drugs again, and this could be a reasonable assumption as she was distant from her aunt and uncle. However, people go through periods of depression especially during major life changing transitions like moving back home.
I know there’s a lot of talk about it being a hate crime as well. In older episodes, I used to share my intuitive insight as to what happened, but I truthfully don’t feel right doing that anymore, at least not in the detail that I once would have. If I had to pick a theory that felt right to me though, I do believe, as many have speculated, that it was someone very close to her. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to find out that she never left her last known location alive. I hope to God they are able to punish whoever did this to her. It feels very full of rage and misplaced anger.
Not everyone in her community, let alone her family was accepting of her transition. Christina talks about this in the Dateline interview of Missing in America, Episode 4. He mentions how after she had breast implants, there was more discomfort with some in her family. The motivation was hate for her and who she was and how she showed up in the world.
There is a dating app theory that has been brought up as well. Aubrey was evidently on Grindr and could have been meeting someone from the app. So a lot of people suspect that she was taken by basically someone she was meeting to go on a date with. I believe when her mom says that she was going to meet up with someone, that that wasn't a conversation that was ever had, that Aubrey was killed earlier that night, and essentially that was just her cover-up. No one has access to the app without her phone as it doesn't back up to any kind of cloud or data source. You have to have the physical phone to access any messaging she could have done on it and her phone has not been found. She wasn't meeting anyone that night as far as I would bet.
The thing is that law enforcement doesn't care enough because one, she's Indigenous, two, she's Trans, and three, she was at least one time, a confirmed drug user. None of these are reasons to not look for someone. Aubrey deserved to be found and now that six years later she has been located, she deserves justice for what was done to her. Pam and Christian deserve answers, as do her friends and the family that has advocated and held onto hope for finding answers.
If you are new to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women episodes of Murder in Mediumship, then please go back and scroll through and listen to a few more. I hope that her killers are brought to justice and that there will be an update soon about an arrest being made in her case.
If you want to learn more about the Aubrey Dameron case, then look her up on the Vanished podcast. I highly recommend it, as there is a lot of interview time with Christian, and there's a lot of information sprinkled in about why it's so difficult to get action from law enforcement when it comes to Indigenous persons. While laws are changing and shifting all the time, nothing's happening quickly enough. If you enjoy this show, please leave a review and five stars so that we can land these stories into the ears of even more listeners.
You never know who could hear and need the push to come forward with information that could solve a case.
Thank you for listening and I'll catch you all next time.