True Crime Chronicles: Recent arrests cools off 12-year-old cold case out of Pittsburg County
- Dennis McCaslin
- May 31, 2025
- 2 min read
Barbara Durant, a resident of McAlester, was 54 years old when she was last seen on July 9, 2012, in the Jackfork Mountains.
She was reportedly living with a man in a home in Dow, east of McAlester, along US Highway 270. Her disappearance was deemed suspicious, and on September 28, 2012, the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Office requested the assistance of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) to investigate.
Despite extensive efforts by OSBI special agents and Pittsburg County deputies, Durant could not be located at the time. She was entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center as an endangered missing person in October 2012.
On February 1, 2020, hunters discovered skeletal remains in a creek three miles east of Hartshorne on Highway 1, near the border of Pittsburg and Latimer Counties. The Latimer County Sheriff’s Office requested OSBI’s assistance to investigate.
The remains were sent to the Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which identified them as Barbara Durant’s on February 4, 2020. An autopsy determined that her
cause of death was a gunshot wound, confirming the case as a homicide.
The OSBI, in collaboration with Pittsburg County investigators, continued to investigate Durant’s death after the identification of her remains. By October 2024, the investigation led to the identification of two suspects: Mary Ballard, 68, and Billy Thomason, 49.
Both were charged with first-degree murder on October 25, 2024, through the Pittsburg County District Attorney’s Office.
Mary Ballard was arrested in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, where she had been living for several years.
Billy Thomason was already in custody in an Oklahoma prison, serving a 15-year sentence for an unrelated child abuse conviction, according to Oklahoma Department of Corrections records.
The OSBI has stated that the investigation remains ongoing, and no further details about the circumstances of Durant’s death or the evidence leading to the arrests have been publicly released.
