Family seeks answers, closure Former Iola man missing since 2009

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April 22, 2011 - 12:00 AM

It’s been 18 months since Brian Trester disappeared without a trace.
His family, meanwhile, still waits for an answer to his whereabouts. Even if the resolution isn’t what they want to hear.
“We want some closure; some answers,” Heather Trester, his sister, said. “I just want to know where my brother is.”
Trester, a former Iolan who would now be 28, was last seen leaving his cousin’s home in rural Stockton in Lyon County. He was on his way to work in Olpe in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 22, 2009.
Less than 90 minutes later, his cousin received a call from police who said they had found Brian’s truck stuck in mud on the side of a road less than five miles from Olpe.
A nearby resident even reported hearing the sound of a motor being revved loudly, as if it had been stuck.
But something was amiss, noted Sharon Trester, Brian’s mother.
“It was a winch truck,” she said. “If he had gotten stuck, he would have used the winch to pull himself out. He grew up a country boy. He wouldn’t have just left the vehicle.”
Just as noteworthy: inside the pickup’s cab was a bottle of Gatorade and a pack of cigarettes.
“He wouldn’t have just left the truck there, and he especially wouldn’t have gone anywhere without his cigarettes,” Heather said.
Most troubling was what Trester’s cousin found when he went to retrieve the truck.
“He drove it right back onto the road,” Sharon said. “The truck wasn’t stuck at all.”
The family became increasingly alarmed when Trester didn’t alert anybody to his whereabouts.
“He would call somebody in the family pretty much every day, just to call and talk,” Sharon said. “I talked to him the day before he disappeared. He was planning to come home the following weekend.”
They reported him missing the next day.
A caravan of family and friends — he’s the third oldest of seven siblings — packed up and headed to Lyon County for a massive search party.
For the next several days, the Trester clan scoured the countrywide, roaming miles in each direction of where the abandoned vehicle had been found.
“We walked across fields, we looked through barns,” Heather said. “The people who lived in the area were nice. They wanted to help.”
Even the farmer who heard the revving engine helped look. “He used his horses,” Heather recalled.
But no luck.

BRIAN LEE TRESTER  was of a quiet and reserved manner, but seemed to be a magnet for trouble.
“He didn’t do drugs, but he would get in trouble for not going to school, fighting, things like that,” Sharon said.
His skin color also may have played a roll in his scraps with others. His mother was white; his father black.
He missed so much school that he never learned to read or write, eventually dropping out of Iola High School. He took up work at what had been the Tyson meat plant in Emporia.
His situation worsened when he reached Lyon County.
“He got in with the wrong crowd at times,” Sharon said. “I tried to get him to come back home, but there was no chance after he turned 18.”
Brian’s troubles included his arrest in 2007 for stealing scrap metal in Lyon County, a crime that earned him a three-year prison sentence.
The prison term may have been the impetus for Brian to turn his life around.
“He stopped getting in trouble when he was in prison,” Sharon said. “He started taking things more seriously.”
Heather wrote letters to her brother on a regular basis while he was incarcerated — other inmates would read the letters to him — reminding him of his support group in Iola.
Brian was paroled in March 2009, and took up work for a trash company in Olpe.
“He didn’t drink much,” Heather said. “The only time I saw him drunk was on my 21st birthday” just weeks before he disappeared.
Brian was a few weeks away from completing his parole obligations. The state declared Brian officially absconded on Oct. 30, 2009.
Jerrod Fell, a detective with the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department, told the Register that the case remains officially open.
“He’s still listed as a missing person, and we continue to follow leads,” he said. Foul play hasn’t been ruled out in Brian’s disappearance; nor has it been proven.
Those with information regarding the disappearance are urged to call the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department at (620) 342-2223 or Kansas Crime Stoppers toll-free at (800) KS CRIME.
“Or you could give any of us family members a call,” Heather said.
Callers can remain anonymous.

RUMORS HAVE come and gone, through phone calls, Internet message boards and simple word of mouth.
“Somebody wrote a comment following a story in the Emporia newspaper saying ‘If you want to know where Brian is, just ask his family.’ As if we knew something nobody else did,” Heather said. “If we knew something, why are we still calling newspapers, calling the sheriff’s department, trying to find out any information we can?”
Sharon Trester moved to Emporia the January after her son disappeared, in part to keep closer tabs on the local investigation.
“I couldn’t take it,” she said. “Every time I went somewhere, I found myself wondering if I’d see Brian in a ditch.”
She returned to Iola four months later.
Even well-wishers can make life difficult.
“I got a text from a friend the other day asking where the celebration was,” Heather said. “They’d heard that he had been found.”
Heather calls the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department regularly — “at least once a month” — just to learn if any new leads have been uncovered.
“I think about him constantly,” she said.
The lack of closure has created a strain.
One sister plans to move to Texas in the coming months. Another already has.
“It’s hard not having Brian around, at least to talk to,” Heather said, wiping away tears. “Even when he was in trouble, he’d call us.”
But as the days pass, Sharon and Heather fear the worst.
“I don’t know what happened to Brian,” Heather said, “but if I had to guess, I’d say he’s gone.”

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