0 it is a story that is very important to us, andti i'm goin to have a lot more on the subject tomorrow night and i hope you will be able to join us then when we focus in on it a little bit more. i'm don lemon. thank you so much for watching tonight. "a.c. 360" anderson cooper starts right now. erin, thanks. good evening, everyone. tonight, 360 investigates the strange disappearance and suspicious death of a young african-american man in texas. serious doubts being raised now about the investigation. also tonight, a major scare and screwup in the skies. why pilots dropped this airliner on to a runway built for a cessna. they were lucky no one got hurt. the question is, why did it happen at all? and later, another alleged scammer accused of cashing in on the newtown shooting tragedy. he is missing. drew griffin is on his trail. we are keeping 'em honest tonight. we begin with that investigation that you'll only see on this program. it starts in rural texas, with one family's serious question surrounding a young man's disappearance back in november and the discovery nearly three weeks later of his body. questions like, how did searchers miss alfred wright's body, even though it was found just up the road from where he vanished. also, what makes authorities so sure he died of a self-inflicted drug overdose when his family says he did not do drugs. and how can they rule out foul play when one autopsy says that alfred wright's throat had been cut and an ear was missing. why was he undressed when he was found. those and other questions are casting doubt on the official version, so is the fact that alfred wright was a young african-american in a part of texas with a history of racial tension and one of america's most horrific recent hate crimes. deborah feyerick begins our report. >> reporter: the sun was just going down when alfred wright turned into this liquor store on a long, quiet stretch of route 87 in east texas, not far from the louisiana border. the 28-year-old physical therapist was on his way to see a patient when his unreliable pickup truck broke down again. his wife, lauren, who was home with their two young sons immediately sent alfred's parents to get him. >> last time i called him, i just heard heavy breathing. he was in distress of some sort. he was not responding to anything that i was saying. >> reporter: his parents were still 20 minutes away and lauren was growing frantic, sending text after text. after 5:57, "trying to get to you,." "answer the phone." "please answer." and at 6:16, i said, "please answer," and that was after i had already heard him in distress of some sort. >> reporter: when his parents got to the store, they saw alfred's truck, but no sign of alfred. only the clerk behind the counter. >> i went in, asked her had she saw a clean-cut young black guy in scrubs. she told me that, yes, i saw him out on his cell phone by his truck. and all of a sudden, he put his cell phone in his sock, took off running, like the truck was going to blow up. >> reporter: the clerk did not want to be interviewed on camera by cnn, but told us that he left of his own free will, a phrase she repeated several times. did he have anything to be afraid of? >> no. >> did he have any enemies? >> not that i know of. >> reporter: alfred wright grew up in jasper and played college football. a musical family, his dad is a pastor and middle school gym teacher. his mom raised five children, including the youngest, savion, who tried out for "american idol." ♪ it's been a long, long, long time coming ♪ >> reporter: his family says alfred always seemed happy. >> alfred was a man of great faith. ♪ change gonna come >> he loved his family, very ambitious, very driven, very hard working. his work ethic was phenomenal. fun-loving and brilliant. >> reporter: so why would he run? especially alone in the texas woods, when he knew help was on the way. this part of sabine county is about a 45-minute drive from jasper, the town where more than 15 years ago, james bird jr. was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death by three white men. people who live in this area, black and white, say racial tension is always just beneath the surface and that things aren't always as they appear. which is why when alfred's watch and items of clothing turned up on a ranch near the liquor store where he was last seen, his family raced there to try to find him. his wife was the first to spot a piece of blue cloth, the same color as the medical scrubs alfred was wearing the last time she saw him. >> it was a perfectly rectangular piece of fabric, hanging from the barbed wire fence, and it was -- it was as if it was just cut perfectly. >> reporter: did it look like it had been put there, like it had been ripped off there? >> it definitely didn't look like it had been ripped off. >> reporter: for more than three days, sheriff's deputies searched the property where the belongings were discovered. the family's lawyer, ryan mcleod, says the sheriff's department told him specially trained dogs lost alfred's scent near a creek. >> if alfred's boy was there, it is incredible -- it's actually unimaginable to me that dogs would not have found his body. >> reporter: tom maddox is the sheriff of sabine county and he was on-scene during the search. >> can you show me the circumference of the area, show me that this whole circular piece here had been searched. he also told me that, numerous times, that if he was in the area, that he would -- they would find him. >> reporter: the sheriff's daughter and alfred wright were apparently friendly and knew each other through their health care jobs. so it came as a surprise to the wrights when, after four days, without warning, the sheriff abruptly called off the search, telling the family -- >> your son's just a missing person. my guys are tired, we've exhausted our resources and funds. we're done. >> reporter: done with the search and done with any investigation. the wrights say the sheriff concluded there was no foul play. even taking it a step further. the sheriff offered an explanation, that this was probably drug related, that he was probably having some hallucination that caused him to rip off his clothes, and so there was no foul play. does that sound like your husband? >> no, not at all. not at all. after they'd found the clothing and his watch, his i.d., they told me that there was still no evidence of foul play. >> reporter: did you believe that? >> no, i don't. >> reporter: alfred wright had been missing for 19 days, and with many questions and few answers, thanksgiving week, dozens of volunteers did their own search in the cold and rain. >> everybody, everybody come to me. come to me. and i knew the sound in his voice, that it was not good. it was not good. i remember asking, is it a body? and somebody said, yes. >> reporter: in an area of the ranch supposedly already searched by deputies was the body of alfred wright, found nearly three weeks after his truck broke down. >> when i first found him, when we found him, i walked up on him. and said, daddy, i knew you were going to find me. he was in this area and his feet were back here. he was neatly laid, he was neatly laid. >> reporter: wearing only boxer shorts, his shoes, and a single sock with his cell phone tucked inside, it wasn't just the position, but the condition of the body that also seemed strange. >> this is the first thing i noticed, how smooth his forearms and his back -- this is smooth. no scratches at all. >> reporter: but he was missing an ear, two front teeth, and his throat appeared cut. and in an echo of the sheriff's prediction, the coroner's toxicology report described alfred wright's body filled with drugs and ruled his death an overdose. the family had never seen alfred take drugs. they don't believe the report. and they don't believe that drugs explained the condition of alfred's body. knowing that the watch was found here, his clothes are found here, and then the body is found there, what does that lead you to think? >> it leads me to believe that there's a crime scene somewhere and the timing is of the utmost importance. every single day that goes by, evidence is lost or destroyed. >> reporter: based on what you know, what do you think happened to alfred wright? >> i think he was murdered. i really don't have a doubt. my question now, just like the family is, who did it? ♪ amen >> thank you, brother wright. >> a short time ago, i spoke to deborah feyerick, who's reporting this story from texas. d deborah, you mentioned drugs were found in his system, what kind of drugs? >> reporter: the coroner found a combination of three different drugs. cocaine, meth, and also amphetamines and concluded that the death was accidental and that it was caused by drug intoxication, anderson. >> in that coroner's report, did it indicate how long the drugs had been in his system? >> reporter: no, it did not. and that's a very big question that the family wants answered. they want to know whether or not those drugs entered alfred wright's system during his disappearance, and that's a big part of the investigation that the family wants answered. >> has the family done their own autopsy? >> reporter: the family hired an independent pathologist to look into this, and their pathologist reached a very different conclusion than the official autopsy, which found that the death was accidental. in fact, their pathologist said that it appeared alfred's death was caused by severe trauma to the neck and to the head area, and that included what appeared to be some sort of a cut, a gash, across his neck, anderson. >> so, i mean, was it -- the gash across his neck, what did the first autopsy find about that that differed from what the second autopsy said? >> reporter: well, the first autopsy made no mention of any sort of a slash or gash across his neck, but you look at some of the autopsy photos, and it is very clear that there is a very straight line that has been cut. the lawyers looked at the picture, the pathologist looked at the picture. the official autopsy said that whatever damage there was to the body was actually caused by animal activity. but we spoke to a couple of people who live out here. they say, if that body had been out in those woods for any length of time, that, in fact, the buzzards, the crows and other animals would have chewed it away to the bone. and that is not the type of decomposition or animal activity that was on the body when the body was found. >> so what was the local law enforcement said about why they stopped the search, about these discrepancies? have they made comment? what are they doing about it? >> reporter: well, we went and we spoke to the sheriff and you'll see that in our piece tomorrow. we spoke to the sheriff and the sheriff essentially said he had handed the investigation over to the texas rangers. now, he did hand the investigation over, but only a month after the body was found. he would not answer our questions as to why he called off the search after just four days. he would not even answer our question as to why he felt there was no foul play involved in this. but the texas rangers have taken over this case and they have called in the fbi to assist. the texas rangers, they say that this death is questionable and they're looking at the autopsy, anderson, as simply one part of a much larger investigation. >> deborah, we'll have more of that tomorrow night. thanks very much. as deb mentioned, we'll have part two of the investigation tomorrow night on "360." let us know what you think, follow us on twitter, tweet me using #ac360. could your next flight end the way this one did, on the run runway with a short landing. how they can get it so wrong. also later tonight, scammers keep trying to cash in on the newtown tragedy. hard to imagine, but we'll tell you about the latest alleged crook and why authorities want to talk to him. we're on his trail. i'm beth... and i'm michelle. and we own the paper cottage. it's a stationery and gifts store. anything we purchase for the paper cottage goes on our ink card. so you can manage your business expenses and access them online instantly with the game changing app from ink. we didn't get into business to spend time managing receipts, that's why we have ink. we like being in business because we like being creative, we like interacting with people. so you have time to focus on the things you love. ink from chase. so you can.