On a January afternoon in 2019, a mother of three called her own mother just to say goodbye. Within the hour, she was running through the East Texas woods, telling a 911 dispatcher she believed someone was chasing her. Her phone died mid-call, and for more than three years, no one knew what had happened to her. When answers finally came, they only deepened the mystery.
A Chilling Final Phone Call
On the afternoon of Thursday, January 10, 2019, 32-year-old Lauren Colvin Thompson called her mother, Torie Colvin. Right away, something felt wrong. Lauren asked to speak to her children, but they weren’t home. She sounded distressed, apologizing to her mother for some of the choices she’d made in the past, and asked her to pass along a message to her father that she loved him.
As Torie tried to calm her daughter down, she could hear a man’s voice in the background, seemingly arguing with Lauren — telling her, according to Torie, that she didn’t need to be calling her children right then. Lauren then made a comment that has haunted her family ever since: she told her mother that if she managed to get out of the situation she was in, she was never going to use drugs again. When Torie, unsure exactly what her daughter meant, urged her to call the police if she felt she was in danger, Lauren changed the subject and asked her mother again to tell her kids she loved them. The call ended around 2:00 p.m.
It was the last time Torie ever heard her daughter’s voice.
“Someone Is Chasing Me”
Roughly 20 minutes later, at 2:24 p.m., a Panola County, Texas, 911 dispatcher received a call from a woman who identified herself as Lauren Colvin Thompson. According to then-Sheriff Kevin Lake, Lauren sounded disoriented and confused, telling the dispatcher she had left her vehicle and was in a wooded area, and that she believed someone was chasing her — some accounts of the case indicate she also said she believed she was being shot at.
The call lasted around 21 to 22 minutes. Dispatchers could hear background noise consistent with Lauren running, and used cell phone tower pings to narrow down her general location. Officers were able to locate her vehicle within minutes: a car stuck in a muddy ditch along Farm-to-Market Road 1794, just west of the small Rock Hill community. The call is believed to have ended only because Lauren’s phone battery died — not because she hung up or was found.
While the 911 operator still had Lauren on the line, investigators were separately able to reach people she’d reportedly spent part of the day with. One person told authorities they had been fishing with Lauren in the area near the Sabine River earlier that day. According to that account, a male companion had been in the car with Lauren when it went off the road and got stuck; he told her he was going to walk to get another vehicle to help pull her out, and it was around that point that Lauren ran off into the woods. That man has never been publicly named, and it remains unclear whether he was the same man Torie Colvin heard arguing with her daughter on the earlier phone call.
A Massive Search Comes Up Empty
Search efforts began that same afternoon and continued through the night, with off-road vehicles and canine units combing the area. In the following days, the search expanded significantly — officials would eventually report covering roughly 2,000 acres on foot and searching approximately 9,000 acres of heavily wooded terrain and open fields using drones and helicopters. A tracking-dog and heat-detecting drone search also swept the area in the weeks that followed.
The next morning, three hours away in Fort Worth, Lauren’s mother woke up to missed calls from the sheriff’s office. When she and her husband called back, deputies asked if they had heard from Lauren — and explained that a 911 call had come in the day before, and that Lauren was now missing.
During the search, investigators found a shoe that was initially unclear in origin but was later confirmed to belong to Lauren. Because the area was so densely wooded, no footprints were found around it. Despite the scale of the effort, searchers found no further trace of her. At the time, authorities said they had no specific reason to believe foul play was involved — but also said no one, including the man who had been with her earlier that day, had been ruled out.
Years Without Answers
Lauren’s case drew national attention in the months that followed, including coverage on Dateline NBC’s “Missing in America” series. Her family offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to her safe return and later established a dedicated tip line to gather any leads the public might have. For years, they held onto hope that she might still be found alive, describing how much her three children needed her home.
The case remained unsolved and largely unchanged for more than three years. No new significant leads were publicly reported, and Lauren Colvin Thompson’s file grew colder with each passing anniversary.
Remains Found in 2022
In July 2022, a work crew in a wooded part of Panola County came across skeletal remains. Investigators believed the remains had been there for some time, but at first there was little else to go on. Texas Rangers and forensic anthropologists from the University of North Texas’s Center for Human Identification assisted with the case, using multiple dental comparisons to work toward an identification.
On December 13, 2022 — nearly four years after Lauren vanished — Panola County Sheriff Cutter Clinton announced at a press conference that the remains had been positively identified as those of Lauren Elizabeth Thompson. Authorities said the discovery didn’t reveal anything to suggest that a crime had taken place, though they stressed that they were continuing to explore every possible avenue. A specific cause of death has never been publicly released; officials have described it as still pending or undetermined.
Torie Colvin shared the news of the identification on Facebook, thanking those who had supported the family through years of prayer and searching, while noting that the cause of her daughter’s death was still unknown.
A Family Still Searching for the Truth
Even with Lauren’s remains recovered, her family has continued pushing for real answers about what happened to her in the hours before she died. Her father, Torie’s husband, has spoken publicly about the toll the unresolved case has taken on the family — particularly around the holidays, when Lauren’s children, now old enough to ask questions, look for answers no one has been able to give them.
The family’s attorney has petitioned the Texas Attorney General’s office to release the original 911 recording and additional case documents, in hopes that renewed public attention and a fresh set of eyes might reveal something investigators may have missed. As of the most recent public updates, that recording remains sealed as part of the ongoing investigation, and the Panola County Sheriff’s Office has said there have been no significant new developments in the case.
What We Still Don’t Know
More than six years after Lauren Colvin Thompson placed two calls — one heartbreakingly final goodbye to her mother, and one desperate call for help from the woods — many of the most important questions remain unanswered. Who was the man arguing with her in the background of that first call? Was it the same man who was reportedly with her at the river earlier that day? What was she referring to when she vowed to give up drugs if she made it out safely? And what, in the end, actually happened to her in those woods?
Lauren’s family has said they aren’t giving up on getting those answers, even years after bringing her home for burial. For now, her case remains a painful reminder that finding someone doesn’t always mean finding the truth.
If you have any information regarding the case of Lauren Colvin Thompson, please contact the Panola County Sheriff’s Office at (903) 693-0333.