I actually had a close friend of Roberts reach out to me recently and we had an opportunity to discuss his disappearance. I’m updating this entry to reflect the conversation I had with them, as they saw and spent time with Robert the night before he went missing. I’ve left out names at the request of the individual I spoke with.
I want to start by saying, I asked this person to tell me about Robert. He was described as being humble, funny, and genuine. Smart as can be, and incredibly nice, but he had made some bad decisions in his life that had ended up with him battling addiction. He’d been struggling for over a decade, having entered rehab previously and managing to stay clean for a few years before falling back into old habits…
On May 4, 2009, Robert Honeycutt, 31, had been at a friend’s house. He had a phone call at around 9:00 pm that night with his parole officer. Robert didn’t have a ride so his friend made sure that he was dropped off back at his home in Littcar, Kentucky, in time to take the call. After the call was over, Robert left with another friend, whom he spent the night with. We’ll call her “Mystery Lady”.
The following day, May 5, he had a hearing at the Knott County Court House, and this is where Mystery Lady dropped him off…
At the courthouse, he managed to make friends with another woman, we’ll call her Court House Lady. He went home with her but had to be at his residence (which he shared with his parents) to take another call from his parole officer. Court House Lady allowed him to borrow her car (despite it being without insurance) to make the drive back home.
After returning home, he spoke with his PO and seemingly settled in for the night. Robert received a call from Court House Lady. She had become increasingly paranoid about the fact that she’d let him take her car, especially since it had no insurance. So, she decided the rational thing to do was to tell Robert if he didn’t get it back to her ASAP she would call the police and report the car stolen.
This put Robert into a panic. Given that he had regular calls with a PO, he was obviously on probation and doing his best to stay out of trouble. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that his jail time probably was drug-related, so of course, if he was found with a “stolen car” it’s not going to go over well.
He left the house in a hurry to get the car back to Court House Lady, but on the way, he wrecked over an embankment, landing in the creek off KY HWY 160 between the Ivis Bible Church and the Arby’s/Exxon gas station. For those of you familiar with the area, in that semi-bad curve.
According to witnesses, Robert climbed up the embankment to the main road. He was bloodied and injured. A local business owner watched as a woman picked up Robert, he offered to call 911 but the offer was refused. The businessman wrote down the license plate of the car he thought Robert got into, called 911, and handed over the information. LE ran the plates, the owner of the car told police that she was not the person that picked up Robert that day. The car’s owner, along with her son were both given and passed a polygraph. The car was also searched, and there was no indication that Robert had ever been in the car.
Later that night, Mystery Woman shows up at the residence Robert shared with his parents. Robert’s father recalled that she was visibly upset, shaking, and crying. At this time, Robert hadn’t even been reported missing. The details on any conversations that may have happened at this point are fuzzy, the person whom I’ve been speaking with said Robert’s father mentioned this around a year or so after Robert’s disappearance.. so he wasn’t able to remember a whole lot.
Two weeks later, LE brought out cadaver dogs. They searched a 2-mile radius around the location where Robert had wrecked with no luck.
Back peddling a bit here, Robert’s uncle went to the location of the accident the day following his accident/disappearance and noted that there was a concerning amount of blood. To quote him, he said it “looked like a hog had been slaughtered”.
So, why did Mystery Woman show us at Robert’s parent’s house that night so distraught? At that time he wasn’t even considered missing. It’s like she knew something had happened to him but just didn’t want to say anything. Could she have been the last person to see him?
If you think about it, he was taking the borrowed vehicle back and was going to need a ride home. Could he have called her to follow after him and give him a ride back? I wonder if phone records were checked to see who he’d called that day/evening…
I still think that whatever happened to Robert, it was ultimately caused by the accident. I believe he had injuries that he succumbed to, and due to the drug-related activities he (and likely whoever he was with at the time) were involved in, they panicked and hid his body instead of calling LE.
Robert’s parents have since both passed away.
If you have any information about what happened to Robert, please call the Kentucky State Police at 606-435-6069.
SOURCES:
NamUs
Project Jason
Friends of Robert
01/21/2021 – no updates available.
02/24/2022 – no updates available.
