Jimmy Don Robinson was 21 years old when he vanished from Elmore City, Oklahoma, after telling his family he planned to drop off an unidentified man who had been waiting in his car while Robinson went inside. Fifty years later, investigators still haven’t found Robinson; the Toyota Celica he was driving was found abandoned on Shields Boulevard in Oklahoma City a few weeks later.
Robinson stopped by his parents’ Elmore City home around midnight on October 1, 1976, to do a load of laundry, according to The Charley Project. He told his mother that the unidentified man had waited in his car while Robinson went inside and that he planned to drop him off afterward; Robinson said he would be back in about 30 minutes. He asked her to move his laundry into the dryer so he’d have clean clothes for work the next day. He never returned. As reported by News 9, Robinson’s sister, Lois Lynn, who was 17 at the time, says her family’s hearts remain broken.
Robinson had been driving a dark green and white 1974 Toyota Celica loaned to him by the Del City dealership where he had recently started working as a salesperson. Per The Charley Project, the car was found abandoned weeks later on Shields Boulevard in Oklahoma City — but Robinson himself was never located. He was the oldest of six children, had served in the U.S. Army for about a year after joining in 1974, and was living in a rented room in Moore while working in Del City at the time he disappeared.
Decades of Dead Ends
Garvin County Sheriff Jim Mullett has kept Robinson’s case file close over the years, personally reviewing decades of reports, witness statements and evidence, News 9’s report notes. Investigators have searched ponds, lakes and areas around Moore following tips over the years, but those search efforts have yielded no results. Mullett has said he may have missed something in his long review of the file, and acknowledged he holds personal theories about what may have happened — though he has stressed those theories aren’t backed by facts or evidence…