Twenty-six years, one month, and eight days.
That's how long it has been since 26-year-old Ronnie Glen Seehafer lost his life on a June, 1994 camping weekend at a secluded spot on Kerr Lake in Haskell County.
The death. reported as a drowning by the local newspaper at the time, has all of the ear-markings of a murder that has gone unpunished and almost forgotten with the passage of time.
On June 18, 1994 Seehafer and a group of more than an dozen individuals were "partying" at a location known locally as Mushroom Point, a fingerling cove on Kerr Lake north of Keota in Haskell County, according to Carrie Seehafer, the younger sister of Ronnie.
"There was a party at the lake, and I'm sure there was drinking, drugs and all kind of stuff going on out there," said Carrie Seerhafer. "And I'm sure my brother was involved in all of it, but bad choices in the people you hang out with and bad decisions you make about your lifestyle choices doesn't justify being murdered. Especially the way it went down."
On that Saturday night, Ronnie Seehafer supposedly drowned in the waters of Kerr Lake. At least that was the story told by the principal party-goers to officials, but small town rumors and the evidence in the case say something completely different.
"Ronnie supposedly drowned on Saturday night," said Carrie Seehafer. "There were at least fifteen people either camping or hanging out at the party spot. Not one of them called the police or alerted officials of the drowning."
In reality, the first time that anyone in Ronnie's family even knew he was missing was the following Monday.
"Monday, one of the people (that was at the camp out) took Ronnie's shoes and wallet to my mom's boyfriend because they worked together, " said Carrie. "He told my mom's boyfriend that Ronnie had drowned."
"Mom's boyfriend worked all day then went home to her and took her the shoes and wallet and told her what his co-worker had said," said Carrie. "The first call to authorities about the 'drowning" was almost 48-hours after it supposedly happened, and that came from my mom."
According to Carrie Seehafer, the Haskell County Sheriff Office made no effort to locate Ronnie or even question anyone about his disappearance at the time. Carrie's mom went out to the Mushroom point area for three days straight, calling the sheriff's office each day and begging them to contact lake patrol officials in an effort to locate her son.
"Mom called them every day...Ronnie had a young son and she was all the time telling him he needed to spend less time with his friends and more time with his son," said Carrie. "On Thursday she got fed up and called Oklahoma Lake Patrol herself."
"They found Ronnie's body in about thirty minutes after they got to the lake," said Carrie.
Ronnie's body was located in a shallow body of water in a gully not far from where he supposedly drowned. But according to Carrie, the body was placed there after the fact because her mother had hunted all over the area just a few days before the body was found in plain site.
"Haskell County never called them (lake patrol)," said Carrie. "He had an autopsy and in fact, he had not drowned. He actually had a plastic sack shoved down his throat. He was so badly decomposed he had to be identified by dental records and we never got to see him".
"Mom always maintained she had been to the place where the body was eventually found and that he wasn't there in the few days before they found him," said Carrie. "Regardless, my big brother was dead for five days before there was even an attempt by anyone to try and find him. The entire deal was bungled from the start."
According to the people who were at the camp site, Ronnie drowned on June 18. His headstone in the Tamaha Cemetery reflects the day his body was located as his date of death....forty-four days shy of his 27th birthday.
"Those five days haunt me," said a tearful Carrie Seehafer. "The effect on my mom was such that I really think that is why she is in the early stages of Alzheimer's at the age of sixty-one."
"He never got to meet my kids, and they never got the chance to meet their Uncle Ronnie," said Carrie. "I regret that."
Carrie said there was some immediate local buzz about the death and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation even assigned a female agent to work the case for awhile.
Twenty-six years, one month, and eight days later, Ronnie Seehafer has become just another opened-ended cold case that no seems to even remember.
So what happened to Ronnie Seehafer?
"We will probably never have an official answer to that", said Carrie, who had moved to Illinois about eight or nine months before Ronnie's death. "But small towns being small towns, people talk. There's not but 300 people in the whole place, but a lot of them think they know exactly what happened."
Carrie says the information she has received indicates there was a fight at the campground on June 18. Rumor is that it was over a girl or drugs. (or both) and during the confrontation Ronnie was "choked out" or strangled, causing his death.
She says at least three people were involved and complicit in the murder and/or cover-up. And more people at the party were aware of what had happened.
"I was told they threw his body in the water because they said he was 'faking' and they did it to 'revive' him," said Carrie. "I think they lost the body in the water, and I think some of them went back out the next day in boats and found him. I think they concealed his body someplace before placing it in that gully on Thursday."
Carrie named names. Obviously, without a police report on the incident and with all the time that has passed, Back Road Mysteries is not going to make allegations against individuals without evidence.
One of the individuals has since died, but others still live in the area. A look at court records for the men she named is quite compelling.
According to Carrie, the man she claims is the actual murderer "brought meth" to Haskell County and was "well connected" enough to avoid any trouble with local law enforcement, who she says "looked the other way" and may have "benefited" from the drug trade.
One of the other men Carrie claims was an accomplice has several Haskell and Leflore County arrests on his record, including, DUI, resisting arrest, public drunk and domestic abuse charges, as well as a number of traffic violations.
Yet another was a career truck driver who could have been involved in the drug situation while a fourth was the subject of at least one protection order in Leflore County,
"It was a rough crowd,and I'll be honest, Ronnie may have been right in the middle of it," said Carrie. "I had moved away from the area after a bad break-up just to get away from all of the drama, but I thought it was kind of telling that I could identify all the drug dealers in Haskell County from 800 miles away and the police couldn't find anything."
"Nobody cared back then and nobody but his family really cares now," said Carrie. "But he was my big brother, and he deserved better than to be left for dead for five days and for there to be no justice in the end."
'I came home for the funeral and I actually confronted the man that murdered Ronnie," said Carrie.
"He's dead now...but I flat out told him he could walk the aisle of that church as much as he wanted, but in the end, he didn't pay for his sins and he went right to where I told him to go the day I confronted him."
'God knows, and I know, who killed Ronnie', said Seehafer. "And so do a lot of people who live in Keota,"
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