Shiner PD taps Texas EquuSearch to assist with cold case investigation

Shiner police recently brought in a renowned group of search volunteers to see if they couldn’t unearth any new leads in the local police department’s search for a man who went missing around Shiner more than two decades ago.
Shiner resident Thomas Flowers Jr. was just 31 when he was last seen around town, locals told police roughly 23 years ago.
He was described as a black male with black hair and brown eyes who stood about 5-foot-6 and weighed about 155 pounds. 
Beyond that information and a few very dated photographs, police didn’t have a whole lot to work with when family members called saying that Flowers had gone missing in July 2002 under mysterious circumstances.
Police Sgt. Chris Kalina took up the quest to find Flowers not long after he hired on with the Shiner Police Department in 2020. He’s spent countless hours, mostly during his off-time, chasing down every lead he came across. 
He’s since reinterviewed many of the original sources in the case, as well as spent many a day chasing what often turned out to be little more than another dead end.
Adding to the mystery was the fact that said call to the police department didn’t occur until April 2006, nearly four years after he is believed to have first gone missing.
Still, it was at that time, in 2006, that Kalina said he learned of a story going around that Flowers may in fact have been killed by a local man and later buried on a piece of property somewhere in Gonzales County, not far from the Shiner city limits.
According to Shiner PD records, Kalina says investigators followed up every lead—including the story about the alleged killing—interviewing everyone they thought might know something about the incident. They even talked to the alleged suspect at the time.
Still, none of it worked to substantiate any of the allegations made, Kalina said. Unable to find any new leads, Flowers’ case eventually went cold, like many such missing persons cases often do.
And it wasn’t just Shiner PD, either, Kalina added. Rather, the investigation has involved multiple agencies, including the Gonzales County Sheriff’s Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers.
Kalina began his own investigation into the cold case files not long after he started with Shiner PD, and has since devoted hundreds of hours to the case—most of those, on his own time—in hopes of finding the missing piece to the puzzle and bring some resolution to Flowers’ friends and family. 
Last month, Shiner PD brought in Tim Miller and his volunteers with Texas EquuSearch to see if they could help uncover some new information in the case that had long ago fallen cold.
Texas EquuSearch is a nonprofit volunteer search and recovery organization that assists law enforcement and family members find lost and missing persons, as well as murder victims.  Miller founded the organization in 2000, following the abduction and murder of his own daughter in 1984.
They’ve since grown to become one of the leading sources when it comes to outside search groups like theirs, and they’ve resolved many cases over the years, including several that, like Flowers’ case, had aged a good many years since anything new turned up.
Shiner PD recently got landowner consent to

search a Gonzales County property.  Members of the Shiner Police Department and Texas Rangers assisted Texas EquuSearch at the location.  
An advanced technology drone was used to map the property before specialized K-9 units and earth moving equipment were brought in, along with more than a dozen Texas EquuSearch experts and volunteers, who spent two days combing the property.
Since the case remains an active investigation with Shiner PD, Kalina said that he could not divulge any additional information about the case at this time. It is open and active, he assured, and he asked that anyone with direct knowledge or information about Flowers’ 2002 disappearance to please come forward.  
You can contact Sgt. Chris Kalina via email at chris.kalina@shinertexas.gov or call the Shiner PD at (361) 594-2831, with any relevant information. Texas EquuSearch also welcomed any tipsters in the case. They can be reached at (281) 309-9500.