IT WAS REALLY NO SURPRISE, this week, to see a new “Killer” sign erected in downtown Canadian. It appeared across the highway from the Canadian Restaurant in the days following publication of Dr. Malouf Abraham’s letter to the editor in last week’s Canadian Record. In that letter, Dr. Abraham delivered a plaintive plea—not his first, by any means—to remove the Main Street sign before next month’s Fall Foliage Festival brings visitors to town.

“There is a killer among us,” the sign announces, with the implied warning—six years after CHS senior Tom Brown’s disappearance and death—that not only is there a killer afoot, but that we are all somehow guilty of having harbored this murderous resident, and of tolerating, if not abetting, his or her heinous crime. Canadian has been tarred and feathered.

The signs greet any intrepid traveler bold or foolish enough to enter the city limits on Highway 60/83, or to cruise its Main Street and visit its charming, but struggling, retail business sector.

To say the sinister signs discourage visitors from stopping here is obvious. To say they dis-incentivize potential new residents or businesses from putting down roots in such toxic soil is perhaps more speculative—though simple observation and a drive around town reveal an alarming number of homes or businesses for sale or rent and properties that appear to have been abandoned by their owners, with accumulating signs of neglect.

A “Killer” banner so prominently placed in any other community on the map would likely convince a reasonable traveler just to keep on driving. Why borrow trouble, after all?

When Tom Brown disappeared on Thanksgiving Eve in 2016, this community joined together to search for the missing teen, and to comfort the family and others whose lives were intertwined with Tom’s.

Wherever we went in our daily lives, we were mindful of his absence, watchful for any sign of his presence, and hopeful of his return. We attended prayer vigils and contributed to fundraisers. We slept less easily and hugged our own loved ones a little tighter.

When Tom’s remains were found near Lake Marvin three years later, we mourned with his family and celebrated his too-short life.

Eventually, in our hunger for answers and certainty, we provided fertile ground for the seeds of suspicion, rumor, and distrust that were too easily sown by others in Tom’s absence.

Over time, four different law enforcement agencies were involved in the investigation of Tom’s death. Their efforts were condemned and their conclusions summarily dismissed by Tom’s mother, Penny Meek, who preferred the baseless, inconsistent, and contradictory accusations of her private investigator, Philip Klein, and his unceasing efforts to attack, deride, and discredit all who dared challenge him.

When Klein and associates unveiled their preposterous theory of Brown’s death last year, suggesting Tom was merely collateral in some high-stakes football gambling ring, they and Tom’s family—who sat silently by—seemed ready to hang the whole town for our complicity. Their key witness: a troubled young man who briefly played football here, eager to share his story from the confinement of a prison cell.

Turns out the killer among us was us.

Canadian has lived for the last six years under a cloud of rumor and suspicion and innuendo and outright falsehoods that have tainted the lives of our students, our coaches, our school district—Penny’s employer, incidentally—our law enforcement, our friends, and each other.

As a community—and I believe I speak for many, if not all—we’ve had enough. If the intention of those signs is to collect new information, they have outlived their purpose. We are told that they have not yielded a single phone call.

If they are intended to indict a community that helped raise and educate a young man, cared for and encouraged him, and wrapped its collective arms around his family when they lost him, their only success has been among the ill-informed and gullible legions whose only “facts” come from social media.

If the signs are intended, instead, to suggest that Canadian shares some guilt for the death of their son and to exact the family’s revenge, they may well succeed in inflicting fatal wounds on this community and its once-promising future.

Noted Texas Monthly writer Skip Hollandsworth, whose Tom Brown’s Body podcast opened with the ominous tagline, “Evil has come to Canadian, Texas,” may have gotten it right, after all.

NOTE: In October 2021, the Texas attorney general’s office and the 31st District attorney issued a joint statement following their investigation into Tom Brown’s death.

The investigation involved forensic testing and/or analysis of 35 items; contact and/or interviews with 71 individuals on 99 occasions; nine polygraphs conducted; nine formal searches—one, an extensive search of the Hemphill County Sheriff’s Office itself; 150 search warrants and subpoenas issued; and nine trips to Canadian.

Their conclusion: “As of today, this case remains a questionable death investigation without sufficient evidence to conclude that Tom Brown’s death was attributed to a criminal act, an accidental death, or a suicide.”

Although it was initially believed that the investigation would culminate in a formal investigatory grand jury, the OAG concluded that it would neither be fruitful nor ethical at that time. “There is insufficient evidence to establish probable cause,” the report stated.

An intriguing note attributed to long-mute 31st Judicial Attorney Franklin Mc-Donough added, “It is the longstanding practice of the 31st Judicial District Attorney to not present suspicious deaths to a Grand Jury if evidence shows the death was the result of a suicide.”

Make of that what you will. The statement and 250-page summary of the investigative team’s findings are available online at https://bit.ly/3G9F02W.