This is not a single case, but a pair of missing persons cases linked by one crucial factor–one crucial person, to be specific. Two young men vanished three months apart in Naples, Florida while in the company of the same Sheriff’s Department deputy. The first man was 23 year old Felipe Santos, who disappeared in October of 2003. Despite his family’s efforts to find out what happened to him, his case may well have been forgotten about if were not for the vanishing of Terrance Williams in January of 2004. The thing that linked them was that they were both last seen getting into the police cruiser of deputy Steven Calkins. All of the theories that I will be presenting here circle back to Calkins and whatever he is not saying.
Somewhat uncharacteristically, I will disregard chronological order and start with the January 12th, 2004 disappearance of Terrance Williams. It would be the investigation into his vanishing that would uncover the suspicious details in the Felipe Santos disappearance. Terrance Williams was 27 years old and the father of four children, including his young son Tarik with whom he was close. He had been an only child and he was also close to his mother, Marcia Williams, and his stepfather, Bug Williams. He was born on January 17th, 1976, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and had spent much of his life in that state. He had moved down to Florida to be closer to his mother and stepfather, whom Tarik was also living with. Williams had not been on the best terms with the law. At the time of his disappearance, he had no driver’s license due to a 2001 DUI. He was also behind on child support, and been in prison for robbery at one point. In January of 2004, he was living with a roommate and working two jobs, including one at a local Pizza Hut. On the evening of January 11th, he told his roommate that he was going to a house party with some coworkers and would be gone all night. On the morning after the house party, he left around 6:00 am in his white Cadillac. He was scheduled to work a 10:00 am shift at Pizza Hut that day.
After a few days of not hearing from Williams, his roommate got a hold of Marcia Williams, who immediately became concerned about her son. She contacted several members of her extended family in the area, and then she did something which I think was very clever. She began calling Naples tow yards in search of Williams’ white Cadillac. Sure enough, the Cadillac turned up in the yard of Coastland Towing Company, but there was no hint as to what had happened to Williams. From the company, she learned that the Cadillac had been towed from Naples Memorial Gardens cemetery and that the tow order had been signed by Deputy Steven Calkins. Marcia contacted the Collier County Sheriff’s Department, which had a record of Calkins radioing that he was having an abandoned car towed at 12:27 pm on the 12th, but no further information about Williams whereabouts. Since Calkins was not working that day, the dispatcher contacted him at home to clarify the story. Calkins acted as if he had no recollection of Williams or the Cadillac, and told the dispatcher, “I’ll have to think about that one…I’ll have to check my notes.”
As it happened, the entire scene had been witnessed by three men working at the cemetery where Calkins had “found” the Cadillac. The events they described were considerably more detailed, and involved direct interaction between Steven Calkins and Terrance Williams. According to their account, these events happened between 9:30 and 10:00 am rather than the 12:27 time initially given by Calkins. They saw the patrol car pull over the Cadillac in the cemetery parking lot, and a man presumed to be Williams get out and speak with Calkins. Then Williams got in the back of the patrol car, and Calkins drove away. Approximately 45 minutes later, Calkins returned alone, moved the Cadillac to the side of the road and dropped the keys on the ground near the driver’s side door.
This was enough for Terrance Williams’ family to lodge a formal complaint against the sheriff’s department, and for Internal Affairs to begin investigating Steven Calkins. It was at this juncture that a particularly disturbing piece of information came to light. There had been another complaint against Calkins, one that had been recently cleared due to lack of evidence of wrongdoing on his part. This complaint involved an eerily similar set of circumstances.
Shortly before 7:00 am on October 14th, 2003, a 23 year old man named Felipe Santos was driving to the masonry company where he worked with two other men, including one of his brothers. He got into a fender-bender with another driver, Camille Lach, who then called the police. Although he had lived in Florida for three years, Santos was originally from Mexico and was undocumented. As a result, he had no driver’s license or registration. Deputy Steven Calkins showed up on the scene, and according to Camille, he seemed agitated and made a comment about how he was “sick of these types of situations.” Santos was cited for driving without a license, driving without registration, and reckless driving. Calkins then put him in the back of the cruiser and drove away. Camille had a flat tire from the accident, and had to wait for a friend to pick her up for work. I bring this up because Calkins later claimed that she was gone by the time he left the scene with Santos, but she insists she was still waiting for a ride when they left.
Later that day, Santos’ brother and his work supervisor arrived at the county jail to bail him out, under the impression that he had been arrested. However, Santos was not there and there was no record of him being in police custody that day. In addition to his brothers, Santos also had a fiancée and an infant daughter living in Naples, and his family began searching for him. He also had family members living in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, and the Mexican Embassy would eventually become involved in the mystery as to what had happened to him. The search quickly circled back to the Collier County Sheriff’s Department and Steven Calkins, the last person known to have seen Santos. This led to the first investigation into Deputy Calkins’ conduct, the one that had concluded just before the one dealing with Terrance Williams’ disappearance began. Nothing could be proven during the Felipe Santos investigation, and so investigators were forced to take Calkins’ statements at face value. According to his account, he did not want Santos to be able to get back into his car, so he drove him to a nearby Circle K and dropped him off there to use a payphone.
Felipe Santos has never re-surfaced, even though one of the citations required a court appearance. Another mystery would emerge when the citations were examined. All three required a full signature from Santos. Although his middle name was Maximino, it reads like “Maximo” on the first two citations, and like “Medino” on the last one. This one appears to be the least legible of all three-you can see the pictures in the CNN article linked below–and it did not resemble his known handwriting. Strangely, it was ultimately ruled out as being Steven Calkins’ handwriting as well. I will return to this detail when I discuss my own conclusions.
At the request of the Sheriff’s Department, Calkins wrote a report on the Terrance Williams incident, the one he initially claimed not to be able to remember. Now, he said that he had in fact encountered Williams on the road by the cemetery. He appeared to be having car trouble, so Calkins pulled him over into the cemetery parking lot. Williams then told Calkins his car had been acting up, and that he was running late for work. Calkins told him to get a cab, but Williams said he could not afford one, so Calkins gave him a ride to the place he said he wanted to go–a Circle K on Williams Road. This was not the same Circle K where Calkins claimed to have dropped off Felipe Santos, but it still seems like quite the coincidence. Just as in the case of Felipe Santos, Calkins’ claim is not particularly well-supported. Williams’ stepfather reviewed some of the CCTV footage from the Circle K for that morning, and saw no sign of his stepson. The claim about Williams asking Calkins for a ride also rang false for those that knew him, as he typically gave law enforcement a wide berth, being that he was a Black man who had a minor criminal record. Lastly, the car that Calkins claimed was malfunctioning seemed to be working just fine. Williams’ stepfather drove it away from the tow lot without any trouble, and the cemetery workers did not recall the Cadillac showing any signs of distress.
Calkins went on to say that as he was dropping Williams off at the Circle K, he told him that the Cadillac’s tags were expired. Williams assured him that all the up-to-date materials were in the glove box. When Calkins returned to the Cadillac, he found that Williams had “misled” him and that all the materials in the car were in fact expired. He then said he called the Circle K “from a phone book” and asked to speak to Williams, and was told that he did not actually work there. He then returned to the store to look for Williams and confront him about the expired tags. Finding no trace of him, he returned to the Cadillac, moved it, and called Coastland Towing to have it picked up (he had the tow report sent to his own home rather than the Sheriff’s Department, as would normally have been the case).
Calkins notified dispatch about finding the Cadillac and having it towed at 12:27 pm. He contacted the dispatcher two more times after that, once at 12:49 pm and once at 1:12 pm. In the first call he asked for a VIN check on the Cadillac and in the second he asked for a background check on Williams, giving his full name and his birthdate as April 1st, 1975. This would become a major point of contention in the ensuing investigation, because the date given was not Terrance Williams’ actual date of birth. It was a false birthdate that he habitually gave to law enforcement to avoid his past legal problems. His family knew about this habit, but it was not recorded on any official documentation pertaining to him. The only way Calkins could have known it is if Williams told him. When I first started investigating this case, I did not understand why this point was focused on when there was so much else that was suspicious about Calkins’ account of events. After all, Calkins could simply have asked Williams for this information when he first spoke with him in cemetery parking lot, and then remembered it later. However, if this were the case, Calkins could have simply said this. Instead he became strangely evasive about it during the investigation into Williams’ disappearance, as we shall see.
The Terrance Williams Investigation
The They Disappeared podcast did a comprehensive series of episodes on the missing Naples men, and included some audio recordings of Internal Affairs investigators questioning Steven Calkins. Much of the questioning took the form of polygraph testing. As has been discussed ad nauseum, polygraphs are unreliable and not admissible in court. However, these recordings are interesting because they show the routes of inquiry Internal Affairs was pursuing and how Calkins was responding to them. I am discussing them not as polygraph results but as another type of evidence that we can analyze. During at least some of the questioning, Calkins was said to be reading directly from his own report on the incident. The questioning revealed further discrepancies between his account and the statements given by the cemetery workers. According to Calkins, the encounter with Williams took place shortly before he called for the tow truck at 12:27 pm, and that this interaction was no more than five minutes long. However, the cemetery workers described it as happening closer to 9:30 or 10:00 am, which is more consistent with the fact that Williams’ shift at Pizza Hut started at 10:00. There was also no record of Calkins having made calls to the Circle K. In fact, the store did not even have a listed phone number at the time, making it unlikely that he would even have known how to contact it.
There were other things that stood out to me and have stood out to virtually anyone that has ever looked into the case. Although Calkins initially described both of the missing men in positive terms, he can be heard in the audio recordings referring to the them as “scumbags.” At one point he says that he wishes Williams’ family had come to him first for answers, rather than appealing to the Sheriff’s Department. He says that he would have been happy to speak with them initially, but adds “now I’m angry.” He also made a comment about hoping that “nothing bad” had happened to Williams. When asked to clarify, he said that he hoped Williams had not gotten himself into a bad situation because he thought Calkins was after him. He also gave some strange responses when asked whether he was using his car radio or his Nextel phone to communicate with dispatch, which I will explain in more detail in a later section. Investigators zeroed in on whether or not Calkins had any contact with Williams after allegedly dropping him off at the Circle K. Calkins can be heard laughing awkwardly after some of his responses, but when the questions persist, he does a lot of exasperated sighing before his denials and develops a much colder tone. When the question about how he knew Williams “birthdate” came up, he became cagey, first saying he was unable to remember and then implying that there are multiple ways he could have come by the information. If he had simply asked Williams for this information up front, this would be the time for Calkins to say so, and yet he does not.
At one point, an investigator asked Calkins if they were going to find the remains of the men “the way they keep finding bodies along Immokalee Road”. What he is referring to are the three sets of human remains discovered along a road running through Collier County, one that will show up on maps concerning the double disappearance. These remains had all been recovered in the ten months prior to the Terrance Williams investigation. Two of them remain unidentified to this day, and the third belonged to a man named Sergio Guerrero. Like Felipe Santos, Guerrero was an undocumented migrant from Mexico. He had been working several jobs and was last seen by his wife on or around April 20th of 2003. According to one rumor, Guerrero had been worried about owing money to an employer when he vanished. His body, which had a gunshot wound to the skull, was found very close to one of the unidentified sets of remains and only about a mile down the road from the Circle K where Calkins claims to have dropped off Felipe Santos. Guerrero had somewhat of an alcohol problem and had his share of run-ins with the law, but there has never been any evidence linking him directly to Calkins.
The Nextel Phones
On January 12th, 2004, Steven Calkins would have had two possible ways to communicate from his police cruiser–his car radio, and a Nextel phone. It was against Sheriff’s Department Policy for officers to use the Nextel phones while on patrol (I am unclear on what exactly they were supposed to be used for, but evidently Calkins used his Nextel in a capacity he was not supposed to that day). He claimed that he used it to contact dispatch because the radio was so often tied up with communications. Yet this is another point on which Calkins became strangely evasive and reluctant to give a straight answer. Some have speculated that Calkins did this in order to avoid having a record of radio communications. I also think it worth noting that Calkins could use the Nextel phone even if he was not in or near his cruiser at the time.
The Timelines
Right from the beginning there has been a question as to how Calkins could have done something nefarious to Felipe Santos, then to Terrance Williams, without being noticeably absent from his professional duties. Both the They Disappeared podcast and the CNN article go into detail about all of Calkins known activities on October 14th 2003 and January 12th 2004. I will do my best to summarize this information for the reader. I should preface this by saying that investigators were able to get some location data from the GPS tracker on the cruiser. I also learned that Calkins would have had access to his cruiser when not on duty, although I am uncertain if this would have had any effect on being able to track it.
Let’s start with the timeline for October 14th 2003. The car accident involving Felipe Santos and Camille Lach was logged at 6:55 am. According to the statements of both Lach and Santos’ brother, Calkins left the scene with Santos at approximately 7:05 am. Calkins said he went to a 7:30 am meeting at the Sheriff’s Department substation, but this is not confirmed by any official records. From 7:59 am until 8:19 pm, Calkins reported that he was doing “extra patrol” near Naples Park Elementary. According to a dispatcher, this meant that he would not be dispatched elsewhere during this time, and no one was likely to check on him. In short, it was the perfect task for keeping whereabouts and activity vague. At 8:53 am, Calkins was present at the local hospital to take a statement. The records for that day stop at 11:19 am, and it is unclear why. Calkins may have only worked a half-day, but nowhere is that specified.
Moving on to January 12th 2004, Calkins started his shift at 7:00 am. He claimed to have written two citations over the course of the day, one at 9:50 am and the other at 1:54 pm. However, there are some problems with corroborating this. The citation numbers do not actually match the date or times that Calkins gave–the first corresponded with a ticket written five days earlier, and the second with one that was written the day after Terrance Williams disappeared. There was also a citation issued at 10:03 am at a location variously described as “near the cemetery” or “near Airport.” In the latter case, it is not clear if the “Airport” referred to the road by that name or the actual location at which airplanes take off and land. After this, there was no further confirmed activity from Calkins until his 12:27 call about towing the Cadillac and checking the VIN number. Calkins did not respond to any calls between 1:01 pm and 1:54 pm, and the only documented activity from his end was the 1:12 call to request a background check on Williams. Calkins was confirmed to have responded to a call later in the afternoon at 2:51 pm. In the audio tapes of the Internal Affairs investigation, there is a more detailed description of Calkins’ calls and radio activity. Here I am laying out the main points regarding the activities for which there is some independent verification.
Professional and armchair investigators alike have attempted to use Calkins’ known physical locations on January 12th to narrow down the possibilities of what happened that day, as well as where and when it happened. Ken Mains, who hosts the channel Unsolved No More on Youtube, pointed out that the cemetery workers saw Calkins leave and then return to the Cadillac approximately 45 minutes later. Obviously these types of eyewitness accounts cannot be treated as exact–after all, I doubt the workers were just standing around noting the time in case the police cruiser returned–but this window of time may be backed up by another source. When investigators examined the cruiser’s tracking device, there was a 45 minute window of time in which the car’s movements could not be accounted for by Calkins’ known activities. I have some questions about how exactly this tracking device worked and what it recorded–I am puzzled, for instance, by the implication that it could record time or distance traveled, but nothing that could point to the cruiser’s location. Based on this information alone, there is no way of telling if the 45 minute gap corresponded with the time between Calkins leaving and returning to the cemetery (and thus the window of time in which Terrance Williams vanished). Still, I found this to be worth noting. On the episode covering this case, Ken Mains also estimated that whatever happened to Williams had to happen in a roughly 23 mile radius from the cemetery in order for Calkins to leave, deposit him, and return.
Steven Calkins
At this point we need to turn our attention to the question of who, exactly, was Steven Calkins? A cursory glance at what is known about his background and personal life do not give us much insight as to what might have happened to the two men known to have vanished while in his custody. He grew up in Ottawa, Illinois, and worked on the family farm through high school. A former classmate remembered him as being “decent” and “non-descript.” For a few years after completing school, he worked as a security guard at a power plant. One ex-girlfriend, who was in a relationship with him for two or three years, described him as “funny, honest, caring, and compassionate.” She never remembered him displaying any alarming or disproportionate anger. Their relationship ended when he moved to Florida in 1987. Calkins already had a brother and sister living in the state, and he wanted to pursue a career with a better future than farming. As far as I have been able to tell, all of his law enforcement training happened after relocating to Naples. At some point he married, and had three children with his wife. One interviewee in NPR’s The Last Ride Podcast described his career with the Sheriff’s Department as “bland” with little that stood out as unusual. In fact, he had no arrests between 2002 and 2004, when his career ended. The interviewee explained that this may have been due to his becoming a senior deputy and assigning more of the routine paperwork to juniors. Most of his coworkers got along well with him, and he was not known to use violence against offenders, even in situations were it arguably would have been justified. There were few, if any, citizen complaints about his conduct. There is a record of him receiving counseling in 2000 for a non-specified “unprofessional attitude towards citizens” problem. In one of his performance reviews, he did mention that he was looking forward to getting away from “road patrol.”
Some of his colleagues, however, did relay things about Calkins which are more disturbing in the context of later events. Some believed he had “lost faith” in the ability of the law to make a meaningful difference in the community. When asked, a former colleague said he did think that Calkins held racist beliefs about Black and Latino people, especially those caught without driver’s licenses or vehicle insurance. This is corroborated by the fact that he used some racist phrasing when calling in the tow, referring to the vehicle as a “homy Cadillac.” In fact, he seemed particularly irked when anyone drove illegally. “…anybody that had no driver’s license or insurance pissed him off,” the colleague recalled. The same colleague went on to make a strange comment: “I tell you, if Steve was capable and did do it, he would definitely make sure the body would never be found.” This may have meant nothing more than that law enforcement experience makes it easier for someone to conceal crimes, but that remark really stuck with me when I was doing my research.
Although not enough could be proven to charge Calkins with anything in relation to the disappearances of the two men, he was fired from his job for his unprofessional tone when calling in about the Cadillac, for lying to the dispatcher about not being able to remember Williams, and for using his Nextel phone. After being let go by the Sheriff’s Department, Calkins began working for UPS, where he remained until 2013. That career, too, ended on a somewhat dramatic note, although this time not tainted with the suspicion of homicide. Apparently, Calkins quit his job abruptly after an angry verbal dispute with a supervisor. Calkins and his wife later moved out of Florida, and were last known to be living in Iowa. As of now, no additional crimes or missing persons cases have been linked to him.
There is one last thing of note about Steven Calkins’ past that merits attention. While employed as a deputy, he had been known to give people rides to various places in his cruiser. These were under completely benign circumstances, and he even received thank you notes from some of the people he assisted. Still, it does suggest that giving rides in a non-official capacity was not at all out of character for him.
Further Investigation
While the investigation into the disappearances of Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams could be faulted for being slow to get off the ground, the later stages were thorough. The areas to which Calkins could reasonably have traveled were searched, as was a local marina and lake. At one point during his questioning, Calkins had mentioned that he “may have” stopped by the marina in the early afternoon on January 12 to speak to someone he knew that worked there, which prompted the search. His police cruiser was examined, although the fact that it was not examined until March 30th of 2004 may have rendered any evidence found as irrelevant. The only item of note was a very small amount of female blood on the front seat, which could not have come from Santos, Williams, or Calkins. After Calkins and his wife moved to Iowa, the backyard of his home was searched with the permission of the new owners. A cadaver dog alerted near a concrete patio, and so the area was excavated. All that turned up were a few pieces of electrical wire and scraps torn from a plastic bag.
Theories and Analysis
There have been several theories as to why Calkins might have chosen to harm Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams. Doug Malloy, an assistant US attorney who led an investigation into the disappearances, said that he was looking at them as “possible hate crimes.” I do think that the ethnicity and social status of Felipe and Terrance might well have played a role in what happened to them, but I do not think these are “hate crimes” per se. Crimes motivated entirely by racial hatred tend to be more overt and demonstrative. They are intended to be attacks not only against the individual but the entire target community, and are designed to shock and instill fear in witnesses. If the missing men in these cases were in fact murdered, they were murdered in such a way that no trace of them has ever been found, and they might well have vanished without so much as a ripple if their families had not been so persistent. So, regardless of how Calkins personally felt about Black or Latino people, I think any crimes he may have committed were done for reasons beyond sharing these feelings with the world.
There is also the possibility of a sexual motive. After all, if Santos and Williams had been women, this would be the default assumption. There is no evidence at all that Calkins had any sexual interest in men, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If there is any substance to this theory, it seems unlikely that Calkins would only have used his authority to take sexual advantage of these two people. In that case, a more plausible interpretation is that he had done this before, perhaps many times, but that something went “wrong” with these two victims and the abuse escalated into murder. It is true that no one has ever come forward claiming to have been attacked by Calkins in this way, but it is entirely possible that someone in that situation would be afraid to speak out. Also, there is a lot of stigma about sexual assault, particularly when the victims are adult men, making such claims less likely.
One popular theory that is often brought up in discussions on this case is the starlight tour theory. To summarize briefly, this refers to a practice in which someone is taken out into the middle of nowhere and abandoned there, being then forced to walk back to shelter. This theory runs into some of the same problems as the one discussed above. If Calkins did something like this to Santos and Williams, he most likely did this to other people as well, and no has ever come forward to say that it happened. Also, as Ken Mains points out in his video on this case, both men were young and healthy, and less likely to perish of accident or exposure than the average person. I should still note that the geography surrounding Naples does place this theory well within the realm of possibility. South and east of the town is the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and the Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area, all or which make up the northernmost edge of a vast, largely undeveloped area that eventually becomes the Florida Everglades.
Another possibility I want to discuss is based on a minor but persistent bit of evidence, that being Calkins’ reported hostility towards unlicensed or unregistered drivers. Even when on good terms with his superiors, he had mentioned that he was tired of traffic policing. In a later exit interview, he said he was “burnt out” during the last years of his career. There is the testimony of the coworker saying that he was angered by anyone driving illegally. There are the statements of Camille Lach, who claimed to witness Calkins’ expressing open frustration with “these types of situations,” presumably referring to Felipe Santos not having a license or registration.
Is anger over an absent or expired driver’s license a ridiculous motive for murder? Yes, without doubt, but that does not mean it did not happen. In Steven Calkins’ case, it may be the most well-supported evidence we have as to why he might have harmed Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams when and how he did. This leads to some further speculation on my part: if Calkins did do something to both men that resulted in fatal harm, I am not entirely certain that was his original intent when he put them in the back of his cruiser. Maybe he was initially intending to leave them somewhere, as described in the starlight tour theory, or maybe he planned to beat each man up to “teach him a lesson”, and things went too far. The reason I entertain this theory is that there were witnesses to both incidents. In the case of Felipe Santos, it most likely would have been obvious that his two passengers knew him and would notice if he vanished. I suspect he did target people that he believed might not have the highest level of community support (hence the reason I do not think that the missing men’s ethnicities/citizenship statuses were irrelevant) but I do not believe he was completely blind to the implications of being the last one seen with a missing person. By the time of Terrance Williams’ disappearance, he would already have been through the investigation into the disappearance of Felipe Santos, so he may have gone through the charade of having the car towed and radioing it in to give an air of legitimacy to the incident in case it came up again.
What to make of the mystery of Felipe Santos’ signatures? If there are indicators that Santos did not sign the citations, but no evidence that Calkins forged his signature, where does that leave us? Based strictly on those parameters, the only explanation is that Calkins got someone else to sign the citations, whether or not that person knew what had happened to Santos. However, I think the explanation may be simpler than this. I have not seen Santos’ known signature, but I would like to posit the possibility that he did in fact sign the citations himself, but that he was rushed or under some kind of duress at the time, hence the middle name appearing incorrect and the last signature being particularly sloppy. While this may mean nothing at all, it could point to a situation in which Calkins was forcing Santos to sign his name.
In the above sections of this article, I referenced the possible significance of Calkins using the Nextel phone rather than the car radio. One interpretation of this is that Calkins could have parked his cruiser at one location and traveled on foot to another, then used to his Nextel phone. The implication is that Calkins could have gotten out of the car with Terrance Williams and forced him to walk to a more isolated place before using the phone to attempt to glean more information about Williams and his vehicle. It could have been during this time that Williams told him the false birthdate. If Calkins suspected that Williams was lying to him, he may have wanted to do the checks to attempt to confront him with the truth. Alternatively, he could have wanted to get an idea of how many people would be looking for Williams if he were to disappear. Now, there is one major problem with this whole theory: if Williams got into Calkins’ cruiser between 9:30 and 10:00 am, and the calls did not come into dispatch until 12:49 and 1:12 pm respectively, then where was Williams between 10:00 and 12:49? If he was alive and in Calkins’ company in the early afternoon, he would had to have been kept somewhere where Calkins could find him again until that point. While not impossible, this does strain credibility for me, and it may indicate that whatever happened to Williams happened during Calkins’ 45 minute absence. In that case, the use of the Nextel phone may simply have been to keep anyone else listening from hearing him talk about Terrance Williams. He could have learned the false birthdate from Williams at some point during their interaction that morning, and his evasive attitude about learning the birthday at some point after dropping Williams of at the Circle K could have centered around the fact that he likely never took him to the Circle K at all.
Below, I have included links to maps of the areas where each of the missing men was last seen. I did some measuring to see where Calkins could have gone during the intervals he was unaccounted for. In the Santos case, the timeline is somewhat nebulous, depending on whether or not he actually attended the 7:30 am meeting at the sub-station. If he never went there, he could have driven 50 miles or more from the intersection where Santos got into his car before returning to take a statement at the hospital. However, I must admit that claiming he was there when he was not is a bold lie even with what we know Calkins to be capable of. There could have been records, or even surviving security footage showing who attended, and Calkins would have been noted as present or absent by several people that knew him. If he did attend the meeting, that only gives him an approximately 12 mile radius with which to work in before returning. However, even if we accept this version of events, the time and distance limit would not necessarily prevent someone from committing murder and disposing of a body, provided they did so quickly. It would only have been a driving distance 7 miles to the Marina Bay Club of Naples, where there appear to be several branching bodies of water ( I am not sure if this is the same marina Calkins mentioned during the Terrance Williams investigation and that was later searched). The Delmer-Wiggins Pass State Park is only 3.5 miles west of the intersection, and someone could reach the NGALA Wildlife Preserve by driving 11 miles southeast.
The timeline of the Williams disappearance is more tightly documented, and I will use the 45 minute time gap/23 mile radius from the cemetery as previously mentioned. The Florida coast is less then a mile due west of Naples Memorial Gardens although the area likely would have been busy during the daytime. Heading 23 miles north of the cemetery would take someone almost to Cape Coral, and close to the Caloosahatchee River, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. This route also travels past the Estero Bay Preserve State Park. Someone could reach the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary by traveling west, while taking I-75 southeast would take them to the Picayune Strand State Forest. Traveling due south from Naples would bring someone to the Coastal Sand Hill State Park.
My overall point here, to be blunt, is that Naples, Florida is not the worst place to be for someone needing to hide a human body. Especially for someone familiar with the area. The heat, humidity, seasonal flooding, and wildlife for which south Florida is known would diminish the likelihood of that body ever being found.
The families of Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams miss their loved ones and want answers as to what happened to them. Santos’ family members have spoken about wanting to give him a proper burial, as a son, brother, father, and husband-to-be. Williams’ mother and stepfather have also been tireless in their pursuit for the truth. In 2018, Marcia Williams filed a wrongful death suit against Calkins, which was ultimately dismissed due to lack of evidence. The dual cases remain at a standstill, getting colder and in desperate need of the missing pieces of information.
Anyone with information about the disappearance of Felipe Santos and/or Terrance Williams is encouraged to contact the Collier County Sheriff’s Office at 800-780-8477.
The Deputy and the Disappeared
THEY DISAPPEARED Podcast “Conduct Unbecoming”
The Darker Side of Life Podcast
Were Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos Starlighted? True Crime Stories
Tyler Perry Offers $200K Reward In Two Florida Missing Persons Cases
Naples Memorial Gardens Location (Terrance Williams last seen)
Immokalee and Airport-Pulling Intersection (Felipe Santos last seen)
L.R. Gordan's Crime Writing 
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