Caleb Ray Diehl

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Montague County Sheriffs Office (TX)

Missing From:

Nocona, Texas

Summary:

Caleb Ray Diehl was an 18-year-old high school senior who disappeared from Nocona, Texas on March 30, 2015, just two weeks after his 18th birthday. He borrowed a pickup truck from his employer and friend Ricky Dale Howard to go to work, but the truck mysteriously reappeared two days later with no sign of Caleb. In 2017, investigators found child pornography involving Caleb on computers recovered from Howard's property, and in 2021 Howard pleaded guilty to federal sexual exploitation charges and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Caleb remains missing and presumed deceased.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

On Monday, March 30, 2015, around 5 p.m., Caleb left his mother's house in Nocona, driving a pickup he had borrowed from his employer Ricky Dale Howard while his own vehicle was under repair. His sister said Caleb told her he was hanging out with a friend and would be home later. But he didn't come home that night, and he didn't go to school on Tuesday, with his phone going straight to voicemail. On Wednesday, Caleb's mother filed a missing person's report with Nocona police. She called Howard to let him know police would need the truck's license plate number. That afternoon, Howard called back and said the pickup had reappeared. When police and his mother went to Howard's shop, they found the truck parked inside with the keys hanging where they were normally kept. Police tracked Diehl's cellular phone signal to Howard's property; this is the last place he is known to have been before it lost signal.

Additional Details:

Howard told police he had found a broken phone lying on the floor and had thrown it away. Before law enforcement could examine Howard's own phone, he removed the SIM card and destroyed it. Howard has a prior criminal record for bank fraud and aiding and abetting; he was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 46 months in federal prison. In May 2015, he was arrested on weapons charges. In 2018, police recovered Howard's laptop computer, which he had given to a relative in Tennessee. They found child sexual abuse images on that, including images of Howard sexually abusing a nude male minor about 13 to 15 years old. Diehl's family identified the boy in the photos as him. As a result of these photographs, in October 2018, Howard was charged in state court with possession of child pornography with unknown victims and indecency with a child by exposure and by sexual contact, that child being Diehl. In February 2021 he was charged in federal court with sexual exploitation of a minor, the minor being Diehl. The first trial ended in a mistrial after a juror was injured and could not be replaced. Afterwards, Howard reached a plea deal with the prosecution, pleading guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a minor. In July 2021, Ricky Dale Howard, 59, pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child. He was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Reed C. O'Connor. In October 2021, Ricky, then 60 years old, was sentenced to 30 years behind bars. Prison records indicate that he remains incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma. Court records discovered during the investigation showed that in 2001, an FBI agent investigating Howard for bank fraud spoke with five young men who alleged that Howard had sexually assaulted them and that loans may have been made to family members of those young men in an effort to secure their silence. Although Caleb's body has never been found (and it is still unknown for certain if he is deceased), it is believed that Caleb was a victim of foul play.

Case Last Updated:

Aug 31, 2026