LIVE OAK, Fla. (WTXL) -- A year ago Saturday, a Suwannee County man went missing in North Carolina. Since then, family and friends of Christopher "Cole" Thomas haven't stopped looking for him.
"We're searching. We're not giving up. We're praying," said aunt Darla Gatewood in a January 2017 interview with WTXL.
What happened to Cole Thomas? It's a question his family has been asking -- for an entire year.
"We search any road that we can possibly think that he could possibly be," said cousin Teresa Cruce in a March 2017 interview with WTXL.
Thomas was last seen in the city of Benson, North Carolina -- 500 miles away from his family in Live Oak, Suwannee County.
"My heart tells me that he's out there somewhere and we want him home," said grandmother Gwyn Herrington in a March 2017 interview with WTXL.
Answers have been hard to come by. Benson police say it's still an active invesitgation, but four men have been arrested -- each facing a felony concealment of a death charge.
"One of them guys know, and they need to tell," said father Chris Thomas in an interview with ABC affiliate WTVD. "They need to talk, and if this is the pressure they need, somebody needs to talk -- and they know."
The family enlisted the help of private investigator David Marshburn to help them find Thomas. Marshburn drove the same route of the car Thomas was riding in to get a better idea of where he might be.
"It's getting better, a whole lot better," Marshburn said in a phone interview with WTXL. "We're getting closer to the result of find where Cole is or what happened to him. So, I would say we are really, really close."
Marshburn says he's confident what happened to Thomas was "foul play," and the reality is the search is a recovery, not a rescue.
"If he was alive, he would've done anything and everything to try to contact his family," he said.
In October, police used ATVs and K9s to search a wooded area in Benson. While law enforcement continues to look for Thomas, so are his friends and family.
"We've searched inside of Benson, outside of Benson -- and we're still searching," Cruce said in March.
Thomas' friends and family released balloons Saturday afternoon in Benson. They conducted another search for Thomas over the weekend.
