‘It’s not too late’: Mother urges tips, answers in son’s disappearance
By Brooke Butler
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STATESBORO, Georgia (WJCL) — Thirteen years after a Statesboro man vanished without a trace, his family and investigators are once again pleading for answers.
Julius Owens disappeared in early November 2012, leaving behind a mother, siblings and two young daughters who have grown up without knowing what happened to him.
“For a mother to not have an answer is one of the hardest things in the world,” said his mother, Vera Owens.
Owens vividly remembers the day her son disappeared. She was in class when she had a bad gut feeling.
“On this day, it was cold. It was wet. It was dreary, but Julius just stayed on my mind. I couldn’t focus on the test or anything, I just had this motherly gut feeling that something was wrong,” she said.
When she didn’t hear from Julius, she contacted police.
“She talked to him every day,” said Statesboro Police Capt. Jared Akins. “She knew him as somebody that would communicate with her pretty much every day and she went for close to a 24-hour period and just didn’t see him.”
Soon after Owens disappeared, someone found his phone at an apartment complex he had no known ties to.
“Detectives responded to that area and found not only the phone, but found Mr. Owens’ vehicle,” Akins said. “There was obvious signs of some sort of violence that had occurred within the actual vehicle itself.”
That discovery made investigators fear the worst.
“Obviously, we’re getting a bad feeling about the fact that he may not simply have gone off and be missing of his own volition,” Akins said.
Detectives later obtained a search warrant for Owens’ phone. SPD said the last known signal placed him in a neighborhood off Pulaski Highway in unincorporated Bulloch County. Police conducted multiple searches in the area.
“There’s an awful lot of wooded terrain, some things which would make it pretty easy to conceal somebody in that area,” Akins said. “None of those searches turned up any remains of Mr. Owens.”
For Owens and her family, the pain of not knowing has never faded.
“[His daughters] grew up in life without their father in their life. They could not say, ‘My daddy was shot,’ or, ‘He was in an accident,’ they weren’t able to say that,” Vera Owens said.
One of those daughters said in a statement, “I didn’t get to grow up with him the way I wish I could have, but I carry him with me in everything I do. I never got enough time with my dad, but the little time I had meant everything.”
The lack of closure for Owens’ loved ones is why Vera and detectives hope someone with information will finally come forward.
“It’s not too late, because Julius is still out there and we still do not have an answer, and there’s a case that still needs to be solved,” Owens said. “So it’s not too late to speak up.”
Anyone with information about the disappearance of Julius Owens is asked to contact the Statesboro Police Department at 912-764-9911.
Police say even the smallest tip, something heard through the grapevine, could be the key to bringing his family long-awaited answers.
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