Real-life tracker says cruelty of Oklahoma woman’s murder will “stay with me forever”
A Tracker's Darkest Case: The Oklahoma Murder That Left a Scar on the Searcher Herself
Wertynews.com – In the small world of rural law enforcement in central Oklahoma, few assignments carry the emotional weight of a missing-persons search that turns into a homicide investigation. For Lieutenant Dakota Black, a trained tracker and detective assigned to the Pottawatomie County Sheriff's Office in Shawnee, the case of Makayla Meave became something she described as permanently etched into her memory. The cruelty of what happened to a young woman in Macomb, Oklahoma, in September 2023, she said, would follow her for the rest of her career.
"This case will stay with me forever. And it will be one that I always remember through my whole life … Because of how cruel it was."
Black's colleagues at the sheriff's office describe her as a formidable presence — a woman with long hair who, by their account, outguns and outworks most of the men on the range and in the field. Her specialty is locating missing persons, whether they are alive or dead. She has pulled people from beneath leaf litter, from the branches of trees, from abandoned structures and outbuildings. No terrain seems beyond her reach.
Working alongside Black on many of these searches is Deputy Haven, a trained therapy dog. For children and grieving family members caught in the orbit of tragedy, Haven offers a quiet, steady comfort — a living presence that softens the worst edges of an unbearable situation. In the months following the Meave investigation, Black herself would come to rely on that same comfort.
The Last Morning
For Andria Meave, the older sister of the missing woman, Friday, September 15, 2023, started the way it always did: a 7 a.m. phone call from Makayla. The two sisters spoke briefly, exchanged pleasantries, and said goodbye. Andria would later say she wished she had known that was the final conversation.
"The last thing we said to each other, was 'I love you.' … I'm grateful for that. At least I said, 'I love you.'"
The following morning, Saturday the 16th, the phone rang at roughly the same hour. But the voice on the other end was not Makayla's. It was her husband, Frank Byers, in a state of near-total distress.
"He's hysterical, crying, screaming, can barely understand what he's saying. And he says, Makayla didn't come home last night."
Byers told his sister-in-law that Makayla had gone out on a date the previous Friday evening with a bald man driving a white truck. They had left the property, and she never returned.
A Divorce in Progress
At the time of the disappearance, Makayla and Frank Byers were in the process of dissolving their marriage. They remained on the same ten-acre property in Macomb, a small community in Pottawatomie County, but occupied separate dwellings. Andria's initial reaction was not alarm but a kind of resigned amusement.
"My first thought is she's single. … I hope she had fun."
That mood eroded quickly. Repeated calls to Makayla's phone went unanswered, landing in voicemail. By noon, Andria was uneasy. By one o'clock, she was frightened. Their mother, Barbara Harper, shared the growing dread. Makayla had been scheduled to help at the family restaurant that afternoon — a routine obligation she had never missed without explanation.
"And the more I prayed about it, the more I realized that something serious had happened."
The 911 Call and the First Response
Frank Byers contacted the Pottawatomie County Sheriff's Office that Saturday afternoon to report his wife missing. In the recorded 911 call, he stated that Makayla had left the property at approximately 5:30 to 5:40 p.m. on Friday and that the last anyone had heard from her was at 8:00 p.m.
"… my wife's been missing since late last night … she left … at 5:30ish, roughly 5:40, and the last time that anyone has heard from her has been at 8:00 p.m."
Deputy Dustin Richardson, the officer on duty, decided he needed to see the scene firsthand. He arrived in Macomb around 4 p.m., body camera running, having already received preliminary details by phone.
"… he'd given me the information over the phone, but I just wanted to see where she was coming from and — and see more of the details."
Byers walked the deputy through the last Facebook message he claimed Makayla had sent after departing — a brief note assuring him she was "fine" and telling him to "back off." He then repeated the account of the bald man in the white truck, offering a physical description: roughly six feet one inch tall, completely bald, bearded, and perhaps two hundred pounds.
Richardson asked to inspect the small, shed-like structure where Makayla had been temporarily residing. Byers confirmed it was locked and that he did not possess a key. During the walk, Byers made an unsolicited remark about their relationship.
"… we have an open marriage where — well, that's — that's a brand-new thing I don't like it, but um, I agreed upon it cause I'm trying to fix our marriage …"
What Followed
The investigation that unfolded from that Saturday afternoon in Macomb would consume weeks of search effort, forensic examination, and community grief. For Lieutenant Black, it became the defining assignment of her career — not because of the scale of the search, but because of the manner in which the victim was treated. In a county where missing-persons cases are measured in hours or days, the Meave matter stretched into something far darker, and the tracker who walked those fields carried the weight of it long after the case closed.
The case underscored a reality familiar to rural law enforcement across Oklahoma and the broader Midwest: when a young woman vanishes from a small, interconnected community, every phone call, every missed shift, every unanswered text becomes a thread in a tapestry that investigators must reconstruct before the window narrows. The Pottawatomie County Sheriff's Office, a small department serving a sparsely populated stretch of central Oklahoma, was stretched to its limits by the scope of the search and the questions it raised.
For Andria Meave, the unanswered phone calls of that Saturday afternoon remain the defining moment — the point at which a sister's casual hope that her sibling was simply having fun collapsed into the certainty that something terrible had already been done. The words she chose to say at 7 a.m. on Friday, "I love you," became, in her telling, both a small mercy and an unbearable reminder.
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