Carolyn Edds: Super Searcher


Carolyn Edds, news researcher with the
San Antonio Express News

Read San Antonio Express News Editor Robert Rivand's columnn detailing the background
of this breaking story and recognizing Carolyn Edds's contribution to it

Helping an amnesiac remember his past

By Carolyn Edds, San Antonio Express-News News Researcher

On Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001 we published a story about a San Antonio minister who resurfaced at a Baptist church in Texas, sixteen years after he had disappeared in west Texas, leaving a six-month old daughter and wife. He said he had amnesia and did not remember his life prior to his disappearance. His name was Wesley Barrett "Barre" Cox when he disappeared on July 12, 1984. His clothes and personal belongings were found strewn around his car on a road near Tuxedo, about 50 miles northwest of Abilene. On December 10, 2000, he spoke at a church and a man recognized him from a Bible camp the two had attended many years ago. 

On Wednesday, one of our research requests was to help identify this person's new name and try to track where he had been. We did not know his new name or the name of the church in Texas where he had been recognized. At the start of my research shift in the afternoon, the editor on this story, David Lauricella, came by to tell me that the new first name for this person was James and that he had come to Texas from the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in California. 

I had a few other daily requests to work on, which would not take much time and I knew this one would so I chose those to get the others out of the way first. Before I could get to this one, David came back by to tell me the reporter, Karisa King, had found his name on the GGBTS Web site. She had gone through the mugshots of the faculty and staff on the Web site and compared them to a picture we had of Wesley Barrett "Barre" Cox. She found a match with a James Simmons.

When I started working on this request, I searched the GGBTS Web site for James Simmons and I could not find anything about him. I thought this was odd. But I found out where in California GGBTS was located and started searching the public records section of Lexis-Nexis for a James Simmons in Mill Valley, Calif. I got four hits, three of which were a James E. Simmons. One of the results had an odd address: GGBTS and an apartment number. I had seen rural routes and post office boxes and other rural roads before but this seemed a little odd. Then it clicked. GGBTS was for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. I had the right James Simmons and with a somewhat common name, I also had another important piece of the puzzle, his middle initial. 

We had heard he had spent some time in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and possibly West Virginia so David wanted me to try and track him in these states. One of these four hits included an address in Richmond, Virginia. I ran searches on each of these addresses to find others living at the same addresses and possible phone numbers.

Because this was a big story and we wanted to locate possible family members and neighbors, I logged into Autotrack and ran a comprehensive search with associates based on a Mill Valley, Calif. address. I think it was this report that was 39 pages long. The month and year of birth matched that of what I had seen from the records in Lexis-Nexis, March of 1955. I also noticed on the Autotrack report a James E. Simmons in Texas possibly with the same Social Security number. 

A hunch led me to my next search. Although we were looking for him in other states, I decided to see what I could find about any James E. Simmons born in Texas in 1955. I ran a search of a Texas birth records database and I got one hit. This James E. Simmons was born in March also. Using this information, I went back to Lexis-Nexis and searched the public record files again to find a phone number for this James E. Simmons. Before I could find a phone number for him, David came back by to check on what I had found so far. He had requested some other things from me, which I gave to him. I showed him what I had found and said it was a long shot. He took everything and went back to his desk. A few minutes later he was back. In reference to this other James E. Simmons he said, "I like this. Get me his phone number." 

I took him the phone number and asked if he needed anything else from me as it was well past 7:00, when my shift had ended. I was ready to stay as long as necessary but I had run out of ideas of what I could search. He thanked me for my help and agreed there was not much else I could do at this point. He asked me to give that phone number to Joe Holley, the other reporter working the story with Karisa. 

Around 10:00 p.m., David called me at home. Yes, this James E. Simmons, a rancher who lived in the panhandle of Texas, did have problems in the past with someone using his Social Security number. He gave us the complete Social Security number. In Autotrack, the entire Social Security number is not displayed in the report unless you run a search by the entire Social Security number. In Lexis-Nexis, the Social Security number is not displayed at all, although you can search by that number. David wanted me to search this Social Security number and see if it returned both of these James E. Simmons. I ran the search and it did. The search returned the address of the Texas rancher, a Mill Valley, Calif. address and a Richmond, Va. address. David said he was giving me a credit in the story. 

Sometimes I get a little obsessed with ongoing stories. It still bothered me that Karisa had found James Simmons on the GGBTS Web site and I had not. Thursday morning, I remembered a special feature about the Google search engine. It includes cached pages as well as the current ones. So I ran a search on Google for James Simmons and the GGBTS. When the results returned, I clicked on the link labeled "Cached."  I found some of the pages with his name on it, including a picture. I saved the picture and the HTML files to my computer in case they would not be there later and we needed them. (Tonight I ran a search in Google and although the one page is cached there, the James Simmons picture is no longer available.) I followed the links to the same pages on the live Web site for the GGBTS. It seems to me that they removed all evidence of him from their Web site on that Wednesday so by the time I started looking for him on the Web site Wednesday afternoon, he was no longer a part of it. 

When I arrived at the office a couple hours later, I told the city editor, Kym Fox, about the cache feature of Google. It seems there had been two pictures of him on the GGBTS Web site. Karisa had saved one of them. But one of the newspapers in the panhandle had a mugshot on their Web site they attributed to the GGBTS Web site. Kym wanted me to see if I could find this other one on a cached page in Google so we could be 100% sure to attribute it to GGBTS if we used it. However, I was not able to find this other page with this picture. So while this cache feature in Google is a good tool, maybe it does not cache everything. 

Joe attended and wrote about a press conference on Saturday, Jan. 20. At this conference, the James Simmons with the amnesia admitted obtaining the social security number from a friend who called Texas Tech University on his behalf. He said his intention was to use that one until he could get his own from the Social Security Administration. He had talked to his wife and daughter on the telephone and planned to meet with them in person soon.  On Sunday, Jan. 21, he delivered his first sermon at White Rock Community Church in Dallas. Joe covered this as well.


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This page was created by Barbara P. Semonche. It was last updated March 2001. If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to contact Barbara here.