Tracker Dakota Black | Full Episode | Forensic Files

♪♪ ♪♪ -At first glance, when you come to this area in Oklahoma, it is very beautiful.
It's serene. But we have missing people that are never found. There are homicides that are never solved.
There's lots of dark secrets that live here. My name is Dakota Black. I'm a tracker and detective
with the Pottawatomie County Sheriff's Office, and I was brought into the missing persons case for Makayla Meave.
And as soon as we arrived on scene, we started tracking the area and trying to locate her.
[ Dog barks in distance ] We had multiple deputies and detectives in the woods looking for her.
We were searching every place that we could potentially think of to try to locate Makayla.
[ Dog barks ] -I was not looking for an individual that was breathing. I was looking for my daughter's body
and I don't know why. -Sometimes it's hard to not take cases personal. They tug at your heartstrings
and this one was one of those. -What was it about this woman that fueled you this way?
-Just who she was. -My sister Makayla is the strongest person I know, has the biggest heart, is the most caring.
Wants to take care of everyone and put everyone before herself. -I love you. -I love you most.
-I love you more. -Her main goal in life was to be around children, to help children, especially ones in need.
-Everybody that knew Makayla had nothing but love for her. We had a huge response from our community.
Everybody really wanted her found. -I don't even know. -We just went out there looking for her.
Didn't sleep for days, didn't eat for days. It was raining, cold -- we were just out there for days.
-Was there a part of you that say, "There's a chance we may not find her?" -Yes.
It seemed day after day, the chances were getting more slim of finding her alive.
[ Police radio chatter ] -I just knew that she was gone. -I can't imagine how scared she was.
It's just sad. Sad that it ended the way it did. It didn't have to end this way.
I was driven and I was not going to go home. I was not going to stop until this case was solved.
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The guys at the sheriff's office call her a cool dude with long hair
because they say she's meaner than any of them... on the gun range and in the field.
-That fence that's hanging, I had to go underneath that into the water. -Her name is Lieutenant Dakota Black.
She's a trained tracker and detective with the Pottawatomie County Sheriff's Office
in Shawnee, Oklahoma. -I go out to scenes when there's manhunts or trying to locate individuals.
-Her specialty is finding the missing, whether alive or dead. -I have found them underneath piles of leaves and trees,
in abandoned homes, sheds. I've found them pretty much in any area you can think of.
-Often by her side, her partner Deputy Haven, a trained therapy dog. For kids and other family members
caught in the crossfire of tragedy, Haven provides comfort and consolation -- a consoling presence she herself would rely on
in the coming months, as she embarked on one of the most heart wrenching cases of her career.
-This case will stay with me forever, and it will be one that I always remember through my whole life
because of how cruel it was. -The last thing we said to each other... was, "I love you."
-Friday, September 15th, 2023 began like most days for Andria Meave with a 7 a.m. phone call from her best friend
and younger sister, Makayla. -I wish I would have known, I would have said so much more.
I'm grateful for that. At least I said, "I love you." -The next morning, Saturday the 16th,
the phone rang as usual around 7 a.m. only this time, it wasn't Makayla. It was Makayla's husband, Frank Byers.
-He's hysterical, crying, screaming. I can barely understand what he's saying and he says, "Makayla didn't come home last night."
He ended up telling me that Makayla went on a date the Friday night before with a bald man in a white truck.
"They left, and she never came home last night." -At the time, Makayla and Frank
were headed for divorce, says Andria. They were still living on the same ten-acre property
in Macomb, Oklahoma, but in separate homes. So at first, Andria wasn't worried. -My first thought is, "She's single.
I hope she had fun." -But Andria's mood began to shift when her many calls to Makayla went to voicemail.
-By noon, I was worried. 1:00 I was really worried. -Their mother, Barbara Harper, was also anxious.
Makayla was supposed to help out at the family restaurant that afternoon, but she didn't show and hadn't called.
Unheard of for Makayla. -And the more I prayed about it, the more I realized that something serious had happened.
-Frank also reported Makayla missing to the Pottawatomie County Sheriff's Office that afternoon.
The deputy on duty, Dustin Richardson, felt he needed to put eyes on the ground.
He got to Macomb around 4 p.m., his body cam rolling. -He'd given me the information over the phone,
but I just wanted to see where she was coming from and -- and see more of the details.
-Frank made a point of showing the deputy the last Facebook message he said Makayla sent him after she left,
assuring him she was, quote, "fine" and to "back off." -Then he told him the story about Makayla driving off
with a bald man in a white truck. Deputy Richardson then asked if he could see the house
where Makayla was temporarily living. But the shed-like home was locked, and Frank said he didn't have a key,
but he did have something to say about their relationship. At that point, the deputy decided to take a quick drive
to the school where Makayla worked as a teacher's aide. Maybe she had gone there.
[ Phone rings ] He called his son, also a deputy, from the car. -The sensation was that there is nothing
about this story that is really true. -While the deputy was at the school, friends and family started showing up at the property,
including Makayla's mom, Barbara. -When I first got there, I didn't even speak to anyone.
I was on my hands and knees, crawling through brush out in the pasture. We've got to find where she's at.
-This is Deputy Richardson with his body camera rolling as he returned to the property late that afternoon.
Frank had smashed open the lock to Makayla's place with a hammer. -I looked, and I immediately saw empty shell casings
from what appeared to be .22 caliber. He told me that she sits in there and shoots out at animals,
the coyotes and stuff. -By then, more deputies had arrived. -I had asked him where she kept that gun
and he said it was in his house. I had him walk me to his house, and he walked inside and he pointed at it.
I had pulled it from where it was in there... ...and put it in my vehicle. -The gun, according to the deputy,
appeared to have been recently fired. -I made phone calls to, um -- get our criminal investigation team out there
because I just -- it was off. There was something that needed to be looked into more.
-Investigators ushered family and friends off the property and blocked the driveway.
-I remember walking back to my car and just screaming at God, asking him, "Why?"
♪♪ [ Sobs ] "Why did you do this, let this happen?" "Just take me. Take me and let us find her and just take me."
-The missing persons investigation was now a possible criminal investigation... and that's when the call went out
to lead Detective Lieutenant Dakota Black. -We definitely needed to figure out what was going on.
♪♪ ♪♪ -As soon as Lieutenant Dakota Black got the call that Makayla Meave was missing,
she jumped in her vehicle and sped to Macomb. What was your immediate mission? -To locate Makayla. We -- We needed to locate her.
We didn't know where she was. -It was 1366? -Yeah. -Detective Black and her partner on the case,
Detective Marcus May, now the undersheriff, put out a BOLO alert -- Be On the Lookout.
-It was, "Be on the lookout for a white male with a beard, bald head, driving a white truck."
We wanted all of the local law enforcement and surrounding agencies aware that we do have a situation developing over here.
-The tips from this rural area where everyone seems to know everybody, came pouring in.
-Every white pickup truck with tinted windows was getting called into the sheriff's office.
-None of the sightings panned out, but the search took on a life of its own. -Fliers were posted everywhere.
Social media ads were everywhere. -Makayla Meave was beloved by everybody. They were demanding every resource possible
to go find Makayla. -And Dakota, this was a woman with enormous heart, right? -Absolutely.
She loved her family. She loved her friends. She loved children. -Makayla fell in love with children
when she herself was still a child. Her mom, Barbara, ran a daycare. -We weren't just a daycare, we were the family.
And she loved those kids, especially the babies. -Sadly, Makayla was unable to have children of her own,
but that didn't stop her. In her 20s, Makayla fostered and would eventually adopt these two kids,
a brother and sister. -She dropped what she was doing, went to -- and took classes, got certified to make sure
that she could give those kids a home. She did. -Around that time, an old high school classmate
named Frank Byers contacted her out of the blue through Facebook. Frank, who was divorced,
had primary custody of four young daughters. -Frank was telling her a story that the current girlfriend
he was living with was abusing his four daughters. So my sister took him and all four girls in
and just started basically taking care of them. -She felt like the kids needed her and she sure needed them.
Probably the happiest I'd seen her in a long time, with those girls. -Frank and Makayla got married in 2022.
They built their lives together in Macomb, population 24. -It's just country. It's 100% country.
The kids are 100% country. -Makayla was going to college to get her teaching degree
while working at the local elementary school. -And she would stand up for the kids and --
and if she saw a child that was dirty or wasn't taken care of, she would take it to the principal
and, you know, bring awareness to it. -I think that was her biggest thing in life,
was to help little innocent kids that needed adult's help. She always felt responsible to do that.
-County wide, dozens of people turned out in the cold and pouring rain to slog through mud
and tick-infested woods in search of their beloved teacher. But one person at the heart of this mystery
conspicuously appeared not to search -- Makayla's husband, Frank Byers. -He never participated in a single search.
He never volunteered to go out with any of the search parties, to go out and try to find Makayla.
-It wasn't like, "Oh my God, my wife is missing." He never seemed like, concerned about that,
he seemed more concerned about himself. -What were you noticing about Frank Byers?
-The lack of any human emotion. I mean, he did not seem scared, he just wanted to know what we knew.
He just -- he didn't seem human at all. -Investigators were already zeroing in on Frank.
-We strongly suspected Frank. -Three days after Makayla was reported missing, Frank Byers agreed to be questioned by Detective Black
at the sheriff's office. The interview was audio only. The detective tried to win his trust
by playing the good cop. She pressed him, but not enough to make him stop talking.
After answering questions for 2.5 hours, Detective Black let him go home. The search for Makayla continued.
Barbara remembers crawling through brush wearing snake protectors when she says she had a premonition.
-I heard Makayla tell me, "Mama, I'm in a tinhorn." I said, "Oh my God, she just told me she's in a tinhorn."
[ Sniffles ] -Barbara frantically started looking for tinhorns, pipes or culverts used to divert water under roads,
but there was no sign of Makayla. Then came the call to 911, on day five, that would prove her mother's intuition was right.
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Insects chirping ] ♪♪ -The chatter of locusts permeated the air, an eerie sense of foreboding.
Makayla Meave had been missing for five days. -I got a phone call from my friend
and she said, "I need you to sit down." And she said, "They found someone and it's a female."
And I'm like, "Is she dead or alive?" -Earlier that day, a cousin and her friend
had been out searching about half a mile from Makayla's house when they were stopped in their tracks
by a strong, sickening odor. The friend followed the intense smell down a ditch to a tinhorn.
He saw something sticking out. It was a hand. ♪♪ It was the call Detective Dakota Black had been dreading.
-It was devastating to everybody. I mean, it was absolutely terrible. -Just as Barbara had imagined,
Makayla was in a large drainage pipe beneath the road. -She had been drug into the middle area
and she was wrapped in the carpet. She had one sock on her foot that had teddy bears on it,
and her shirt was actually pulled up over her face to cover it. I mean, it was hard. It was really hard.
So dark in there. -Detective Black wouldn't leave Makayla's side. The two women had been born one day apart in the same year,
but that wasn't their only bond. -I did feel a connection with Makayla. I have a history also.
I've been in bad relationships. It could have been me. [ Sniffles ] On more than one occasion, I just got lucky.
-While the detectives were working the scene, Makayla's family gathered just up the road.
-You could hear -- hear them crying up there, and they were trying to come down here where she was.
-But the crime scene was blocked off. -We can't let you through the tape. [ Police radio chatter ]
-I never once doubted that it was her. -I felt like I needed to see her... because she'd been out there for five days without me.
And I just needed to be with her, and they wouldn't let me. She needed me, but I wasn't there.
-Makayla's remains were placed in the coroner's van for the journey to the medical examiner's office.
-My mom and I both realized that it was probably her in there. That we would never be able to hold her and hug her again.
My mom started to chase the van. -I just followed it down the road just as fast as I could,
and somebody hollered at me and asked me what I was doing, and I said, "My baby is in that van."
-Detective Black was so angry she had to hold herself back. -I wanted to leave that night and go and arrest Frank,
but I knew it's better to move thoroughly than to act quick. -The two investigators had already begun building
a strong circumstantial case against Frank Byers. The bullet casings in her home.
His unlikely story that Makayla agreed to an open marriage... ...and left with a bald man in a white truck.
-When you asked Makayla's family about this open relationship, what'd they say? -Absolutely not.
They said there was absolutely no possible way that Makayla would have ever done that.
-Investigators learned from interviews and from Frank's own social media accounts
that he was the one who was cheating. -Frank Byers is the biggest cheater. He was cheating on her as soon as he moved in.
Every time he would go out of town, he was creating dating profiles. -Frank worked for an environmental cleanup company
cleaning up hazardous materials. He spent a lot of time on the road. -He would meet women at gas stations,
he would meet up with them at hotel rooms. He would text them while he was home with Makayla
and hide it from her. -He was communicating with females the day Makayla was murdered, and immediately afterwards.
-He was sending pictures to women the day of her funeral, asking, "How do I look in my tux?"
-Frank's cheating got so bad, Makayla moved out about three months before her murder.
-She packed a bag and she came and stayed with me for a week. I held her while she cried every night.
She felt like a failure. -[ Speaks indistinctly ] -But Makayla's love for the little girls
kept drawing her back, says Andria. -I love you. -I love you most. -I love you more. -I love you most.
-Makayla went back to the ten acre property, but not to Frank. She temporarily moved into that little structure behind his
to stay close to the girls. Frank tried to win her back, promising to change, but the cheating continued.
Detective Dakota Black would later discover this conversation in which Makayla told Frank she was done.
Makayla recorded it two days before her murder. Detective Black believes she recorded it
to expose Frank's infidelity. -That Friday, September 15th, Makayla returned from work to pick up her things
and leave for good. But Frank, it seemed, had other plans. Detectives would later recover these images captured
on a home security camera on his phone. Detective black believes he thought he had deleted them.
Where is Makayla in this picture? -This is Frank's home, and she's coming through the front door.
-Makayla stayed for 14 minutes. The detective believes they were arguing. -Here's Makayla again. She's leaving.
-This is the last picture of the series. Frank standing at the door of his home.
And what do you believe happened after this last photograph was taken? -I think this is when he exited his home
and went to her home and killed her. I think this is when he killed Makayla. Within minutes.
-Makayla was shot in the head. -Makayla had a gunshot wound right here in the front.
She had one on the left side, and then she had a graze wound on the same side. -The last image she may have seen on this earth
was her own husband holding a rifle, and then the shot fired. -Yes. ♪♪ ♪♪ -It started as a simmering anger...
...and grew into a raging fury. People wanted to know why Frank was still walking free.
-The most difficult part was knowing that we were accumulating evidence to Frank's guilt
and Makayla's murder, but we were unable to release that or share that with the public.
-We knew Frank was guilty. We knew Frank was not a good husband. We knew Frank was lying.
We knew lots of things, but we couldn't prove everything. And I wanted to prove everything to make sure he stayed in jail.
-Detective Black spent 18-hour-days at the office with her sidekick Haven, the therapy dog now there for her.
Give me a sense, emotionally, how tough this was for you. -It was tough mentally. I was drained.
I was mentally exhausted, I had lost weight, I was tired, but I was not going to go home until this case was solved.
-Frank used the time to defend himself on social media. He also appeared on local news.
-Even today I called her. I mean... [ Sniffles ] I know she's not here, but... It's just the fact that I have her number still
and her phone's still on somewheres. And, uh -- it just -- it would have been nice just to hear her voice.
-Many in the community tuned in to watch Frank Byers' interview, including Lieutenant Dakota Black.
Did it make you angry? -It did make me angry. It was sickening to see that a beautiful woman was gone from the world,
and that while he's on TV professing his innocence, he's still in communication with other women trying
to have intimate relationships with them. -Detective Black tracked down scores of these women.
Crystal Cantrell was Frank's girlfriend before he met Makayla. -He's very good at making you believe him.
And then he's kind of like a snake, once he gets you in there, he bites you. -Detective Black learned Frank wooed Crystal
the same way he wooed Makayla, with a false story that his daughters were being mistreated
by his current girlfriend. And like Makayla, Crystal had a soft heart. -I love kids.
You know, I have kids of my own, so I just felt really bad for them. -Shortly after they moved in together,
Crystal says Frank started to show his true colors. He isolated her from friends and family
and controlled her every move. They fought. One night, she woke up to see him looming over her,
clutching a pair of handcuffs. -I closed them so he couldn't use them on me, and then after that, he just got on my back and was choking me.
He had wrapped his arms around me and had his hand on my throat, and he just didn't let go.
-Crystal was able to get away, but was too afraid to report the incident to the police.
She left Frank for good, but says it could have been her in that ditch. -He would have killed me.
-If Frank ever harmed Makayla, she never told her mom and sister. Sometimes they saw bruises,
but Makayla always said they were just from roughhousing with the kids. [ Sighs ]
-I think if I think about it too much... is where I will go down a dark hole and not come out,
because I did see the bruises and I just chose to believe and not question. And maybe if I would have questioned,
it would come out differently. -Bit by bit, Detective Black and her team built a profile of a murderer.
-So this photo was taken at Walmart. -Using the date on a Walmart receipt found on Frank's property,
the detective was able to track down this security camera photo. What's in the cart?
-There is bleach, ammonia, and a mop. -And mop, ammonia, and bleach equals what in your mind as an investigator?
-Crime scene cleanup. -They were also able to match the carpet in the ditch... ...to one a neighbor had given
Frank and Makayla for their dogs. -Frank took the carpet that was given to him by the neighbor
and used that to roll Makayla's body in. -They believe Frank killed Makayla around 4 p.m.
and left her body in her home. He then picked up his girls after school and drove them around...
returning home about 8 p.m. That's when the detectives believe he started to move her body.
-The kids reported in interviews once they returned home that Frank was outside most of the night.
He wasn't in his bed. -Detective Black says there were fresh tire tracks leading
to Makayla's little house. -We believe that the tire tracks actually came from a vehicle backing up to load her body,
to take it to where she was located. -The detectives believe Frank drove Makayla's body
to the edge of the ditch, pulled her out, and then let her body topple the 12 to 15 feet to the creek bed.
They believe Frank then climbed down and dragged her into that pipe underneath the roadway.
Once Frank got rid of the body, he concocted a plan to cover up his crime. Remember he told the deputy
that Makayla had messaged him from her phone that evening, telling him, "back off."
But investigators would later find Makayla's phone in Frank's bedroom. Detective May confronted Frank in a second interview.
But investigators did have an explanation. Makayla had two phones, an iPhone and a Moto G phone.
Frank had both of them. -The Moto G phone was an old phone of Makayla's that she hadn't been using for quite some time.
-So you just push in that hole it pops the tray out. -Frank knew how to get into that old phone...
So there's the SIM card for those who don't know, that's what it looks like. ...so he switched the SIM card from her iPhone.
Why does he do that? -To gain full access to all of her accounts. That's how he was texting himself,
pretending to be Makayla. And in fact, it was him the entire time. -The evidence was mounting,
but they were still waiting on two key pieces of evidence they had sent to the forensic lab for testing.
-I needed a smoking gun that I knew was not going to let him out. I knew it was going to keep him there.
-What have you just unwrapped here? -This, uh -- what have here is is the projectile recovered from the two by four
inside Makayla's bedroom. -In addition to the shell casings found on the floor in Makayla's home,
they later found this bullet wrapped in what they believed was Makayla's hair embedded in the wall.
They hoped it would test positive for Makayla's DNA. And then there were these boots.
-So these are Frank's work boots. They were recovered on the night of the missing persons report
from his bedroom. -And what did you spot on these boots that was of interest? -So we had found a substance
that we believed could be blood. But he also works with lots of chemicals, so we were unsure if that would be something that got on there
while he was at work. -38 days after Makayla went missing, they finally got the results.
They weren't able to get a genetic confirmation on the hair, but the boots were a different story.
The substance on Frank's boots was blood. Makayla's blood. -As soon as we got that, we were like,
we're going right now. -You had your man. -We had our guy. Yes. [ Police siren wails ]
♪♪ ♪♪ -We were waiting for that arrest... so it moved fast after that. -It was close to midnight.
Flashing police lights lit up the darkness. 38 days after Makayla was reported missing,
Detective Black, Deputy Richardson, and a special ops team moved in to arrest Frank Byers.
-I got with the SWAT team, organized the takedown and went in and got him. -He thought he was smarter than everyone,
but he was outsmarted, right? -Yes. I think he was surprised. ♪♪ -Lieutenant Black finally had Frank in her grasp
and right where she wanted him in handcuffs, headed to jail. Detective May called Makayla's family with the news.
-That was a "Hallelujah" moment. That was "About time," moment. We couldn't get her back,
but we knew he wasn't walking free anymore. -Detective May says they were done with Frank's lies.
And they confronted him with the hard evidence they'd taken weeks to gather. Frank Byers was charged with first-degree murder.
The D.A. was seeking the death penalty, but the defense requested a deal to save his life.
15 months after Byers arrest, he agreed to plead guilty and serve life without parole.
Makayla's mom was bitterly disappointed. -I feel that the plea deal was a cop out.
The moment... the second that she took her last breath, he chose that. And he got to choose what he got for punishment, too.
And that's not okay. It's not okay. -The plea deal isn't the only thing upsetting Barbara.
She doesn't think Frank acted alone. You're absolutely convinced that Frank had somebody help him.
-I'll go to my grave believing that. -I think he had to have had an accomplice. I don't think that he could have moved her body
on his own at all. -Physically, he could not have done it. -No, I don't believe so.
-I think we all agree that it would absolutely be difficult to move her. But people are scared, they can do amazing things.
-What they're saying is not unreasonable. If the evidence is presented to us one day,
that -- that suggests that we will take it and we'll run with it to its fullest extent.
♪♪ -I come and I sit and I look at that place down there. I went down and hung all kinds of crosses and different things.
He didn't just take from us. He took from his own children someone that loved them,
that put them first. -It didn't have to end this way. -He could have let her leave.
But he didn't. -There's cold justice for Makayla. For Detective Dakota Black, tracker,
her painful work continues. -Makayla would want her life to mean something. -Barbara is starting Makayla's Purple Butterfly Foundation
to fight against domestic violence. -That was her goal. Her mission in life was when you see someone in need, help them.
When I think of Makayla, I think of sunflowers. I think of joy. -She would love that, though.
You know she would, with all those sunflowers. I sure miss her smile. Her laugh, oh, that laugh was something else.
-She was my best friend. I strived for her to be proud of me because I looked up to her
even though she was the little sister. I still lay in bed and talk to her like she's still right there.
I feel like she's watching over us every day. ♪♪ ♪♪

A detective hunts for answers when a woman goes missing. For Tracker Black it's personal. "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant reports. Watch more full episodes of "48 Hours" on Pluto TV.

True crime. Real justice. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Detective Dakota Black investigates the tragic case of Makayla Meave, leading to her husband's arrest for murder.

Key points

The Search for Makayla Meave. Detective Dakota Black leads the search for missing teacher Makayla Meave, uncovering dark secrets.
Frank Byers' Alarming Behavior. Makayla's husband, Frank, shows a lack of concern during the search for his missing wife.
The Evidence Against Frank. Detectives build a circumstantial case against Frank Byers, revealing troubling details about his behavior.
A Mother's Premonition. Barbara Harper experiences a chilling premonition about her missing daughter, Makayla.
The Devastating Discovery. After days of searching, a tragic discovery is made in a drainage pipe.
Frank's True Colors. Crystal reveals Frank's controlling behavior after moving in together.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It didn't have to end this way.

Dakota Black laments the tragic outcome of the case.

2:40WatchNov 21, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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