Travis Wendell Burley is a young man who disappeared from Baltimore, Maryland on April 1, 2002. It is believed that his gang member friends were responsible for his disappearance and presumed homicide.
Background[]
Travis Burley was born on June 29, 1982 to Elenora McCutcheon, a single mother working as a custodian and grew up in West Baltimore. He dropped out of Southern High School and had an arrest record starting when he was sixteen. He became involved in the Lexington Terrace Boys, a local violent street gang involved in "kidnapping, witness tampering, car thefts, cocaine sales and arson carried out with large-caliber guns." Between a five-year-span, they committed at least forty shootings and killed five people. He had two older brothers, David and Kevin, and both were killed in separate killings. David's 1990 homicide remains unsolved while the killer in the Kevin's 1996 homicide was killed in a gun fight.
According to McCutcheon, Burley was starting to straighten his life after she threatened to kick him out of the house. He had a job interview scheduled the week he disappeared. He also had a son, who Burley's mother said it would be uncharacteristic for him to abandon. He also had his brother's funeral programs pinned in his bedroom and spent his time raising pigeons in a small pen and goldfish in a large tank.
However, Burley told his mother he feared for his safety and planned to buy a gun to protect himself, and that if anything happened to him one of his friends was probably responsible. Burley and a distant cousin, Michael Lafayette Taylor, had a falling out because Burley refused to get rid of a .44 caliber revolver which Taylor, also a member of the Lexington Terrace Boys, had supposedly used in at least two homicides.
Disappearance[]
Burley was last seen leaving his mother's home in the 2900 block of Southland Avenue in Baltimore. He left in a green minivan with Taylor in it and has never been heard from again. Authorities found bloody footprints and blood spatters on the floor and walls in a row house on North Caroline Street, which led them to believe Burley was killed there. Four days later, the residence was set on fire.
In 2002, a federal grand jury investigation led by the US Attorney's Office was conducted by federal agents and city detectives against the Lexington Terrace Boys. Taylor, Keon D. Moses, Aaron Demarco Foster, and presumably other gang members were arrested for multiple crimes, including six homicides, one of them being Burley's. One the other gang members, Aaron Butler, reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and testified against his partners in crime in exchange for a life sentence.
In 2004, Taylor and Moses were convicted on all counts, including the six murder charges. They were each facing the death penalty, but were sentenced to life in prison without parole instead.
At the time, McCutcheon would walk around the neighborhood looking for her son. She asked his friends and checked vacant buildings, but she couldn't find anything to help her learn what happened to him. Police speculate his body was most likely either hidden in the trunk of a car and disposed of or was left in an abandoned spot inside the city or buried in a park.
Characteristics[]
- Black hair.
- Brown eyes.
- Healed gunshot wound to the right thigh.
