What Did Police Find While Searching for Two Missing Women?

A woman locked herself in the bathroom of a Dollar General in [music] a tiny Louisiana town and called 911. It was July 2026 and she told the dispatcher she was hiding from a man, a man she said brought her all the way from Montana and was holding her against her will. His name was Thomas Morris and he was arrested [music] that night. But as details of that alleged kidnapping started to come out, detectives realized there was something much bigger here. Two other women are tied to Thomas Morris. Two women that nobody has seen in years. Crime junkies, I'm Brianna [music] Whitney, and in the headlines this week, this is the story of two families on the brink of answers who need your help in the disappearances of Stephanie Heavia and Madison [music] Allen. It's May 2025 and Lily Pearly told me the whole family got together at their mom's house for Mother's Day in Louisiana. But at some point, someone asked, "Has anybody talked to Stephanie?"

Nobody had. Stephanie Hevia was 37 years old and Lily's older sister. And Lily told me Stephanie was pretty nomadic. She would come and go, but she always made sure to be there for holidays and had told her family she wanted to be more present. So when everyone realized nobody had talked to her for months, Lily and her sister got up right then and there, left the Mother's Day gathering, and started looking for her. They drove around Baton Rouge, checking all the places they thought she might be. But they couldn't locate her. And anytime they talked to someone who knew her, they had heard the same thing. No one had seen or spoken to her in months. By June, they started messaging her friends on Facebook. Have you heard from Stephanie? Have you seen Stephanie? And over the next month, everybody had responded with the same thing. No. So, in August, their mom filed an official missing person's report. And that's when two of Stephanie's friends, separate from each other, told Lily something interesting. The last time they'd talked to Stephanie, she told them she was going to stay with a man in St.

Francisville. Now, that's a small town about 45 minutes from where she had been living. And one of those friends told Lily the man's name was Thomas Morris. Okay, that was at least a place for them to start. But then their family heard something incredibly shocking from another one of Stephanie's friends. And I don't know why he waited to tell them this, but he said back in March, she had called him while he was driving. She was in St. Francisville in the [music] woods and was terrified. She told him she was scared for her life and asked if he could come get her. And then he said the call dropped. He never heard from her again. Nobody did. So Lily's family was obviously super upset hearing that. So, they started trying to figure out everything they could about this Thomas Morris guy. [music] And they were posting on social media about Stephanie's case, just trying to get her picture and story out there, [music] like maybe someone knew more. And then a message came in from a woman they'd never [music] met who saw their Facebook posts and said her daughter also was missing and also was last seen with Thomas Morris.

Lily's family was stunned when they got a Facebook message from a woman named Lynn Roland. She told them she had seen their post about Stephanie and was in the same boat. Her daughter, 32-year-old Madison Allen, had vanished just after Thanksgiving, but in 2023. And Lynn told them it was like a parallel to their story. After months of trying to get a hold of Madison and couldn't, she knew something was wrong. But oddly enough, Madison appeared to have a new Facebook page. So, Lynn requested to be her friend. And even though Lynn hadn't heard from Madison in months, her friend request was accepted in March of 2024. So, she thought, "Okay, Madison must be okay." And I know you guys are probably thinking what I was thinking because why did Madison randomly have a new Facebook account? Like that seems sus to me right off the bat. And deep down, Lynn knew it, too. So, she told Stephanie's family that she started messaging everyone she could find on that new Facebook account.

And one of those friends was Thomas Morris. Lynn sent him the same message that she'd sent everybody. She was worried because she hadn't heard from her daughter since November. And she told Lily he responded. He said he also hadn't seen or heard from her since around Thanksgiving and that he was looking for her, too. He told Lynn he had only known Madison for about a month, so he didn't have a lot of info, but his guess was that she'd gotten some money after a car wreck and went somewhere outside Baton Rouge. So Lynn reported Madison missing in Zachary since that's the last place she knew she was living. But around that same time in spring of 2024, apparently a friend got back to Lynn and said that Madison told people an address of where she was staying back in October after she wrecked her car. It was Thomas Morris's house. Okay, so now Lily and her family are definitely freaked out hearing this. And Lynn said obviously red flags went up for her too when she heard it because when Thomas Morris was messaging her, he never said her daughter was living in his home. Like seems like an important detail not to include when we're talking about a missing woman. So Lynn told them she just kept messaging Morris to see if he would say anything more, anything that she could relay to Zachary PD. He sent a few screenshots he claimed Madison had taken on her phone and recently sent to him. One was about a new job interview coming up. A couple were for cash app transactions, and Lynn

asked for all of Madison's belongings back, but Morris told her that she only had a few things and took them with her when she left. The last time that Lynn and Thomas Morris talked was May 30th, 2024. Morris reportedly sold his house in Zachary at the beginning of 2025 to go live on his family's property, which was a small place outside of St. Francisville. And that's when Lynn saw the Facebook post Lily and her sister had been posting about Stephanie. And Lynn told Lily she had never heard of Stephanie before. But as soon as she saw their post, she did some web sleuththing and found that Madison and Stephanie actually had several Facebook friends in common. Then she reportedly started getting messages from people who said Stephanie knew Thomas Morris, too. And suddenly this whole thing all felt eerily [music] connected. So that's when Lynn reached out to Lily and their family and said, "You guys need to call Zachary police." The two families were in touch constantly after that, and they tried to basically do their own investigation alongside police, but they just didn't have a lot more to go off of at that point. Nothing really seemed to change.

Their names started to fade from the media reports and it was super frustrating until everything changed this summer. Thomas Morris was arrested for secondderee kidnapping. He was caught because a woman had escaped and had quite the story to tell police. Everything we know about this alleged kidnapping comes straight from the arrest warrant affidavit, but because police have not publicly named the victim, were not naming her either. So, according to the affidavit, the victim told detectives she was unhoused in Montana. And in early July, she had just been dropped off with all of her belongings along a road in Missoula by her ex-boyfriend. As she was walking, she noticed a silver GMC pickup with eyes stickers on [music] the front. Like clearly that stood out to her because that's not something you see every day.

The man in the truck was parked at a car lot and he introduced himself to her [music] as Thomas Morris. He offered her a ride to a hotel where she was supposed to have a room. But before she got out of the car, the two traded phone numbers and when they did, she noticed her number was already saved in his phone. I read that and I had so many questions like, "What do you mean her phone number was already in his phone? [music] Did they know each other previously?" And the report doesn't elaborate at all. It just moves right along. And Zachary PD was not available for an interview. So, I still don't have answers on that part specifically. But back to the report. The victim said she spent the next few days with her ex-boyfriend who had come back into town, but after he left, she stayed with Thomas Morris at a ranch for about 5 days. And while she was there, she got super sick. Vomiting, diarrhea, all of it. On the night of July 15th, she told deputies that Morris packed up all of his things and all of hers in the middle of the night and put it all in the truck. He told her they were leaving because she was sick, which like weird, that doesn't really make sense. But she told detectives he never actually said where they were going. When she woke up the next morning, she was in the passenger seat. She had no idea where they were, and when she asked, he didn't really answer. She thought they were maybe near Wyoming, but she was so sick still that she couldn't even think clearly, so she just kept drifting in and out of sleep. At one point, she woke up and noticed the shorts that she had

been wearing were gone. She later found them under his seat, and she told deputies she had no memory of taking them off. Over the next few days, anytime she asked where they were or where they were going, he just shrugged. and they drove until about 1:00 a.m. on July 18th when they pulled into a long lane on Morris Road in St. Francisville, Louisiana. She described a long lane where they eventually got to a gate and behind the gate was a white shed that Morris said was his home. It was a bizarre description. She said it had a big TV inside, a bunch of security cameras that weren't plugged in, and every window was blacked out with trash bags. At some point, she said Morris grabbed a hunting rifle and went behind the shed and fired a few shots. By July 19th, she was pretty concerned about being so far away. And so, she got a hold of her mom and she tried to describe where she was and who she was with and told her that his name was Thomas Morris. So, her mom Googled him and was like, "Oh my god." like right away stuff popped up with info about Stephanie and Madison and him being the last person who was with them. So at that point the woman and her mom both believed she was not safe and had been abducted. So they hatched a plan for her to escape. According to the police report, she told Morris she was sick and her face was swelling. So she asked him

to take her to the emergency room. They headed south on US61 and when she saw a Dollar General on the side of the road, she asked him to stop. She went in, locked herself in the bathroom, and called police. Deputies got there and found Morris in the parking lot in his truck. Now, the deputy who wrote the affidavit did make a couple things clear. He wrote that Morris never threatened her or told her she couldn't leave, but that she expressed fear of him and she didn't have the money or any way to get back to Montana. He also noted she didn't get sick until she came into contact with Morris and said there was quote reason to believe that Morris may have given her a substance that could alter her consciousness. So Morris was charged with secondderee kidnapping, false imprisonment, and illegal possession of a stolen firearm. His bail was set at $500,000. Now, that woman's actions, escaping like she did, giving authorities all the details like she did, [music] that changed the course of the Stephanie Heavia and Madison Allen investigations.

When Morris was arrested in July, the sheriff announced something else. Morris was now a confirmed person of interest in both Stephanie and Madison's disappearances. According to the sheriff's office, he told investigators he knew Stephanie and had seen her a few months before she vanished. So tips started pouring in. People started coming forward with whatever they knew and detectives asked Stephanie's family for DNA samples. Like clearly things were moving forward. And then about a week later, the sheriff called a huge press [music] conference. Lily's family believed they were going to learn major info. So, they all came in from out of town to be there and sat down with the detectives and the sheriff for the first time before they addressed the public. And Lily told me the way the sheriff talked with them she was convinced they were about to find Stephanie. At the press conference, Sheriff Brian Spilman told reporters there was a highly likely possibility the two women could be found on Morris's property. They had gotten a search warrant and had a whole army basically working this because the property was huge. About 15 acres.

According to local news stations, there were more than 10 federal, state, and local agencies involved. I mean, they had cadaavver dogs, ground penetrating radar, metal detectors. They had it all. And they searched at Morris Road for 8 days. A few days later, deputies also searched the Zachary home where Madison was last seen. But according to the Advocate newspaper, deputies found no human remains. They did submit potential evidence for testing, and according to local media, some sort of evidence was also found at the Zachary house, but the sheriff's office has not said what any of that evidence was. They also haven't told Stephanie and Madison's families what they found either. So, after the search, Lily and her family sat down with detectives and the sheriff again. And in that room, Lily asked what she had been dying to ask them. Did they think Stephanie had been murdered? And she told me they all shook their heads yes. Lily lost it. She told me she felt so heartbroken and couldn't understand how they could tell a family that, but not tell them why. And she said they told her it's an open investigation. She gets it. She wasn't angry at them, per se. She told me she is and was grateful for everything that law enforcement is doing. She was just beyond frustrated because for more than a year she'd been able to lean on the idea that Stephanie was still alive somewhere, maybe just not ready to come home. And now her

family had been told otherwise, but with no explanation. Meanwhile, Lynn Rollins isn't really in a better place either. She also has no idea what they found at the searches and told me at this point she believes her daughter was strangled. But now concern has mounted even more for both families because Thomas Morris was just recently hit with a new charge after authorities found something stolen, something bizarre near his property. Thomas Morris had been sitting in jail on a seconddegree kidnapping charge with a $500,000 bond. But on September 29th, that bond was revoked because he was booked on a new additional felony charge. Illegal possession of stolen things worth more than $25,000. Kind of seemed like a random charge, but let me explain. That item was an excavator, which is a heavyduty piece of machinery that digs up the earth, soil, or rock. According to the advocate, the Baton Rouge Water Company reported the machine missing at the same time Thomas Morris was working there, and it was found on the property of an acquaintance of Thomas Morris. Now, investigators have not said whether the excavator has anything to do with the missing woman, and nothing in the court paperwork

connects it to Stephanie or Madison, but I mean, you can imagine where the family's minds went when they [music] heard about this. So, those charges were added on, and he now awaits arraignment for all of it, including the secondderee kidnapping charge. But a reminder, he is not facing any charges as of now in Stephanie and Madison's disappearances. This is all its own form of torture for Stephanie and Madison's families. They both still have no idea what was found that led investigators to tell them they believed the women are dead. So, they're just left to speculate right now. Was it DNA like blood that they found? Did they find digital evidence that shows the women possibly unconscious? Do they have informants who have come forward with something? We don't know. So, for now, both families have banded together and continue to post on social media, hoping that they're reaching as many people as possible who may know something. And there is a $10,000 reward for anyone who can help solve both their disappearances.

Both women were mothers, they were sisters, and they are deeply loved by their families. Two mothers just want to bring their daughters home. Madison's mother has a message for anybody who might be afraid to share what they know. She told us Thomas Morris is in jail right now. If you've been scared to speak up, he is behind bars. This is the [music] time to come forward. If you have any information, no matter how small you think it is, about Stephanie Heavia, Madison Allen, or Thomas Morris, please call Capital Region Crimestoppers at 225344. [music] Stop. Crime junkies, we will keep following this and [music] keep you updated. Make sure to subscribe and hit the bell icon for additional updates on this case and other cases [music] our team covers. Crime Junkie is an audiochuck production. I think Chuck would approve.