'Unsolved Mysteries' Episode 2: Patrice Endres' disappearance within 13 minutes, death still puzzle investigators
Netflix's new reboot of 'Unsolved Mysteries' centers on candid accounts from the loved ones of victims that were either murdered or disappeared under mysterious circumstances. One such case that the show is shedding light on focuses on Patrice Endres, a mom and hair-salon owner from Cumming, Georgia, who went missing in 2004. No one knew what happened to her and she was presumed to have gone missing within a span of 13 minutes. It wasn't until December 2005, that her skeletal remains were discovered in Dawson County. The second episode in the season, '13 Minutes', covers her abduction and the theories surrounding her death.
After dropping her son, Pistol Black, off at his school on the morning of April 15, 2004, Endres, 38, went to her salon and waited on the two appointments that she had scheduled that morning. At 11:37 am that day, she received a call to schedule an appointment for a client. But when at 11:50 am, 13 minutes later, a different client tried to contact her, the incoming call went unanswered. Whatever it was that happened to her, had unraveled within those 13 minutes, and the time frame was significant to the case. It was later that morning after a client showed up and found no signs of Endres, that the police were called to the scene. The cash register was left open and empty and Patrice's food was left untouched; but other than that there had been no shred of evidence inside the shop, neither were there signs of a break-in or a struggle.
The only palpable evidence for the case were the two witnesses who saw a small blue car parked in front of her shop at around 11:45 am and they both claimed to have seen Patrice standing beside a short figure, with shoulder-length hair. In addition, Patrice's SUV was also not found to be in its usual parking space and was instead parked oddly to the side in front of the shop. On witnesses described seeing the Patrice and the other person with their hands on each other, but she couldn't decipher what was going on since she was only driving by. By the time the police arrived at the salon, both the small blue car and Patrice were gone.
Numerous search party efforts were organized and pleas from family and friends of Patrice to return home, were in vain. After more than a year of investigation and no new leads, on December 6, 2005, a human skull was found in the woods by the Lebanon Baptist Church, in Dawson County Georgia.
The location was ten miles away from where Patrice's hair salon was located. Sometime later, the police had managed to recover all the skeletal remains, and they were thereafter identified to be of Patrice. However, her wedding ring was missing and has never been found.
Her case remains open since no suspects have been linked to her death, although there have been some false confessions connected to the case. In the past 16 years since she went missing, two serial killers, Jeremy Brian Jones, and Gary Michael Hilton, had come under the police's radar as suspects. Jones even confessed to her murder, saying he had kidnapped, assaulted and killed her, then dumped her body into the creek in Dawson County. An extensive search was organized, where the police found nothing, and Jones then revealed to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he had “made up the story to get better food and extra jail visitation and phone privileges”.
The authorities effectively ruled out the two suspects as Patrice's killers. Another woman claimed to have seen a man and a white van in front of the salon at the time of Patrice's disappearance and even worked with the authorities on a composite sketch, per Forsyth County News. She later recanted her story and was charged with providing false statements.
Special Agent Kimberly William told the Forsyth County News in 2019, that “Endres’ murder remains an active and important case with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Cleveland Office.” Special Agent Mitchell Posey explained in the Netflix episode that “there are aspects of the Patrice Endres investigation that we can’t discuss, that we refuse to discuss because we define that as guilty knowledge information…information that’s only known by the person responsible for what happened to Patrice, and by us, the investigators, that know every aspect of the case. We can’t afford to have a false confession. We definitely want to give some form of closure to the family.”
'Unsolved Mysteries' is now streaming on Netflix.