A pickup belonging to a missing Goldsby man was hidden in plain sight at an Oklahoma City apartment complex.
Bill Shipley’s 2002 Chevrolet S-14 crew-cab pickup was parked outside the apartment complex’s clubhouse for several months.
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Could it have been there the entire 13-plus months since Shipley disappeared on July 19, 2011?
The only one who can answer that is the person who parked it there.
“We don’t know how long it was there,” McClain County Sheriff’s Detective David Tompkins said Monday.
Apparently it isn’t unusual for vehicles to be parked months at a time at Eastlake Village Apartments, which has a number of military tenants who are sometimes away on lengthy deployments, Tompkins said.
A new manager who began work at the apartment complex a few months ago noticed the pickup and eventually tagged it.
When the vehicle was finally towed, workers at the impound lot ran the license number and VIN, which returned a hit that the pickup was sought by law enforcement.
Oklahoma City police were called and they in turn alerted McClain County authorities.
Tompkins said the truck is stored in safe keeping for now.
“We haven’t done forensics on it yet,” he said, adding that there was nothing left inside the vehicle’s cab.
“This is the vehicle he (Shipley) was driving in the Sonic video,” Tompkins said.
That video, which shows Shipley buying two drinks at the Sonic on Highway 9 across from Riverwind Casino, is the last time he was seen.
What the video doesn’t show is who was in the pickup with Shipley.
Tompkins said Shipley, a painting contractor, had earlier withdrawn $3,000 from his bank account at an ATM.
Shipley frequently took jobs out of state and it wasn’t unusual for him to withdraw large sums of cash, the detective added.
The 47-year-old Shipley’s disappearance wasn’t reported for a month because family members believed he was working out of state.
His work vehicle, a 1988 Jeep Comanche, was found Aug. 20, 2011 at a different apartment complex in the city.
Tompkins said a man described as a person of interest used Shipley’s credit card at a gas station and steak house in Norman Aug. 12, 2011, and at a Home Depot in Oklahoma City Aug. 13, 2011. That was the last activity on his credit card.
Authorities have released a composite sketch of the man, described as white, about 50 years old, 6-foot-2, 250 pounds, with a medium complexion and light brown hair.
Tompkins urged anyone with information about the case to call the sheriff’s office at 527-2141.
“He left a lot of money in the bank,” Tompkins said. “Mine and the family’s hope is to find him alive … but there’s probably a very good chance he’s not with us anymore.”
