{"id":11654,"date":"2026-05-21T15:11:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T15:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-disappearance-of-bill-roland\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T15:11:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T15:11:49","slug":"the-disappearance-of-bill-roland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-disappearance-of-bill-roland\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disappearance of Bill Roland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>When Bill Roland went missing from Lake Sam Rayburn in 1997, nothing about the case made sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>His truck, boat, and trailer were missing, but there was no sign of a struggle at his lake house. Searches of the surrounding woods turned up empty, and his family and friends said he&#8217;d never leave without telling anyone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Weeks later, his boat turned up hidden in a cove, shot multiple times with a shotgun in an apparent attempt to sink it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>His truck was found burned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>His trailer was somewhere else entirely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Investigators were left to piece together a puzzle with missing parts: a fisherman who may have had no enemies\u2026 or more than anyone realized.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Was this a random encounter on the water or something that started long before he ever launched his boat?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Got a tip about this case or know about another you think we should cover? Send us an email at <strong>bloodtrails@themeateater.com<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themeateater.com\/listen\/blood-trails-case-files\/the-disappearance-of-bill-roland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Bill Roland went missing from Lake Sam Rayburn in 1997, nothing about the case made sense. His truck, boat, and trailer were missing, but there was no sign of a struggle at his lake house. Searches of the surrounding woods turned up empty, and his family and friends said he&#8217;d never leave without telling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.ctfassets.net\/pujs1b1v0165\/2Al5EnigZxpsNMwYY0rHAL\/419783f6d05b4297f0fed1342a77a26a\/roland_feature.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hunting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11656,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11654\/revisions\/11656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}