“She was my best friend.”
That’s what Hollie Hatfield Morris says via telephone from her home in Charleston, South Carolina, choking back tears as she speaks about Susan Osborne, who, along with her son 15-year-old Evan Chartrand, has been missing for more than a year.
“We originally met when we were neighbors in Prattville,” said Morris. “She lived across the street from me then. She came over and introduced herself and we were pretty much inseparable after that. We were like sisters.”
The two women met nine years ago and, Morris said, became extremely close.
“We went everywhere together, Morris said. “When she lived across the street she was over at my house more than she was at hers. She was at my house most every day. We went shopping together all the time. We got our nails done. We went grocery shopping together, did yard work together. She’d come over and help me with my yard work and I’d help her with hers. She helped me paint my house in Prattville. We painted it on the inside, the living room and the hallways and all that.”
Five years separated the two women, Susan,42, being older. Soon after Morris left Prattville for Key West with her Coast Guard husband, much more would separate the two – perhaps forever.
“I moved from Alabama last year on May 16,” Morris said. “I was moving down to Key West with my husband, my fiancé at the time. He was stationed down there.
“When we got to Key West, I talked to her every day after we got down there. Actually, she was going to be my maid of honor when we got married. She would talk about her and Evan coming down to visit, you know.
“I talked to her every day and May 28 we talked on the phone and May 29 we texted and that’s the last time I heard from her. We texted back and forth several times on May 29 and everything was just casual conversation, nothing out of the ordinary. May 30 I sent her a text, just said, ‘Hey, how are you?’ and I didn’t hear back. And I didn’t think a whole lot of it. I just thought, ‘Okay, she may have dropped her phone, she may be busy or whatever.’”
A few days later, Morris tried to text Osborne again.
“Typically we talked most every day either by text or phone or whatever,” Morris said. “Sometimes we might go a few days without talking, but we usually at least texted every day. But I didn’t hear back this time, either. So then I started kind of wondering, I kind of started having a bad feeling. So over the next few weeks I continued to try to send her texts to her and Evan’s phones. I was calling and everything and when there was never any reponse, I thought something wasn’t right. I didn’t have a good feeling. Within a few weeks, both of her phones were disconnected and that’s when I knew something was wrong then.”
Morris didn’t know how to contact Osborne’s family to ask if she’d been in an accident or if they’d heard from her. She couldn’t remember Osborne’s mother’s last name.
Finally, she found Osborne’s brother on Facebook, but his page was set so that he couldn’t receive friend requests or messages from non-friends.
Then, another of Osborne’s brothers contacted her.
“He was asking if I’d heard from her,” Morris said. “I immediately called him and told him no, that I’d been worried sick about her. I said ‘Evidently you haven’t talked to her either’ and he said, ‘No. I knew if anyone had talked to her it would have been you.’ That’s when the missing persons report was filed” on July 29.
Later, Osborne’s husband, Jerry, told authorities she and Evan left their home on Memorial Day 2017 and never returned.
Though she is obviously hurt and thinking of the possibility brings tears, Morris believes her friend and her 15-year-old son, who attended Holtville High School, are dead.
“Like I told the detective, I wish that I could truthfully say I thought they were still here with us, but unfortunately I don’t,” Morris said. “I don’t think they’re alive anymore, because, if they were, then she would have contacted me. It’s been over a year. She would not just disappear. She wouldn’t have left (her 10-year-old daughter) Hannah Grace. She wouldn’t go without talking to her and seeing her.”
It also seems odd to Morris that Jerry Osborne has made no attempt to contact her or Osborne’s family.
“I know that his story that we were told was that she had left him for another man, but it’s like I’ve said from the beginning, if that was true, then she would have told me,” Morris said. “I don’t believe that and I never have believed that. She wouldn’t have done that without telling me. And one of the last things she said to me on May 16 in person was that they (Susan and Jerry) had worked things out, that they had communicated and they loved each other and she was staying with him. So you tell me how she tells me on May 16 that everything’s fine, on every day I talk to her until May 29, and then he claims she just up and left him.”
Another frustrating thing to Morris is that many people in the local area seem, at least to her, to have a lack of knowledge or interest about the case of Osborne and Chartrand.
“We came back for a vigil on Memorial Day weekend and it seemed there were a lot of people who knew nothing about the case,” Morris said. “People were either really on top of it or hadn’t heard about it at all. I hope that will change and that more people will become aware.”
Law enforcement, particularly the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office, is acutely aware, however, and Morris says they’ve been “a great help.”
“I know their hands have been tied in a lot of things,” Morris said, perhaps referring to blood found in Osborne’s husband’s home that was too degraded to perform a DNA profile. “But the detectives in the Sheriff’s Department, they have been such a great help. They have put so much into this case you can tell it really kind of hits close to home for them, too. We’ve gotten to know them and they’ve gotten to know us.”
The case hasn’t gone totally without publicity. Others are aware, too. One thing that has been said on public broadcasts and that Morris confirms is that she was told by Osborne her husband, Jerry, was leading a double life and, in fact, had a profile page on a gay dating site and had communicated with other men by email.
“She knew a lot more about Jerry’s past than she never let on that she knew,” Morris said.
Elmore County Sheriff Bill Franklin says of Jerry Osborne, “He’s definitely a person of interest and probably our only person of interest.”
Morris said the trip to Alabama for the Memorial Day weekend vigil brought back bittersweet memories.
“Even going to Alabama … I always talk to Susie and I wasn’t able to call her,” Morris said. “In all of the time I’ve known her I’ve never been this long without talking to her and I know we’re probably not supposed to say too much as far as what we think. But I have my own beliefs about what happened.
“I wish to God I thought they were alive, but there’s too much evidence that says otherwise.”
Osborne is 5-foot-3 and 120 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes. Evan is 5-7, 160 with brown hair and blue eyes.
If you have any information about this case, please contact the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office at 334-567-5227 or Crimestoppers at 334-251-STOP.
