In the early morning hours of June 8, 2000 then 69-year-old Gerald Leroy Bingham told his neighbors in Fort Smith that he was going to Talihina in southern LeFlore County.
Those same neighbors last saw Bingham leaving his Fort Smith residence in a maroon -colored 1998 Buick Regal at right around 2 a.m. Nine days passed before one one Bingham's nephews reported him missing.
Bingham’s Buick, with his diabetic supplies inside, was later found on Cavanal Mountain near Poteau and an individual told investigators that he had given Bingham a ride to a nearby town and later but took him back to mountainous area and dropped him off.
His dog was even located on the mountain.
Over eighteen-and-a half years later, the fate of Bingham is still a mystery. All investigators have at this point is speculation.
Cavanal Mountain, also know as the "World's Highest Hill" is a large and somewhat foreboding place in a rough and rugged area with with a number of caves and abandoned mine shafts. So Bingham is not the first person to go missing in the region.
Over the years, several bodies have been found in the area and at least one death in the 1980's was attributed to methane gas poisoning when a teenager fell down an abandoned mine shaft.
At the time Bingham went missing, multiple agencies from several communities spent a number of days searching the land on and near the sides of the mountain. In the ensuing years, nothing has led invstigators to coming any closer to discovering the truth of Bingham's disappearance.
It is probably one of the top three or four coldest of cold cases that Fort Smith and LeFlore County officials have on the books.
But police have not given up.
Anyone with information that might shed some light on on the disappearance of Gerald Bingham is urged to call the Fort Smith Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division at: (479) 709-5116