Gainesville police report two deaths in search for missing father and son

A search for an Oklahoma father and his young son led to the discovery of a man and child dead in Gainesville on Oct. 14, 2026, according to Gainesville police. The department had not confirmed their identities in its announcement, saying the medical examiner would make that determination.

Texas Rangers were helping investigate the deaths, police said. The department described the case as active but reported neither a cause nor a manner of death.

The father and son being sought were Caleb Furley, 25, and Andres Harry Furley, 4, according to Oklahoma’s endangered-missing advisory. In an AMBER Alert issued Oct. 14, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said the father had not appeared for an exchange with the boy’s mother and had a warrant for parental kidnapping.

The earlier advisory said the pair were last seen in Norman around 7 p.m. Oct. 11. Norman police received the missing-person report the following day, according to that notice.

According to Gainesville police, the department received a suspicious-contact report around 3 p.m. Oct. 12 involving a man and child near a business in the 1500 block of North Grand Avenue. Police said an officer searched the area with help from a drone without finding them.

Two days later, an investigator examined the business’s surveillance recordings and then searched nearby. That search resulted in the discovery of the bodies, according to the police release.

Oklahoma’s alert guidelines provide for endangered-missing advisories when children are believed to face danger but their cases do not qualify for an AMBER Alert. Under those guidelines, AMBER activation requires a reasonable belief that an abduction occurred and that the child faces imminent serious injury or death. The guidelines also require enough identifying information to aid recovery and entry of required information into the national crime database.

Texas allows local AMBER activation before statewide criteria have been verified if the requesting agency’s chief considers it warranted, according to Texas DPS. The agency says that authority came from 2023 legislation honoring Athena Strand, who was kidnapped and murdered in Wise County in 2022.

WALB.com published coverage Oct. 15, crediting KXII News staff, Austin Hedgcoth and Jordan Gartner. The page carries a KXII/Gray News dateline and credits KXII for video. Owner Gray Media’s directory lists WALB in Albany, Georgia, and KXII in the Sherman–Ada–Paris market.

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