Another All-Day Search For Joe Clyde Daniels Fruitless

CHARLOTTE, TN -- Professional searchers from across the country scoured the forests and fields of rural Dickson County Saturday in yet another attempt to find the body of murdered 5-year-old Joe Clyde Daniels.

Searchers utilizing horses, dogs and even drones searched a 20-mile radius in the 90-degree heat Saturday. That's an area nearly 45 times larger than the three-mile radius investigated in earlier searches.

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Still, the searchers went wanting.

"It's been eight weeks. It's going to be tough for anybody to find anything at this point in time. We don't have any clue where the body's been placed, so it's a crapshoot for us," Ed Kriska, search manager for St. Louis-based Tri-SAR, told NewsChannel 5.

Still, the searchers know how important it is for the family - and prosecutors - to have the body.

“We want to make sure that we give the officials that piece of the puzzle that they need to tell the story so these people don’t get off,” David Rader, director of the Midwest Chapter of Texas EquuSearch, told WKRN. "They don't want us to find this child."

Joe Clyde Daniels was reported missing by his parents from their home in rural Dickson County northwest of Nashville the morning of April 4, launching a massive search utilizing hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officers. The boy's father, Joe Daniels, was arrested April 7, charged with beating his son to death and hiding his body. His mother, Krystal Daniels, was arrested two days later, charged with aggravated child neglect.

Joe Daniels did not initially offer detectives any tips as to where the body was, though that has changed in recent weeks, although none of the locations he's offered have "panned out," investigators say. A huge search May 19 utilizing hundreds of volunteers yielded no clues.

Photo via Tennessee Bureau of Investigation