A Navy veteran who disappeared three years ago was found dead in his own apartment, and officials believe he was deceased the entire time. Ronald Wayne White, who would have been 51-years-old when he died in 2016, was discovered after his apartment complex began investigating units that had not been using any water. When workers broke down White's door, they found his body on the kitchen floor.
"When the medical examiner told me three years, my knees gave away. Three years? And that's what I can't get past in my brain. I can't get past three years," his mother Doris Stevens told WFAA-TV. "My biggest question is, how in the world could my son have been dead in that apartment, and nobody knows anything?"
After retiring from the Navy, White worked as a defense contractor, a job which required him to travel all over the world. Despite always being on the road, White always stayed in touch with his mother.
"My son would call me at least twice a month," Stevens said. "He would call me from Egypt. He would call me from the Philippines. He would call me right from Dallas."
Three years ago, he stopped calling her, and she became concerned when she couldn't get a hold of him on his birthday. She contacted the police but was told that they could not open a missing person case because he was an adult who traveled extensively as part of his job.
Police say that White had a month-to-month lease and that the money was automatically deducted from his Navy retirement fund. Officials have not determined his cause of death but not believe he was murdered.
"What I can tell you is it is very clear when officers entered that he had been there for a while," Pete Schulte, a detective with the DeSoto Police Department, said. "The way he was found, the way the apartment was arranged, and so forth, there was zero indication of foul play."