Duane Talmon, Jr. Missing Person Case

Jan 06, 2010

Jun 22, 2022

Duane

Talmon, Jr.

67

16

68 inches

145 lbs

White / Caucasian

Male

In the autumn of 1974, sixteen-year-old Duane Robert Talmon, Jr. was a student at Williamsville North High School in a suburb of Buffalo, New York. On October 30th, he made a phone call to his mother with a change of plans. He told her he wouldn't need his usual ride from school as he was going with a friend to Akron Park. He arranged to have her pick him up later on Miles Road, a detail that would later become a painful memory of his last known communication. Wearing blue Wrangler jeans, a shirt, and black boots, Duane, a young man with brown hair and hazel eyes, was never seen or heard from again after that day. His mother went to the agreed-upon pickup spot, but her son never appeared. For more than a decade, the disappearance of Duane Talmon, Jr. remained a cold case, a source of unending anguish for his family. Then, in 1986, a significant break in the case emerged when a man named Michael Thurman confessed to his murder. Thurman, who was eighteen at the time of Duane's disappearance, told investigators that he had arranged to meet Duane for a drug transaction on the day he vanished. An argument over money escalated into a physical confrontation, culminating in Thurman shooting and killing the teenager. He then claimed to have buried Duane's body in a shallow grave near North French Road in Amherst, New York. Despite his detailed confession and months of extensive searching by law enforcement in the area he indicated, Duane's remains were never recovered. Despite the confession, years passed without legal resolution due to the absence of a body. However, shifts in legal precedents regarding prosecuting homicides without remains eventually allowed the case to move forward. In 2003, bolstered by witness statements corroborating parts of Thurman's account, authorities charged him with second-degree murder. Thurman ultimately accepted a plea bargain, pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison. The case of Duane Talmon, Jr. is a poignant example of the complexities and enduring pain of an unsolved missing person case. While a legal conclusion was reached with the conviction of his killer, the inability to locate his remains has left his family without the final closure of laying him to rest. He is still officially listed as a missing person, a lingering reminder of a young life cut short and a family's search for answers that remains, in many ways, incomplete.

Oct 30, 1974

Buffalo

New York

Erie County

26221

New York State Police - Clarence

Clarence

New York

Erie County

14031

Jason Fish

Senior Investigator

196 TPR KEVIN P DOBSON WAY, New York

7164066215

State

Law Enforcement

ACLA5307

1974-11-01

New York State Police - Clarence

Brown

Hazel

Hazel

09/16/2026