Do you know what happened to Jose? In the biting cold of a January night in 1997, a life was tragically cut short in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jose Gonzales, a 38-year-old man, was in the small camper he called home with his sixteen-year-old son. The camper was situated beside a mobile home they were in the process of renovating. It was a bitterly cold evening with deep snow still falling when their lives were violently interrupted.
Two masked intruders, described as one Black and one white male, burst into their landlords' nearby
home first. They brutally attacked the landlord, demanding money and threatening his wife, holding a pistol to her head. After stealing the landlord’s pickup truck, the assailants made their way to the camper where Gonzales and his son were. They stormed in, with Gonzales on the bottom bunk and his son on the top. The men demanded money from Gonzales, who tragically spoke no English and could not understand their demands. In a senseless act of violence, one of the intruders shot Gonzales multiple times, killing him in front of his teenage son. The robbers then took his wallet, which contained only a few dollars, and fled.
For more than two decades, the murder of Jose Gonzales has remained unsolved, a cold case that continues to haunt the Tulsa community. The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office, in conjunction with the Tulsa Police Cold Case Unit, has kept the investigation open. While they have a strong suspect in mind, they have not been able to gather the solid evidence needed to secure a prosecution. The case is a painful reminder of a brutal crime that left a family shattered and a community searching for answers and justice that have yet to come.
