Man and child found dead in Gainesville during search for missing Norman father and son

A Gainesville police investigator found a man and a child dead in the city on Oct. 14, the department said. The investigator was searching for a father and son missing from Norman, Oklahoma. The department's release named neither person and said a medical examiner would make the positive identification.

The release gave no cause or manner of death. It said Texas Rangers were assisting the investigation. GvilleTX found no public record from a medical examiner naming the dead.

Oklahoma's Oct. 13 endangered-missing advisory identified the missing people as Andres "Harry" Furley, 4, and his father, Caleb Furley, 25. The advisory said they were last seen in Norman around 7 p.m. Oct. 11 and that Norman police received the missing-person report the next day.

An AMBER Alert that the Oklahoma Highway Patrol activated for Norman police on Oct. 14 said Caleb Furley had failed to appear for an exchange with the child's mother. It said he was wanted on a parental-kidnapping warrant.

Gainesville police said officers responded around 3 p.m. Oct. 12 to a North Grand Avenue business over a reported suspicious encounter involving a man and a child. An officer searched with a drone's help and did not locate the man and child, police said. On Oct. 14, a relative gave police information. An investigator then reviewed surveillance footage and searched the surrounding area, where the bodies were found, according to the release.

Cooke County's Feb. 23 check register lists four autopsy-expense payments to the Dallas County medical examiner's office. The record does not show which office is handling this case. Dallas County's public guidance treats identification and the autopsy report as separate steps. By its estimate, a fingerprint identification takes one to two days and a DNA identification several weeks, while a finished autopsy report generally takes eight to twelve weeks.

Oklahoma uses two kinds of notice for different cases, according to its Department of Public Safety. The child advisory covers endangered children whose cases do not meet AMBER criteria. An AMBER Alert requires a reasonable belief that a child was abducted and faces imminent serious injury or death, plus enough descriptive information and a national crime database entry.

Texas sets its own bar. The Texas Department of Public Safety says its statewide criteria for abductions by a parent or legal guardian require attempted murder or murder connected to the abduction. The agency also describes a separate local option for cases that have not yet met every criterion. It says that option followed legislation signed in 2023 in honor of Athena Strand, the 7-year-old kidnapped and killed in neighboring Wise County in 2022. Under it, a local chief law-enforcement officer who believes activation is warranted may request an alert before all criteria have been verified.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children recorded 37 AMBER Alerts originating in Texas in 2025, the most of any state. Oklahoma originated one. Nationally, the center classified 67 of 117 AMBER cases that year as family abductions at intake, excluding alerts later classified as hoaxes or unfounded.

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