Rylee James Styler

In February 2022, 21-year-old Rylee James Styler traveled to Leavenworth, Kansas, to spend the weekend with friends. Rylee moved around often, splitting his time between Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, so when his mom, Teri, didn’t hear from him for a few days, it wasn’t immediately alarming. Rylee always resurfaced, but this time, he didn’t.

Shortly before communication stopped, Rylee sent his best friend a scene from the movie Juice, followed by a cryptic message suggesting something was wrong. He also missed a call from Rylee that night and planned to call him back the next day, but never got the chance.

Then, police contacted Teri and said they were trying to locate Rylee because of a car that had turned up in the county. They assured her that Rylee wasn’t in trouble and that they just needed to speak with him. But when Teri tried to contact Rylee to let him know the police were looking for him, her message never went through.

Rylee’s family tried to understand what was happening while investigators revealed very little. What eventually emerged was far more complicated than that initial phone call suggested: a burned vehicle, a suspected murder scene, conflicting accounts of what happened inside a Leavenworth house, and a sprawling racketeering investigation involving the last known people to see Rylee.

Years of arrests, trials, plea agreements, and prison sentences followed. Yet the legal process would prove that resolving one part of a case doesn’t necessarily answer the question a family has been asking from the beginning: What happened to Rylee James Styler, and why has that answer remained so difficult to find?

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