Myrisha and her brother A.J. were last seen in Goliad, Texas on September 6, 1958. They lived with their mother, Jewel Bernay Campbell. The children’s father, A.J. Campbell Sr., took them for a ride and never returned them.
They had been married for eight years and A.J. was very abusive towards Jewel. She took the children and left him, supporting herself with a teaching job in Goliad, Texas. A.J. Sr. had court-ordered visitation times with them on Saturdays, and it was during one of those visits that they disappeared. He took them at 9:00 a.m. and was supposed to bring them back by 3:00 p.m.
William Randle Jr., an acquaintance of A.J. Sr., was the last person to see the children besides their father. Randle stated he and A.J. Sr. picked up the children in Goliad, then drove away in Randle’s two-door pink and charcoal-gray 1955 Chevrolet Tudor with the Texas license plate number MA-9996. They went through Cuero, Texas and Gonzales, Texas, stopping along the way to pick up two large cans of lard.
When they were about three miles outside Goliad, A.J. Sr. asked Randle to stop because he wanted to see a friend. Randle stopped and got out of the car, and A.J. drove on without him, with both children inside the vehicle.
About thirty to forty minutes later, A.J. returned to pick Randle up. The children were no longer with him. He said he’d gone to visit his brother-in-law, but they had a fight, and he wound up leaving the children with another relative. A.J. seemed nervous and agitated at the time, asked if he had any blood on him and warned Randle to tell no one about the fight.
They drove to San Antonio, Texas and then separated. A.J. was supposed to meet Randle at a bus station at midnight the next day to return the car, but he never showed up. Randle took a bus to Fort Worth, Texas and then reported his car as stolen.
The following day, A.J. Sr. spoke to a Fort Worth, Texas minister on the telephone that day and implied that he had killed his children, saying they were “at rest with the world” and that he was going to kill himself. Early on September 7, A.J. Sr.’s body was later found inside Randle’s vehicle on a rural road near Austin, Texas. His death was ruled a suicide; he had shot himself in the head with a new 16-gauge shotgun.
He left a note addressed to Jewel. The note said he had “buried both children” and that he loved the children and he loved Jewel and hoped she would be happy. There was no indication of the children’s whereabouts, and no trace of them could be found.
Jewel remarried after A.J.’s death and took the name Robertson, and had two more children. She died in 2013. Her children by her second marriage, Regina Meynig and Phil Robertson, have been active in the search for A.J. Jr. and Myrisha and hope that they may be located. They believe there’s a chance that the children are alive and A.J. Sr. gave or sold them to someone instead of killing them.
The bodies of Myrisha and A.J. Jr. have never been found and their cases remain open.
Information courtesy of Charley Project.
