Thomas Craig

Thomas Noel Craig, known to friends and family as Tom, was a 48-year-old man from Fulton, Missouri. Born in Kirksville, he was a father to two daughters, Kendra and Krystal, and a proud grandfather to four grandchildren. Remembered by his loved ones, including a brother and a sister, his unexpected death left a void in his family. His life was celebrated at a graveside service at Cheesman Cemetery near Green Castle, Missouri, where he was laid to rest later in June 2016.

The quiet of a rural Missouri morning was broken just after dawn on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. A passerby made a grim discovery on a country road in Johnson County, south of Interstate 70 between the small towns of Concordia and Sweet Springs. A call to authorities around 5:15 a.m. brought a deputy to the 1260 block of Northeast 1075 Road, near the Dunksburg Bridge, where they found the body of a man lying in the roadway. The victim was identified as Thomas Craig. An investigation determined he had been shot to death. Authorities believed he had last been seen leaving Fulton around midnight, creating a five-hour window during which the fatal encounter occurred.

The location, a remote stretch of road far from any neighborhood, offered few immediate clues. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office secured the scene, treating it with the meticulous care of a major crime scene with assistance from a Missouri Highway Patrol accident investigation team. Given the serious nature of the crime, the Missouri Rural Major Case Squad was activated, bringing together dozens of officers from multiple agencies to canvass the area and pursue any and all leads. The team worked intensely, trying to piece together Craig's final hours and determine who he might have met after leaving Fulton.

Within days, the widespread investigation, which involved following up on over 140 leads, began to focus on one individual. The Major Case Squad identified Raymond Blake Brockway, a 26-year-old from the nearby city of Sedalia, as a person of interest in the homicide. On the evening of Saturday, June 4, police in Boonville, Missouri, spotted Brockway's vehicle on Main Street and took him into custody around 8:15 p.m. While he was officially arrested on a parole-violation warrant, investigators from Johnson County traveled to Boonville to question him in connection with Craig's death.

Following the arrest of the person of interest, the Missouri Rural Major Case Squad disbanded its multi-agency effort, turning the ongoing investigation back over to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office as the lead agency. Authorities confirmed Brockway's arrest and his status as a person of interest in the homicide, marking a significant early development in the case. The initial flurry of activity and the quick identification of a potential suspect brought hope for swift answers and justice for Thomas Craig's family.

However, after these initial developments in June 2016, public information on the case appears to have ceased. While Raymond Blake Brockway was named a person of interest and arrested, there have been no subsequent announcements or publicly available records indicating that he was ever formally charged with, tried for, or convicted of the murder of Thomas Craig. The trail of information goes cold, leaving the official resolution of the case and the final chapter of Thomas Craig's story unknown to the public. As of the last available reports, the investigation into who killed Thomas Craig and why remains with the Johnson County Sheriff's Office.