On a late summer evening in 1989, seventeen-year-old Norman Ladner, a male, set out to go hunting on his family's sprawling 122-acre farm near Picayune in Pearl River County, Mississippi, a place he knew intimately. His failure to return by his usual time of 7:30 p.m. prompted a search by his concerned father. The search ended in heartbreak when Norman Sr.
discovered his son's lifeless body on the ground, cold to the touch, with a single gunshot wound to his head.
Initially, the Pearl River County Sheriff's Department, led by Sheriff Lorance Lumpkin, and the coroner, Johnny Stafford, leaned towards the theory of an accidental shooting. The coroner initially told Norman's father he was 90% sure the death was an accident. However, the official ruling that followed was a shocking turn for the family: Norman's death was declared a suicide. The finding was based on the close-contact nature of the wound to his right temple. Sheriff Lumpkin suggested that the teen had gone to a familiar place to take his own life.
The Ladner family vehemently rejected the suicide ruling, citing Norman's happy and outgoing nature. Their grief was compounded by what they saw as a flawed and incomplete investigation. They pointed out that Norman's wallet, containing $140, was missing. An autopsy also revealed a one-and-a-quarter-inch cut on the crown of his head, which the family felt was inconsistent with a self-inflicted gunshot. Authorities suggested the cut could have been caused by a bloody tree root found at the scene, a theory the Ladners found implausible.
Driven by a conviction that their son was murdered, Norman's parents launched their own investigation. Sifting through the dirt where their son's head had rested, they found a bullet. They claimed this bullet was longer than the type of ammunition used by Norman's gun and that it had what appeared to be dried blood and a hair on it. When they presented this to Sheriff Lumpkin, he was dismissive, stating there was no way to prove it was the fatal bullet. The family also contended that the authorities never fingerprinted Norman's gun or made a serious effort to find the bullet that killed him. Their search of the area also uncovered a strange, homemade electronic device, which a former DEA agent later suggested could be a signaling device used by drug smugglers to coordinate air drops. This discovery fueled their theory that Norman may have stumbled upon a drug deal and was killed as a result. Despite the family's efforts and the troubling questions they raised, the official ruling of suicide was never changed, and the case remains closed with no arrests ever made or suspects officially named.
