Pittsburg County Sheriff's Office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations are asking for leads in a double homicide from August 2016.
Emily Morgan and Totinika Elix were shot and killed in the driveway of an abandoned home. The house sits just off Highway 270 in Bache, Oklahoma, which is just outside of McAlester.
Around 11:30 a.m. in the morning on Aug. 26 2016, the owner of the home noticed a car in the driveway with two people inside. The temperature was in the mid 80s, however, the windows were up and the car was not running.
The owner believed the two inside were asleep. He called police to have them removed from his property.
Minutes later, he approached the passenger side of the car and noticed blood inside.
When police arrived they searched the house for a possible killer. No sign of a killer and no murder weapon was located in the house or in the car.
The victims were identified as Emily Morgan and Totinika Elix.
Emily Morgan was a 23-year-old mother to one son. She was a competitive athlete, winning most valuable player in softball several times. Her mother described her as someone who never settled for second best.
"She had a teacher in the second grade that called me in to have a meeting with me and her to try to tell her it's okay to make a B, because she was so upset that she had made a B," Kim Merryman said.
Emily was also an aspiring model and wanted every woman around her to feel special.
"Oh, she loved to make people pretty," Merryman said.
Totinika Elix was a mother to a son and a daughter. At 24 years old, she was living with her children's father who was her high school sweetheart and enrolled in nursing school.
Totinika's mother remembers her daughter being the class clown.
"She was a goofy kid," Twanna Brown said. "She kept everybody laughing."
Totinika was the second child in a family of nine. Brown says Totinika was a homebody, mostly staying home with her children. She met Emily five months before their murders.
Investigators have little leads in the murders, but know the women were last scene at a McDonald's six miles away, around 11:30 p.m. the night before.
That is the last time they were known to have been alive.
There were no indications it was a crime of opportunity.
"I definitely don’t think It was a random deal," Pittsburg County Sheriff Chris Morris said. "Someone had to know the area, know this house, know that it’s been vacant for years."
He also believes the killer may have known at least one of the victims.
"I don’t think this was random at all," Morris said. "You know, I think it was an intended killing, and they came here specifically for that reason."
There have been few leads in the case, and no person of interest or suspect has been officially named. It is not known if any DNA was recovered from inside the car.
One mother is left behind with a burning question.
"Why? Why did you have to take their lives? I mean, was the matter that serious where you had to take their life?" Brown said.
The other mother has found a way to keep her daughter's presence alive.
“We can take this horrible mess and make it into a message, and Emily’s spirit gets to live on then," Merryman said.
The Oklahoma Bureau of Investigations is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case. If you have any information, you are asked to call 1-800-522-8017.
Watch Vincent Hill's report "Forgotten Faces" at 10 p.m. on 2 Works for You.
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