Tracker Dakota Black | Post Mortem | Forensic Files

Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host, [music] Ann Marie Green, and today we're discussing Michaela Mayavi, who was
first reported missing by her husband, Frank Buyers, in 2023. Now, he told police that his wife had gone out on a
date with another man, saying that they had an open marriage, but then she never
returned from that date. An extensive search was launched and Lieutenant Dakota Black, a tracker and detective
with the Podawani County Sheriff's Office was brought in on this case. So, joining me now is 48 hours correspondent
Peter Vans who reported on this episode. Peter, it's always great to see you. >> Hi, Anarie. Great to be with you again.
And of course, we want to remind uh the viewers and listeners, if you haven't listened to uh this episode of 48 hours,
you can find it in your podcast feed, the full audio version of it. So, go take a listen, then come on back for
this conversation cuz we got questions. Um and Peter has the answers. So, Peter,
Michaela and Frank Buyers, they're living in a small rural town of Mcome, Oklahoma. Uh, Lieutenant Dakota Black
described the area as beautiful and serene, and it certainly looks that way, but also said there are a lot of dark
secrets that live there, too. What did she mean by that? >> Well, it's hard to believe, but Oklahoma
has the highest rate of domestic violence of any state in the country. And Dakota Black told us she in her own
life has experienced violence in a relationship. And while Mcome only has a population of less than 30, and keep in
mind Michaela, Frank, and the girls, they make up 20% of the population of Mcome, uh, it's near an intersection of
multiple interstate highways. And Dakota Black said criminals moving through the
area are known to dump victims bodies there. And there are people living in Podawatami County in poverty. there.
Some are off the grid with no electricity or or running water, toilets, or even a roof over their head.
There are some drug problems and uh it's an open carry state. A lot of people have firearms. And Lieutenant Black said
they have missing people that are never found, homicides that are never solved. And I do want to say that while the
sheriff's office there is small, they serve this large rural county with distinction and professionalism and they
were outstanding in their efforts to find Michaela. >> That's the impression that I got just
from watching the hour. Like they just seem so on point and so um unbiased and completely focused on like where the
evidence is driving them. >> That's right. >> So let's talk a little bit about Michaela and Frank's relationship. um
they were old high school classmates. They did not date in high school, but then many years later, out of the blue,
Frank contacts her on Facebook and they start a relationship. Um they are married in 2022 and it's a large blended
family because Michaela, she already has two kids. Frank has four of his own daughters. But was Michaela's family
worried about the relationship that she had with Frank? Because there must have been red flags.
>> Yeah. Her sister Andrea said that at the beginning of this relationship, Frank
was a romantic person. One time he left rose petals in the bathtub, but that didn't last long. According to the
family, Michaela couldn't have kids of her own, but she had such a maternal gene. and her family believes that these
four kids that Frank had were a really draw for her more than Frank himself. Um, detectives believe that Frank used
those young girls, his four daughters, to lure Michaela in. He told her that they had been abused by his then
girlfriend. And investigators would later determine that that was all a lie and a tactic he used to convince other
women to be with him as well. You might say it was Frank's business model and it
worked. M what a way to describe it. >> And um her mother Barbara and her sister
Andrea say that they saw bruises on Michaela, but Michaela said they were just from roughousing with the kids and
the family believed her at the time. And looking back now, the family wished they
had questioned her more about those bruises. According to Barbara and Andrea, he was also a compulsive liar.
And Frank had this pattern of cheating, lying, and Michaela had left at least once. Let him know that's it. I'm not
going to deal with this anymore. But she came back. She always felt because of this devotion she had to those four
children that she couldn't leave them just in Frank's hands. Michaela's sister Andrea said that they were headed for
divorce and Michaela had temporarily moved to another structure on the property. But then on September 15th,
2023, Michaela returns home from work, intending to pick her things up and leave for good. But she was never seen
alive again. Frank then reports Michaela missing in the afternoon of September 16th, and the responding officer, Deputy
Dustin Richardson, went to the buyer's property to check it out. Typically, police will wait longer than just a few
hours for a missing person's report. But why did Richardson decide to investigate this one, you know,
relatively quickly? >> Yeah, investigator Richardson, his instincts right away told him this just
isn't adding up. He listened to Frank on the 911 call and also spoke to Frank on
the phone and he just had a hunch that something seemed off. And when he got there, Frank launched into his
explanation as if he had a story planned out in in Richardson's mind that the last time he saw Michaela, she was
leaving to go on a date with a bald man in a white truck. And Frank also claimed
that they had an open marriage. And he said that they agreed to this arrangement to try to fix their
marriage. >> And we hear on Deputy Richardson's uh body camera footage that he thought
Frank Buyers was squirly. You know, as a audience member, I kind of went through
like, what does that word mean to me when I hear somebody squirly? I think of them as kind of like a fast talker.
Someone's got an answer to everything, but nothing's adding up. >> Squirly is a great word. Uh, and it just
means you can't trust him. There's something about him that's just not right. >> And, uh, and that's what what he picked
up on right away. >> Right. So, he goes to the school where she works, where Michaela works as, um,
a teacher's aid. And then he goes back to the buyer's property and Frank at this point has smashed open the lock to
the structure where Michaela was living temporarily when she sort of like moved out of the first structure cuz she
doesn't want to be with him. Um, this is all starting to look kind of more and more suspicious to Richardson.
What is it that is bothering him? Well, Richardson asked Frank if he had a gun because they had discovered some
shell casings inside Michaela's shed where she lived. And Frank said yes, and he shows the gun to Richardson. Well,
Richardson noticed he was able through his training to tell that the gun had been recently fired. And Frank told him
that, well, these shell casings on the floor of Michaela's shed were from Michaela, get this, shooting at coyotes
on the property. He claimed she would sit inside her shed with the door open and and and fire at coyotes, which was
ridiculous to her family because she hated guns. >> And uh the shell casings were found that
they were going in a direction that showed that the shooter was not firing outside of her shed, but rather into the
shed, which told Richardson, "We may have a homicide scene here." >> Right. this guy's something's off about
what he's telling police. So, this missing person's investigation pretty quickly turns into a criminal
investigation. There's a massive search that's launched. And we are introduced to Lieutenant Dakota Black. She's
leading the charge. She is a detective, but she's also a tracker. What exactly is a tracker? Well, Dakota Black told us
that she is trained to look for signs that a normal detective might not see. Uh, she found people in all kinds of
places like trees and houses that didn't belong to them. And she's trained to use
her power of observation to look for the little clues like evidence that someone
had once been through an area, details that others might miss, helping to locate missing people, fugitives or
suspects. People always think of a tracker too from the old cowboy movies and saying, "Yes, someone was just here
45 minutes ago." True. She's not that precise, but she's close and she has a way about her that she notices things
that others don't. >> Well, listeners may also associate the term with a CBS show that we have called
Tracker starring uh Justin Hartley. He's a sort of a bit of a lone wolf, this character. Lone wolf wolf for hire. Um
but Lieutenant Dakota Black is not. He's an essential part of a team at the county sheriff's office, right, Peter?
>> Absolutely. Cops have always told me, you know, that they stay emotionally detached, sort of like a doctor treating
a patient, but Dakota Black keeps her heart right on her sleeve, and that extra caring, that devotion really works
for her. And during one interview with producer Liza Finley, Dakota Black teared up. She cried as she thought
about the horrors that Michaela went through and how in her own life she had been threatened. I had never seen this
level of emotion from a law enforcement detective ever in my career. And that passion pushed and pushed her to get
this case solved. >> And as I understand it, Dakota's whole team was kind of singing her praises.
>> Absolutely. Her colleagues, they have so much respect for her. Dakota Black is a
woman in her early 30s and she's working with a lot of male colleagues. Um, some
of whom uh she's in charge of. And she said, "You can ask all the guys. They call me a cool dude with long hair
because I'm meaner than any of them and they know to listen to me." And Dakota Black brings her own dog, Haven, to
serve as a comfort dog to victims and for herself. if they ever make a TV show about her. Here's a detective with a
comfort animal in her office. And we have Dakota Black talking about her dog, Haven.
>> Um, she works with victims of um, homicides. She also works with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault
and then as well as with children. And she works with a lot of victims every year. Her first year we had her, she
worked with over 300 victims. They can cry on her, they can love on her, they can hug her. Um sometimes she will lick
them, you know. Um but she just provides comfort for them and that's what [clears throat] her name represents,
which is a safe place. So that's what she does for our victims and she does a good job.
>> I was really struck by the professionalism and the humanity of this whole team in Podawatami County. Dustin
Richardson had been working at the sheriff's office for only four years at the time of Michaela's case. And because
of his great work, he was recently promoted to detective. And the under sheriff is Marcus May. He's a terrific
guy. And then the sheriff, Freeland Wood, who runs all of this, introduced himself at the shoot and said he was so
happy that 48 was covering this story. I'm telling you, the Podawatami County Sheriff's Office has a peer support
group to help police, first responders deal with the trauma that they experience on the job. and they told us,
"We see things that no one should have to see." And that weighs very heavy on them. [music] So, it's a tiny sheriff's
department with a big heart and a lot of very professional, seasoned investigators cuz they've got a lot on
their hands in this rural county. Welcome back. As search efforts were underway with dozens of people turning
out to try to find Michaela, there's one person who's absent. It's her husband, Frank Buyers. After Michaela had been
missing for 5 days, she was found in a large drainage pipe under a road and she is wrapped in a carpet. Investigators
quickly zero in on Frank Buyers as the primary suspect. Meanwhile, Frank continues to spin his narrative of being
the grieving husband and he actually goes on TV. So, I want to play a clip from a TV interview that that he did
with a local uh Fox affiliate, Fox 25. Just take a listen to this. >> Even today, I called her. I mean,
[snorts] I know she's not here, but it's just a fact that I have her number still and her phone still on somewhere
and uh it just it would have been nice just to hear her voice. You know, Peter, I was looking to see if I was seeing any
real tears coming out of those eyeballs of his because often, you know, often sometimes people make crying noises, but
they're not actually crying, right? Yeah. This is one heartless, uncaring, phony. Uh this uh emotion that he had
there was all fake. He had crocodile tears that didn't really flow. Um Frank was so comfortable lying on TV. He says
her phone's still on somewhere, but in reality, he had her phone the whole time before investigators took devices into
evidence, so he knew exactly where it was. >> So, you know, days turn into weeks.
There's no arrest. Michaela's family, they are livid. Frank is still walking around. So, I'm really curious, what
sort of evidence were investigators looking for before they felt comfortable making an arrest?
>> They wanted a piece of forensic evidence that would leave no doubt that Frank was
the killer. And Lieutenant Dakota Black told us towns people knew it was Frank, but investigators needed to find that
beyond a reasonable doubt kind of evidence. So, they started digging into Frank's social media, and there was a
treasure trove of information there. He had multiple dating profiles and multiple Facebook accounts. They found
comments from from women with screenshots on text messages with Frank. And one disturbing find, Frank was
actually texting other women on the day of Michaela's murder. Even on the day of
her funeral, Frank sent a photo of himself to multiple women asking something along the lines of, "How do I
look in my tuxedo?" They also tracked down another girlfriend he had assaulted, and she said he used the same
tactic on her with the story of Frank's four daughters being abused. So, they found lots of stuff that really told
them about how this man operates, >> right? And we see in the hour something else that they found. Um they recovered
footage from a home security camera. And really, I mean, detectives believe that
this is sort of the last that anyone would have seen of Michaela. >> Yeah. I'm telling you, technology now is
solving so many of these cases. Um, investigators were never able to find the actual physical security camera that
recorded these images, but Frank used an app on his phone to view the images, and
he thought, according to investigators, that he had deleted them. But when investigators did the forensic
extraction on Frank's phone, they were able to find these images. The first image you see is Michaela coming into
his home, and she's there for about 14 minutes. The next image we see her leaving the home. The last image is
Frank standing at his door looking out like he was about to follow Michaela back to the shed where she was living
where investigators believe he confronted her and shot her. >> Investigators also used a Walmart
receipt to track down security camera photos. Frank Buyers is seen buying bleach, ammonia, a mop, and according to
Dakota Black, all of this looks like a possible, you know, toolkit to clean up a crime scene.
>> I mean, go to Walmart and buy all those things. Frank even called the police while he was at that Walmart buying
those cleaning supplies. >> And then there's also the carpet, right? And what um investigators find out is
that the carpet that Michaela was wrapped up in, that was a carpet that a neighbor had given to the couple for
their dogs. Um so the evidence is adding up here, but they had hopes that a specific bullet that was found embedded
in Michaela's wall would also test positive for her DNA. >> That's right. And they weren't able to
get a a genetic confirmation on hair that was stuck to that bullet, but a dark substance that was found on Frank's
boots was Michaela's blood. That's when they went in for the arrest. >> 38 days after Michaela was reported
missing, Frank Buyers is arrested and he's charged with firstdegree murder. His defense, though, negotiates a deal
to take the death penalty off the table. Then 15 months later, he agreed to plead
guilty and serve life without parole. Michaela's mother really feels like this is a copout because he chose to take
Michaela's life and then he gets to choose his own punishment. >> And I understand Barbara's frustration
with the death penalty being taken off the table. Moving forward, they have now turned their grief, the family, into a
charity. They have started Michaela's Purple Butterfly nonprofit to fight against domestic violence and they
raised money by selling handmade crafts made by women affected by domestic violence to build transition housing for
victims. And once 48 hours learned of Michaela's case, we really wanted to honor her by telling this story.
>> Well, you absolutely did. Um, what I kept on thinking over and over again was
just how remarkable she was in her daytoday life. She was transforming the lives of his daughters, her own
children, the children at school. And I think about all that was lost, the future impact that she would have had
because of one selfish person's actions, >> right? She was a guardian angel to those
four kids. And when Frank took her life, he really impacted theirs so profoundly.
And we wish the best for those children. >> Yeah. And you know, once again, just
spotlight on domestic violence. Those red flags, that gut feeling, listen to them. It may end up saving, you know,
your life or the life of somebody that you love. Um, Peter Vansen, always lovely having you here. Thank you
[music] so much. >> Thank you, Emry. And to our listeners, if you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple
Podcast or Spotify. [music]

"48 Hours" correspondents Anne-Marie Green and Peter Van Sant discuss Dakota Black, a tracker and detective who hunted for answers when Makayla Meave went missing in 2023.

Crime. Social justice. Impact. "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.

For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com

Brief Summary

Michaela Mayavi's disappearance leads to her husband's arrest for murder amid troubling evidence and domestic violence issues.

Key points

Michaela Mayavi's Disappearance. Michaela was reported missing by her husband, Frank Buyers, after a date.
The Investigation Begins. Lieutenant Dakota Black leads the search for Michaela, uncovering dark secrets in Mcome.
Frank Buyers' Alibi Falls Apart. Evidence mounts against Frank, including suspicious behavior and conflicting stories.
Michaela's Family Takes Action. In the wake of tragedy, Michaela's family starts a charity to combat domestic violence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Oklahoma has the highest rate of domestic violence in the country.

Discussion about domestic violence in Oklahoma.

1:28WatchNov 22, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from 48 Hours

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.