Oklahoma woman looking for her missing son disappears

(Image credit: Larry W. Smith/Getty Images)

published 2 November 2021

While searching for her missing son and his friend last month, Glenda "Cookie" Parton, an 80-year-old Oklahoma woman, vanished.

Parton's son, 59-year-old Dwayne Selby, and his 76-year-old friend Jack Grimes were last heard from on Oct. 22. The pair planned on driving to Fort Worth, Texas, for a horse show, but never arrived at the event or contacted their families, police said. They were last spotted at a restaurant in Purcell, Oklahoma.

The men were reported missing, and Parton started searching for them on her own. She was last seen on Oct. 25 at a business in Turley, Oklahoma. Security footage showed Parton talking to an unidentified man; the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office said that after it released images of the man, he was identified, located, and interviewed. On Oct. 26, Parton's vehicle was discovered abandoned on the side of the road in Tulsa.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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