The Mysterious Unsolved Disappearance of Sky Burnley

Sky Burnley refused to let his 94-year-old grandmother be put in a nursing home. It was 2016, and Sky was 27 years old. A young man, with a lot going on in his own life, but he loved his grandmother and didn’t want to see her put in a home.

Instead, he offered to take care of her himself.

Sky spent his days working in construction, and his evenings with his girlfriend and his grandmother.

Sky was such a thoughtful and caring young man, although he made some questionable choices a few years earlier.

Sky’s life hadn’t gone as planned. When he was younger, he dabbled with pills- specifically Xanax. A decision that landed him two years in jail.

At age 20, Sky was released, but his dream of joining the military was dashed. He now had a felony on his record and he had to come up with another plan. He fell into some odd jobs and often worked construction.

In June 2016, Sky’s exact movements have been a mystery to those who knew him.

In the early morning hours of June 4, 2016, authorities received a strange call.

A man said that someone had stolen his truck, and he and his girlfriend, along with Sky, went looking for it. However, they split up in the woods where they believed it was left, and Sky vanished.

The truck was found. But Sky was not.

Searches of the area turned up no sign of the young man either. Law enforcement believed the story was fishy because the immediate area showed no signs of Sky, and the man who called about his truck- well his story wasn’t adding up either.

Sky had completely disappeared.

Where is Joseph Skylar Burnley?

Joseph Skyler Burnley was born on October 18, 1988 to mother Stacy. He would be raised with his brother, who was just a year younger than him, and a younger sister who would be born nine years later.

From birth, he always went by his middle name Skyler, or more often, just Sky.

As a child, Sky was described as a friendly child, one who was friends with everyone.

Sky excelled in school and it came easy to him. He also grew up playing baseball and had a dream of becoming a high school teacher and coaching high school baseball someday.

In high school, Sky talked about joining the military. He wanted to enlist after graduation, before coming home to pursue his education to be a teacher and a coach.

But life had other plans for Sky.

At age 18, while leaving a fair, he was stopped by police officers. They searched him and found five Xanax pills on him. Sky did not have a prescription for these pills, and in 2016, this was a felony possession charge.

He was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison.

Those two years would change Sky’s life forever.

First, this completely derailed his plans to join the military. With a felony charge, he was told he was no longer eligible.

Secondly, Sky found himself in some dangerous situations in prison, and at just 18 years old, he wasn’t sure how to handle it.

When he was approached by the notorious prison gang, the Simon City Royals, while incarcerated, he had to make a decision. Another inmate told Sky if he didn’t join the gang, he’d become a target and his life would be in danger. Because of this, Sky became a member of the Simon City Royals gang.

The Simon City Royals are one of Mississippi’s largest- and most problematic- street and prison gangs.

After two years of being incarcerated, Sky was finally released at the age of 20. He would find various jobs, mostly construction type jobs, and tried to get on with his life.

But life with a felony wasn’t that easy. Jobs were hard to find, and his future dreams- including being a baseball coach- were completely dashed.

In the years after his release, a couple of things happened.

Sky took on the care for his grandmother so she wouldn’t have to go into a nursing home. He was close with her, and he couldn’t bear to see her go into a nursing home, which the family was discussing. With promises to look after her, she would continue to live in her home in Florence, Mississippi with Sky as her caregiver.

Because of this, he spent most evenings at home with her in Florence.

In 2015, Sky and his girlfriend became born-again Christians and joined a church. Sky read the bible every day and highlighted verses that were important to him.

Some who knew Sky would say that while he wasn’t ‘addicted’ to drugs, he did enjoy using them occasionally. Likely this was due to some of the company he kept.

The level to which he ‘dabble’ would be debated from person to person.

One afternoon, Sky was pulled over, although we don’t know the reason. An officer told him that his license was suspended, and he was taken from Brandon, Mississippi to Pearl, Mississippi.

Sky’s girlfriend said he was allowed to call a friend to come and get his truck. It wasn’t impounded, and she had to pay a $100 fine for Sky to be released. She said she paid in cash.

This was odd because Sky was under the impression that this license infraction had been cleared up and he paid all necessary fees. There would be cleared checks to demonstrate that.

Another oddity was that after Sky disappeared, his mother and family would inquire about this traffic stop and this fee, only to be told there was no record of such a stop and no record of a fee being paid.

It was as if it never happened.

THE DISAPPEARANCE.

The events leading up to June 4, 2016, for Sky are a bit of a mystery, and it’s important to note that the following account was provided by Travis Brewer.

Travis Brewer was a friend of Sky’s who often helped him work on his vehicles.

On the night of June 3, 2016, Sky was with Travis at his home on Cedar Brook Drive in Pearl, Mississippi. Travis lived with his girlfriend Amanda and their four-year-old daughter.

There would be another friend at the home that night, or at least, another acquaintance of Travis: A young man by the name of Matthew McCoy. Travis said Matthew took his truck without permission that night and wouldn’t return it.

With the help of his cell phone carrier, he was able to track the GPS on his cell phone, which Travis said he had left on the seat of the truck.

Late that night, Travis, Amanda, their daughter, and Sky got into Amanda’s vehicle and went off in search of Travis’ truck. They tracked it to a wooded patch in Rankin County, not far from Travis and Amanda’s house.

Travis and Sky got out of the truck and went off in search of the truck, splitting up to cover more ground. Travis said they had a general idea of where the truck was, but not exactly.

After a while, Travis returned to the vehicle. Amanda said their daughter was getting tired and she needed to put her to bed. Travis looked briefly for Sky, then decided to drive them home and go back for Sky.

When Travis got back to the wooded area, he said he looked all over for Sky but found no signs of him. He did find his truck, abandoned, and was able to get that back home later. It isn’t clear how he was able to do this- I presume with Amanda’s help.

Eventually, he went back home and told Amanda he couldn’t find Sky anywhere.

The next day, as the sun came up, Travis made the call to 911 to report that his truck had been stolen and his friend was now missing.

There will be some discrepancies on this report as we will soon learn.

Authorities responded to the scene and headed to the wooded area where Sky was allegedly last seen.

Joseph Skyler Burnley had disappeared.

THE SEARCH AND INVESTIGATION.

Law enforcement did go to the patch of woods to search for Sky. They searched on foot, using K9s and helicopters.

The woods aren’t that large and are surrounded on all sides by roads. Detectives were quick to note that some of Travis’s details didn’t make much sense.

For one, they weren’t able to understand how Travis tracked his truck. They couldn’t verify his story of using his cell carrier’s GPS to find its location.

It just seemed….odd.

The story turned up even more concern when Travis’ cell phone was found in a front yard down the street from his home. As if someone had tossed it out of the truck while driving it.

If the phone was in the front yard of this home, and Travis claimed to have not done that, how did he track his phone to the woods?

Authorities quickly questioned Travis’ story altogether.

Sky’s mother desperately tried to find her son also. She called everyone she could think of, and instinctively, she knew something was wrong. Mostly, she knew he would never leave his grandmother without telling him where he was going.

She spoke to Sky’s girlfriend, and she told her about the incident of being pulled over a couple of weeks earlier. It was odd, how it happened, and his mother wanted the details.

When she reached out to a detective about that incident, she learned there was no record of it at all.

There was no record of Sky being pulled over. There was no record of him being taken to the police station, and there was no record of the $100 cash she paid, which an officer had told her was necessary to clear up his fine for driving under a suspended license.,

Camera footage was found from the day it was believed Sky disappeared. It showed Sky, along with Travis, Amanda, and their daughter, at a gas station just down the road from Travis and Amanda’s home.

It showed nothing of significance and Sky seemed to be acting normal. It does verify that Sky had been with Travis and Amanda at some point.

It was this video that also led detectives to issue a description of Sky, which included what he was seen wearing- a baseball hat, short-sleeved yellow button-down shirt, and blue shorts.

With the information they had, law enforcement obtained search warrants for Travis and Amanda’s home. During that search, they found drug paraphernalia and were arrested. They were said to be less than forthcoming with detectives, especially when questioned about Sky.

Authorities thoroughly searched that entire patch of woods, several times, but never found any trace of Sky.

Finally, after expanding the search to cover over 400 nearby acres, they called off the search and announced that they were 100% sure that Sky was not there.

So where was he?

Rumors swirled in these small towns, and many of them were not good for Sky.

RANKIN COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI.

Sky’s story takes us to Rankin County, Mississippi.

Rankin County is located just east of Jackson, Mississippi, the state’s capital city. It is comprised of all the towns that Sky frequented in the days leading to his disappearance.

Sky lived in Florence, Mississippi with his grandmother. His friend Tyler lived in Pearl, Mississippi and he had been pulled over in that ‘driving under suspended license’ incident in Brandon, Mississippi.

All are located within the boundaries of Rankin County, Mississippi.

The entire county has a population of just over 150,000 residents.

With that all being noted, based on the surveillance footage at the gas station and Travis’ story, we can place Sky last in Pearl, Mississippi.

Pearl, Mississippi just north of Florence, and a few minutes drive to Jackson.

Travis told authorities that he and Sky had gone off in search of his truck, which he believed had been stolen, and were in a patch of woods off of Bridges Road, near Rankin Road.

This is a more rural area outside of the city, but also a corner of land that is surrounded by roads on all sides.

Bridges Road looks to be a dirt road, and pretty desolate.

But again, authorities not only searched that patch of woods, they also fanned out over 400 acres in the event that Sky wandered off and became injured.

They found nothing.

The area of Jackson, Mississippi has the highest crime rate in the state. Sky was also rumored to be still affiliated with the Simon City Royals prison gang, although his family believes he left that life behind him when he left prison.

Did the gang come after him for trying to leave? Did a rival gang become involved?

Or, could this be drug related?

The main theory in the case, however, points to a main person of interest. Travis Brewer.

Law enforcement has said they believe Travis, and likely Amanda, know more than they are saying and have remained persons of interest in Sky’s case.

Two years after Sky vanished, his mother received a call from a woman who claimed to have Skyler’s son. His mother was unaware he had a child and wasn’t sure what to believe. DNA tests were conducted however and confirmed the four-year-old boy, who was just two when Sky disappeared, was indeed Sky’s.

It’s unclear what Sky knew of the child, or how involved he may or may not have been.

What we do know, is that a young child does not have his father. A mother does not have her son. A brother and a sister are missing their oldest sibling.

A grandmother had to live out her days without her caretaker, her best friend, and her grandson.

Sky’s disappearance has affected many people and will continue to do so.

What do you think happened to Sky Burnley?

Sky is described as a Caucasian male, standing 5’9” and weighing around 160 pounds when he was last seen in June 2016. He was 27 years old then and would today be 36.

He was last seen wearing a short-sleeved yellow button-down shirt, blue shorts, and a baseball cap. Sky has short brown hair and hazel eyes. He also has several tattoos on his arms and chest.

Anyone with any information on the whereabouts of Sky Burnley is asked to contact the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office at 601–825–1480.