Gainesville police find bodies of man and child during search for missing Oklahoma pair

Gainesville police found the bodies of a man and a child on Oct. 14 while they searched for a missing father and his 4-year-old from Norman, Oklahoma, according to a city news release. Police said the medical examiner will make a positive identification. The release calls the case an active investigation and says the Texas Rangers are assisting.

The release does not name the two people. Oklahoma's official missing-person advisory identified the missing father and child as Caleb Furley, 25, and Andres "Harry" Furley, 4. The advisory says the two were last seen together at about 7 p.m. Oct. 11. Norman police received the missing-person report the next day.

Gainesville officers first searched on Oct. 12. Police said a report of a suspicious contact sent them to the area near a business on North Grand Avenue. A drone search there did not find the pair. Two days later, surveillance footage brought officers back to search the surrounding area, and that search found the bodies, the release says.

Oklahoma raised its alert level during the same days. The state's Endangered Missing Advisory is dated Oct. 13, and an AMBER Alert followed with an Oct. 14 date. The AMBER Alert said Caleb Furley did not appear for an exchange with the child's mother and was wanted on a parental-kidnapping warrant.

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety uses different standards for the two alerts. For an AMBER Alert, officers must reasonably believe that someone abducted a child and that the child is in imminent danger of serious injury or death. An advisory can cover an endangered child whose case does not meet that standard.

Texas has its own rules. Under criteria that the Texas Department of Public Safety publishes, a statewide alert in an abduction by a parent or legal guardian requires attempted murder or murder connected to the abduction. A 2023 change lets a local chief law-enforcement officer start a local-area alert in certain missing-child cases before every requirement is verified. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the change honors 7-year-old Athena Strand, who was kidnapped and killed in neighboring Wise County in 2022.

The alert system started in North Texas. According to DPS, it came out of the 1996 abduction and death of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington. Texas set up a statewide network in 2002 and wrote it into law the next year.

Nationally, alerts often involve a family member. The 2025 annual report of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says the center first classified a little over half of that year's valid AMBER Alert cases as family abductions. Texas issued close to 40 alerts that year, and Oklahoma issued one, the report says. The report counts alerts, not all missing children.

WBRC 6 News, which Gray Media lists as its station in Birmingham, Alabama, carried a video report on the Gainesville discovery dated Oct. 15.

_Editor's note: Everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law._