The street across from the community park in Kansas, Oklahoma is lined with homes belonging to the Glass family. In the past few years, those homes have gotten a lot emptier. Emma Sanders, whose mother was a Glass, says the COVID-19 pandemic devastated her family who belongs to the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.
“My aunt and uncle, they were older, they passed. My baby sister passed. I have some cousins that live back here, they lost two daughters and a grandson. Over here in this corner, I had a cousin who passed, he was older. And then my other uncle and cousin passed just down the road here,” said Sanders.
Of all the death she’s experienced lately, it’s the loss of her cousin, 19-year-old Trey Glass, that haunts Sanders. She’s become the spokeswoman around the teenager’s mysterious death at the request of Glass’ father.

“My uncle is really into his Cherokee language. He don’t speak a whole lot of English. During this time, they asked me to be their mouth, their ears, and their eyes. It’s been a mission for me,” said Sanders.
Sanders said the last time she saw Glass, the “small-town boy who loved life,” he was playing one of his favorite pastimes, Indian marbles, when he greeted her with a challenge after she arrived at a gathering.
“He come running — him and my daughter were close when they were younger — and he come running over there and asked me how my daughter was, I said, ‘She’s good,’ and he said, ‘Well, tell her when she wants to get beat at marbles to come over,’ and he giggled.”
Four months later the skeletal remains of Glass were pulled from a well on the ranch of a retired Kansas police chief. The crucial details of how Glass ended up in Mike Wilkerson’s well are still unclear, despite reports of an “altercation” just before Glass’ death and the involvement of multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The lack of clarity has intensified suspicion in the small, rural community, and added to the grief and frustration of those who knew Glass best.
It was in April when, Wilkerson, 73, said he and his wife noticed that one of the cattle guard panels surrounding his abandoned well had been moved. The panels are about five feet tall and, according to Wilkerson, weigh nearly 100 pounds. Wilkerson walked the approximately 40 feet from his house to the well to look inside to make sure no calves had fallen in. When he did, he saw Glass floating in about eight feet of water, feet up.
The career law enforcement officer was possibly the last person to see Glass alive. On the night of Dec. 17, Wilkerson said Glass turned up very drunk but still “real polite and courteous” near his home. He said Glass would’ve been familiar with the ranch because he visited the property near the Cherokee Turnpike and U.S. Highway 59 several times.
“I was real familiar with the boy when he was younger, because he just lived across the street from town hall, and we saw him, and his mom, and his family all the time. But that was the first time I’d seen him since I retired,” said Wilkerson.
Wilkerson said he offered Glass a ride home around 9 or 9:30 p.m. Glass declined but asked if he could cut across Wilkerson’s ranch. The last time Wilkerson saw Glass, he was beyond the well “a ways” from where his body was ultimately found.
Three days after seeing Glass, Wilkerson responded to a post on Facebook about the teen's disappearance. When no one contacted him, Wilkerson’s wife called Sanders and agreed to let the family search the ranch.
Eventually, law enforcement teams showed up, but Wilkerson described their first visit as being “quite a while” after the Glass family's first efforts. He said law enforcement visited his property “two or three times.” At one point he estimated more than 200 officers were present.
During searches, Wilkerson said law enforcement went near the well with cadaver dogs and probably did not hook the cattle panels back correctly. He thinks one of the panels that was moved was loosened and later dislodged by his animals, which led to Wilkerson’s discovery of Glass.
Since then, Wilkerson said he’s been the subject of many foul play accusations online, and is facing threats of having his home burned down.
“It’s been a bad deal for his family, it’s been a bad deal for my family. People on Facebook have accused me of doing harm to that boy,” he said. ”People cross my place all the time, kids. They walk up and down. There’s a little spring back there that runs across my place. And people go back there and catch crawdads out of that spring. We’ve had trouble with coyotes in the past, and [other police officers] would go back there and coyote.
“I spent 52 years in law enforcement and always did my best not to hurt somebody. Then, all of a sudden, I was going to hurt somebody? That’s ridiculous,” said Wilkerson.
Before the interaction with Wilkerson, Glass was spotted with two friends — a boy 14 or 15 years old, and 23-year-old Jagur Soldier — at local convenience store Speedys. Soldier bought beer for the trio, according to messages obtained by Public Radio Tulsa. They walked to East 550 Road near Wilkerson’s ranch where they got into an argument.
“We had some beer left to drink and he started to try and fight his friends. I told him to stop and he got mad and turn back the way we came. We was yelling at him to come back but he wouldn’t,” reads the message from Soldier.
Soldier has so far not responded to questions from Public Radio Tulsa.
Sanders said in August and also reported to KSN-TV that details from the underage teen present don’t match statements made by Soldier.

Law enforcement’s involvement started with the family contacting the Kansas Police Department in mid-December to report Glass missing. Sanders said officers weren’t responsive and it could have been because Glass was known to them.
“Trey’s a youngster, he was a young kid that liked to get in trouble sometimes, you know? It wasn’t like he did it all the time. Well, what they told my aunt, they said he had to be 24 hours missing, which is not true,” Sanders said.
Kansas Police Chief JJ Mason said he doubted the claim that the department gave a timeframe for when they would start looking for a missing person. Still, after the call was dropped due to a bad connection, Mason did not return immediate follow-up inquiries.
The perceived lack of action by KPD prompted the Glass family to contact a tribal Lighthorse officer, who Sanders said was a comforting and supportive presence. But KPD refused to work with the officer and “booted her off” the investigation for “getting a little too nosy.”
In the meantime, the Glass family said they were obsessively searching and inquiring. They walked one of Trey’s last known locations — East Road 550 — repeatedly, but Glass’ cell phone wasn’t found on the road by Quapaw Search and Rescue until Dec. 23, about a week after Trey Glass disappeared.
Quapaw Search and Rescue didn’t return a request from Public Radio Tulsa for information.
Sanders alleges that when a KPD officer presented the phone to the family for verification, he let them handle it without gloves.
The phone was found on a Saturday, but Sanders said it was not processed as evidence until four days later, after the Delaware County Sheriff got involved at Sanders’ request because she felt KPD was not taking her seriously.

Eventually, at least five law enforcement agencies became involved in the search for Glass, including Cherokee Nation Marshal Service and the FBI, neither of which returned requests for more information.
A final Aug. 22 report from the state medical examiner says Glass’ body was in an advanced stage of decomposition. His cause of death could have been due to drowning, exposure, intoxication, or soft tissue trauma. But ultimately, it remains unknown.
The uncertainty is almost more than Sanders can bear. She says she’s dealt with it by keeping journals about the case and creating art for Glass in an effort to put the pieces together.
“There’s things that don’t make sense, and that’s where my heart is, to keep pushing.”
Donate to Public Radio Tulsa here. This report was produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.