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. Her name is Lt. Dakota Black. She’s a trained tracker and detective with the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Lt. Dakota Black: I go out to scenes when there’s manhunts or trying to locate individuals.
Her specialty is finding the missing — whether alive or dead.
Lt. Dakota Black: I have found them underneath piles of leaves. … In trees and 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.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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 Search for Makayla Meave
Andria Meave: The last thing we said to each other, was “I love you.”
Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, began like most days for Andria Meave: with a 7 a.m. phone call from her best friend and younger sister, Makayla.
Andria Meave: I wish I would’ve known I would’ve 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.
Andria Meave: He’s hysterical, crying, screaming, 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.
Frank Byers Facebook
At the time, Makayla and Frank Byers were headed for divorce, says Andria Meave. They were still living on the same 10-acre property in Macomb, Oklahoma — but in separate homes. So, at first, Meave wasn’t worried.
Andria Meave: My first thought is she’s single. … I hope she had fun.
But Meave’s mood began to shift when her many calls to Makayla went to voicemail.
Andria Meave: By noon, I was worried. One o’clock, 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.
Barbara Harper: And the more I prayed about it, the more I realized that something serious had happened.
Frank Byers also reported Makayla missing to the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office that afternoon.
FRANK BYERS (to 911): … my wife’s been missing since late last night … she left … at 5:30ish, roughly 5:40, and the last time that anyone has heard from her has been at 8:00 p.m.
911 OPERATOR: … And your name?
FRANK BYERS: My name is Frank Byers, B-Y-E-R-S.
911 OPERATOR: … What’s her name?
FRANK BYERS: Her name is Makayla, uh, Byers …
The deputy on duty, Dustin Richardson, felt he needed to put eyes on the ground. He got to Macomb around 4 p.m. with his bodycam rolling.
Deputy Dustin Richardson: … 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 Byers made a point of showing the deputy the last Facebook message he said Makayla sent him after she left assuring him she was “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 (bodycam): Did you see the guy at all?
FRANK BYERS: … I would probably say, 6, 6’1″.
DEPUTY RICHARDSON: OK.
FRANK BYERS: He was completely bald and he had a beard. If I — If I had to guess a weight, I don’t know, maybe 200.
Richardson then asked if he could see the house where Makayla was temporarily living.
DEPUTY RICHARDSON (bodycam): Can I go take a look around?
FRANK BYERS: Yeah.
DEPUTY RICHARDSON: … So she’s been staying in this little old thing?
FRANK BYERS: Yeah … Yeah, so —
DEPUTY RICHARDSON: All locked up.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office
But the shed-like home was locked and Byers said he didn’t have a key. But he did have something to say about their relationship.
FRANK BYERS (bodycam video): … we have an open marriage where — well, that’s — that’s a brand-new thing I don’t like it, but um, I agreed upon it cause I’m trying to fix our marriage …
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.
ANOTHER DEPUTY (on phone): What’s up?
DEPUTY RICHARDSON: Man. This uh Frank Byers called in saying his uh wife was missing …
He called his son, also a deputy, from the car.
DEPUTY RICHARDSON (bodycam): … this guy is squirrelly man, this Frank guy is squirrelly …
Deputy Dustin Richardson: The sensation was that there is nothing about the 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 Harper.
Barbara Harper: When I first got there … I didn’t even speak to anyone.
Barbara Harper: I was on my hands and knees crawling through brush out in the pasture. … we’ve got to find where she’s at.
With his body camera rolling, Richardson returned to the property late that afternoon. Byers had smashed open the lock to Makayla’s place with a hammer.
Deputy Dustin Richardson: I looked and I … I immediately saw empty, uh, shell casings from what appeared to be 22 caliber …
Deputy Dustin Richardson: … he told me that she sits in there and shoots out at animals … the coyotes and stuff.
FRANK BYERS (bodycam): There’s a few times I’ve heard her shoot …
By then, more deputies had arrived.
Deputy Dustin Richardson: I had asked him where she … kept that gun. And he said it was in his house.
DEPUTY RICHARDSON (bodycam): Is it in there now?
Deputy Dustin Richardson: I had him walk me to his house and he walked inside … and he pointed at it … I had, uh, pulled it from where it was in there … and put it in my vehicle.
FRANK BYERS (bodycam): … treat it like always.
The gun, according to the deputy, appeared to have been recently fired.
Deputy Dustin Richardson: I, uh, made phone calls to, uh, get our criminal investigation team out there because I just — it was off that there was something that needed to be looked into more.
DEPUTY RICHARDSON (bodycam): Hey, I’m on that – I’m on that missing person thing still… This is suspicious as f***.
Investigators ushered family and friends off the property and blocked the driveway.
Barbara Harper (crying): I remember walking back to my car and just screaming at God, asking him, “why, why did you do this, let this happen? Just take me, take me, and let us find her and just take me.”
The missing person’s investigation was now a possible criminal investigation, and that’s when the call went out to lead detective Lieutenant Dakota Black.
Lt. Dakota Black: We definitely needed … to figure out what was going on.
A Mother’s Intuition
As soon as Lt. Dakota Black got the call that Makayla Meave was missing, she jumped in her vehicle and sped to Macomb.
Peter Van Sant: What was your immediate mission?
Lt. Dakota Black: To locate Makayla. We — we needed to locate her. We didn’t know where she was.
Detective Black and her partner on the case – Detective Marcus May—now the undersheriff—put out a BOLO alert: be on the lookout.
Det. Marcus May: 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, that we do have a situation developing over here.
The tips from this rural area, where everyone seems to know everybody, came pouring in.
Lt. Dakota Black: Every white pickup truck with tinted windows was getting called in to the sheriff’s office.
None of the sightings panned out but the search took on a life of its own.
Lt. Dakota Black: Flyers were posted everywhere. Social media ads were everywhere.
Det. Marcus May: Makayla Meave was beloved by everybody. … they were demanding every resource possible … to go find Makayla.
Peter Van Sant: Dakota, this was a, uh, a woman with enormous heart. Right?
Lt. Dakota Black: Absolutely. … She loved her family. She loved her friends. … she loved children.
Andria Meave
Makayla fell in love with children when she herself was still a child. Her mom ran a daycare.
Barbara Harper: We weren’t just a daycare. We were the family, and she loved those kids, especially the babies (laughs).
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 two kids — a brother and sister.
Andria Meave: She dropped what she was doing, went took — 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. Byers, who was divorced, had primary custody of four young daughters.
Frank Byers Facebook
Andria Meave: 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.
Barbara Harper: 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.
Barbara Harper: It’s just country. It’s 100 percent country. The kids are 100 percent country.
Makayla was going to college to get her teaching degree while working at the local elementary school.
Barbara Harper: 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.
Andria Meave: I think that was her biggest thing in life was to help little innocent kids that needed adult help. She always felt responsible to do that.
Countywide, 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.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
Andria Meave: It wasn’t like, oh, my God, my wife is missing. He never seemed like concerned about that. He seemed more concerned about himself.
Peter Van Sant: What were you noticing about Frank Byers?
Det. Marcus May: The — the lack of any … human emotion … I mean he — he did not seem scared. … He just wanted to know what we knew. He – he just didn’t seem human at all.
Investigators were already zeroing in on Frank Byers.
Det. Marcus May: We strongly suspected Frank.
Three days after Makayla was reported missing, Frank Byers agreed to be questioned by Black at the sheriff’s office. The interview was audio only.
FRANK BYERS (interview with detectives): At this time I just want her found …
The detective tried to win his trust by playing the good cop.
DET. BLACK: Again, I couldn’t imagine. I mean it’s hard not knowing, you know. And when everybody’s pointing a finger at you I’m sure it doesn’t make it any better.
FRANK BYERS: Yeah.
FRANK BYERS: … I feel like I got to defend myself and tell everyone that no, this is what happened, this is the truth.
She pressed him but not enough to make him stop talking.
DET. BLACK: Did you ask her about the date before she left?
FRANK BYERS: Yes, I did. And uh, she told me it was none of my business. Same thing as if I went on a date, it’s none of her business.
DET. BLACK: OK, so she never said a name or anything?
FRANK BYERS: No. She —
DET. BLACK: How she met him, how she knew him?
FRANK BYERS: No…
After answering questions for two-and-a-half hours, Black let him go home. The search for Makayla continued. Harper remembers crawling through brush wearing snake protectors when she says she had a premonition.
Barbara Harper: I heard Makayla tell me, mama I’m in a tin horn. … I said, oh my God, she just told me she’s in a tinhorn.
Harper 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.
911 CALLER: … ma’am I don’t know exactly where I’m at, but I’m on Hamilton Road. I was searching with my friend for my cousin that’s missing, Makayla Meave.
DISPATCHER: Mm-hmm.
911 CALLER: And I think that we just found her.
A Devastating Discovery
The chatter of locusts permeated the air, an eerie sense of foreboding. Makayla Meave had been missing for five days.
Andria Meave: 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.
911 CALLER: … I was searching with my friend for my cousin that’s missing, Makayla Meave.
DISPATCHER: Mm-hmm.
911 CALLER: And I think that we just found her.
It was the call Detective Dakota Black had been dreading.
Lt. Dakota Black: It was devastating to everybody I mean it was absolutely terrible.
CBS News
Just as Barbara Harper had imagined, Makayla was in a large drainage pipe beneath the road.
Lt. Dakota Black: She had been drug into the middle area and she was wrapped in a carpet. … Uh, 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.
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.
Lt. Dakota Black: I did feel a connection with Makayla… I have a history also. … you know I’ve been in bad relationships … It could have been me. (emotional) … On more than one occasion. … I just got lucky …
While the detectives were working the scene, Makayla’s family gathered just up the road.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
BARBARA HARPER (bodycam): Can we see her? I can verify. Please?
Barbara Harper: I never once doubted that it was her.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office
OFFICER (bodycam): … if anyone goes through the tape without permission, they immediately go to jail, I – I don’t know what to tell you I’m sorry.
BARBARA HARPER: Can you tell them we’re here?
OFFICER: Of course. Of course.
Barbara Harper: I felt like I needed to see her because she had been out there for five days without me. And I just needed to be with her and they wouldn’t let me.” (crying) … she needed me and I wasn’t there.
Makayla’s remains were placed in the coroner’s van for the journey to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Andria Meave: My mom and I both realized that it was probably her in there and that we would never be able to, like, hold her and hug her again, my mom started to chase the van. (crying)
Barbara Harper: 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 — my baby is in that van.” (crying)
Detective Black was so angry, she had to hold herself back.
Lt. Dakota Black: I wanted to leave that night and go and arrest Frank. But I knew … um … 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.
FRANK BYERS (bodycam): Uh, she embraced the guy in a hug, and then they got in the truck and left …
Peter Van Sant: When you ask Makayla’s family about this open relationship … what’d they say?
Lt. Dakota Black: Absolutely not. They said there was absolutely no possible way that Makayla would’ve ever done that …
Investigators learned from interviews and from Frank Byers’ own social media accounts that he was the one who was cheating.
Andria Meave: 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 Byers worked for an environmental cleanup company cleaning up hazardous materials. He spent a lot of time on the road.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
Det. Marcus May: He was communicating … with females … the day Maykala was murdered … and immediately afterwards.
Andria Meave: He was sending pictures to women the day of her funeral asking, how do I look in my tux?
Byers’ cheating got so bad, Makayla moved out about three months before her murder.
Andria Meave: She packed a bag and she came and stayed with me for a week. … I held her where she cried every night. … She felt like a failure.
But Makayla’s love for the little girls kept drawing her back, says Andria Meave.
Makayla went back to the 10-acre property, but not to Byers. She temporarily moved into that little structure behind his to stay close to the girls. Byers tried to win her back, promising to change. But the cheating continued. Detective Black would later discover this conversation in which Makayla told Byers she was done:
MAKAYLA MEAVE: I’ve never once been dead set for divorce until today.
FRANK BYERS: You …
MAKAYLA MEAVE: … I’m just saying you have officially lost me …
Makayla recorded it two days before her murder.
Black believes she recorded it to expose Byers’ infidelity.
MAKAYLA MEAVE: … I’m stating to you right now that you have officially broke the last string that was holding me to you.
FRANK BYERS: OK.
MAKAYLA MEAVE: And you have nobody to blame but yourself for doing it.
That Friday, September 15, Makayla returned from work to pick up her things and leave for good. But Frank Byers, 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.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office
Peter Van Sant: Where is Makayla in this picture?
Lt. Dakota Black: This is Frank’s home and she’s coming through the front door.
Makayla stayed for 14 minutes. The detective believes they were arguing.
Lt. Dakota Black: Here’s Makayla again. She’s leaving.
The last picture of the series is Frank Byers standing at the door of his home.
Peter Van Sant: What do you believe happened after this last photograph was taken?
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
Peter Van Sant: The last image she may have seen on this earth was her own husband holding a rifle, and then the shot fired.
Lt. Dakota Black: Yes.
Profile of a Murderer
It started as a simmering anger and grew into a raging fury. People wanted to know why Frank Byers was still walking free.
Det. Marcus May: 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 …
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
CBS News
Detective Black spent 18-hour days at the office with her sidekick Haven – the therapy dog now there for her.
Peter Van Sant: Give me a sense, emotionally, how tough this was for you?
Lt. Dakota Black: It was tough mentally. I was drained. I was mentally exhausted. … I had lost weight. I was tired, but I was not gonna to go home … until this case was solved.
Byers used the time to defend himself on social media. “… I am innocent, And everything will come out.”
He also appeared on local news.
FRANK BYERS (local news report): Even today, I called her. I mean, 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’ve been nice to hear her voice …
Many in the community tuned in to watch Byers’ interview, including Lt. Dakota Black.
Peter Van Sant: Did it make you angry?
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
Black tracked down scores of these women. Crystal Cantrell was Byers’ girlfriend before he met Makayla.
Crystal Cantrell: He is 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.
Black learned Byers wooed Cantrell the same way he wooed Makayla — with a false story that his daughters were being mistreated by his current girlfriend. And like Makayla, Cantrell had a soft heart.
Crystal Cantrell: 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, Cantrell says Byers 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.
Crystal Cantrell: 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.
Cantrell was able to get away but was too afraid to report the incident to the police. She left Byers for good but says it could have been her in that ditch.
Crystal Cantrell: He would’ve killed me.
If Byers ever harmed Makayla, she never told her mom and sister. Sometimes they saw bruises, but Makayla always said they were just from rough housing with the kids.
Andria Meave: 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 then maybe if I would’ve questioned, it would come out differently.
Bit by bit, Black and her team built a profile of a murderer.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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 a security camera photo.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office
Peter Van Sant: What’s in the cart?
Lt. Dakota Black: There is bleach, ammonia, and a mop.
Peter Van Sant: And mop, ammonia, and bleach equals what in your mind as an investigator?
Lt. Dakota Black: Crime scene cleanup.
They were also able to match the carpet in the ditch to one a neighbor had given Byers and Makayla for their dogs.
DET MARCUS MAY (bodycam): … you, you gave them that carpet about eight or nine months ago? Was that…
NEIGHBOR: Yes…
Lt. Dakota Black: Frank took the carpet that was given to him by the neighbor and used that to roll Makayla’s body in.
They believe Byers 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.
Det. Marcus May: The kids reported in interviews that once they returned home, that, that Frank … was outside most of the night. He — he wasn’t in his bed.
Black says there were fresh tire tracks leading to Makayla’s little house.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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 Byers 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 Byers then climbed down and dragged her into that pipe underneath the roadway.
Once Byers got rid of the body, he concocted a plan to cover up his crime.
MAN (bodycam): So she took her phone with her?
FRANK BYERS: Yeah as far as I know she took her phone with her…
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.
DETECTIVE MAY (interview): … So, I’m just trying to understand how, if she left with her phone and was communicating with you through her phone on Facebook, how that phone was in your bedroom? …
FRANK BYERS: I understand. Um, I mean, I — I don’t — I mean, I — I don’t have an explanation, honestly …
But investigators did have an explanation. Makayla had two phones – an iPhone and a Moto G phone. Byers had both of them.
Lt. Dakota Black: The Moto G phone was an old phone of Makayla’s that she hadn’t been using for quite some time.
Byers knew how to get into that old phone. so he switched the SIM card from her iPhone.
Peter Van Sant: Why does he do that?
Det. Marcus May: To gain full access to … all of her accounts.
Det. Marcus May: 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.
Lt. Dakota Black: I needed a smoking gun that I knew was not gonna let him out. I knew it was going to keep him there.
Peter Van Sant: What have you just unwrapped here?
Det. Marcus May: … what do we have here 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 a 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 the boots.
Lt. Dakota Black: So these are Frank’s work boots. They were recovered … on the night of the missing person’s report, uh, from his bedroom.
Peter Van Sant: And what did you spot on these boots that was of interest?
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office
Thirty-eight 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 Byers’ boots was blood — Makayla’s blood.
Lt. Dakota Black: As soon as we got that … we were like, we’re going right now.
Peter Van Sant: You had your man.
Det. Marcus May: We had our guy, yes.
Plea Deal was Cop Out, Says Victim’s Mother
Lt. Dakota Black: 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 Meave was reported missing, Lt. Black, Deputy Richardson and a special operations team moved in to arrest Frank Byers.
Lt. Dakota Black: Got with the SWAT team, organized the takedown and went in and got him.
Peter Van Sant: He thought he was smarter than everyone, but he was outsmarted, right?
Lt. Dakota Black: Yes. I think he was surprised.
Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office
FRANK BYERS (bodycam): I swear I didn’t do it.
Black finally had Byers in her grasp and right where she wanted him — in handcuffs headed to jail. Detective May called Makayla’s family with the news.
Barbara Harper: 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.
May says they were done with Byers’ lies and they confronted him with the hard evidence they’d taken weeks to gather.
DETECTIVE MAY (interrogation): Now is the opportunity to let us know what happened.
FRANK BYERS: I — I didn’t do it. I mean –
DETECTIVE MAY: Why was her blood on your boots?
FRANK BYERS: I mean, I can’t answer I mean, I — I — I don’t — I don’t know I mean, honestly.
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.
Barbara Harper: 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 OK. It’s not OK.”
The plea deal isn’t the only thing upsetting Harper. She doesn’t think Byers acted alone.
Peter Van Sant: You’re absolutely convinced that Frank had somebody help him.
Barbara Harper: I’ll go to my grave believing that.
Andria Meave: 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.
Peter Van Sant: Physically he could not have done it.
Andria Meave: No, I don’t believe so.
Lt. Dakota Black: I think we all agree that it would absolutely be difficult to move her, but people are scared, they can do amazing things.
Det. Marcus May: What they’re saying is not unreasonable. … If the evidence is presented to us one day that, that — uh — that suggests that … we will take it and we’ll run with it to its fullest extent.
Barbara Harper: 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.
Barbara Harper: He didn’t just take from us, he took from his own children someone that loved them, that put them first.
Lt. Dakota Black: 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.
Barbara Harper: Makayla would want her life to mean something.
Harper is starting “Makayla’s Purple Butterfly” foundation to fight against domestic violence.
Andria Meave: … that was her goal, her mission in life, was when you see someone in need help them.
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Andria Meave (at Makayla’s grave with her mother): When I think of Makayla, I think of sunflowers. I think of joy.
Barbara Harper: 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.
Andria Meave: 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.
Andria Meave: 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.
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233
Produced by Liza Finley and Hannah Vair. David Dow is the development producer. Marlon Disla, Marcus Balsam, George Baluzy and Michael Baluzy are the editors. Megan Brown is the associate producer. Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
