The case evolved from a missing-person search into a federal prosecution built on drug activity, forensic evidence, concealment and witness intimidation.
TRENTON, Neb. — When Sunny Sramek left this small Nebraska community on April 20, 2019, she told people close to her that she expected to be gone for a day. More than seven years later, she has never returned and her body has not been found, but two men connected to her final known trip are now headed to federal prison.
The sentences imposed on Floyd Clifford Coates Jr. and Dennis Lawson mark the most substantial legal result to emerge from an investigation that began as a search for an 18-year-old missing woman. Coates received 35 years in prison for federal drug, firearms and obstruction-related crimes. Lawson received 10 years for threatening a witness. Neither was convicted of murder, although the federal judge who sentenced Coates found that he intentionally caused Sramek’s death and later concealed the crime, according to prosecutors.
The first public account of the case was far less certain. In June 2019, the FBI said Sramek had last been seen in Trenton and had left with a male individual in a white 2004 Ford Explorer. She was believed to be taking a trip to Omaha. Her mother reported her missing the next day, April 21. The bureau said there had been no reported sightings of Sramek and no known contact from her after she disappeared. Investigators asked the public for information that might help determine where she had gone.
As the investigation developed, authorities came to believe the planned “day trip” concealed a much larger set of events. Evidence presented years later at federal trial showed that Coates was involved in an organization that moved pounds of methamphetamine from Colorado into Iowa and other places for redistribution. Prosecutors said he also possessed firearms in connection with the drug operation. Over Easter weekend in 2019, Coates arranged another trip designed to replenish a methamphetamine supply in Kansas City, Missouri.
To carry out that plan, Coates arranged for an Iowa woman to drive from Sioux City to Blair, Nebraska, and meet him there. She was then supposed to take him to Kansas City and back. Coates traveled from Trenton toward Blair with Sramek in his wife’s Explorer. Prosecutors said Sramek had told friends and relatives she was going to Omaha, and the government found no evidence that she knew Coates had planned to continue to Kansas City for a drug transaction.
Her last known journey appears to have ended in Blair. The Iowa driver testified that when she met Coates, she saw Sramek motionless inside the Explorer. Coates told the woman he had provided Sramek with methamphetamine and said she had overdosed, according to prosecutors. The Kansas City trip was canceled. Coates instead directed the driver north and east toward a rural property near Whiting, Iowa, belonging to Lawson, his former brother-in-law. Lawson’s property was near the Missouri River.
Once there, according to the witness, Coates and Lawson went away together for some time. Sramek’s body was no longer present after they returned, the woman testified. She said she later helped Coates clean the Explorer. Lawson then threatened her against speaking about the events, according to prosecutors. Years afterward, a federal jury would convict Lawson for that threat, concluding that he used the threat of physical force in an attempt to prevent information about a possible federal offense from reaching authorities.
The river location later took on additional importance because of statements prosecutors attributed to Coates. Federal officials said he told several people that Sramek had died and that her body had been thrown into the Missouri River. His accounts were not consistent about the circumstances of her death. To some people, he said she had overdosed. Prosecutors said he provided others with a more violent version. Investigators were unable to recover her remains, leaving an important part of the case unresolved even as evidence accumulated elsewhere.
Physical evidence inside the Explorer gave investigators another way to test the accounts they were hearing. Federal forensic analysis identified Sramek’s DNA and a significant amount of blood in the vehicle, the Justice Department said. Authorities also found evidence they said indicated a struggle. At trial, an FBI geologist addressed damage to one of the vehicle’s windows, while a medical examiner testified about whether movements described by a witness could be consistent with someone dying after methamphetamine use.
Those findings allowed investigators to move beyond the fact that Sramek had simply vanished after leaving with Coates. The government developed a timeline involving the planned drug run, the meeting in Blair, the trip to Lawson’s property, the cleaning of the SUV and statements made afterward. Prosecutors also introduced remarks in which Coates allegedly suggested that the failure to recover a body would protect him from prosecution. One witness said he used the phrase “No body, no case.” Another said Coates questioned whether a murder prosecution was possible without a body.
For years, however, no public trial resolved the evidence. The FBI, Nebraska State Patrol, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, ATF, county sheriff’s offices and other agencies continued working the case. Federal prosecutors said the investigation ultimately produced more than four dozen witnesses and dozens of exhibits. The case also grew beyond Sramek’s disappearance as investigators developed evidence of Coates’ drug-trafficking activities and firearms possession.
The resulting federal trial began the process of converting that yearslong investigation into formal criminal judgments. After 11 days of testimony in Sioux City, jurors deliberated for about two hours before returning verdicts on Nov. 25, 2025. Coates was convicted on six counts involving a controlled-substance conspiracy, firearms or ammunition and obstruction-related concealment. He was acquitted of other allegations. Lawson was found guilty of the witness-threat offense but acquitted of other drug and obstruction counts.
The verdicts were significant precisely because prosecutors had never recovered Sramek’s body. The government did not obtain a murder conviction against either man. Instead, it relied on crimes established through evidence independent of a recovered body, including the drug conspiracy, gun offenses, concealment and witness intimidation. The jury’s verdict therefore answered some questions about criminal conduct surrounding Sramek’s disappearance while leaving the legal record different from a conventional homicide prosecution.
That distinction remained at sentencing. Chief U.S. District Judge Leonard T. Strand considered the evidence against Coates and, according to federal prosecutors, found that he had intentionally caused Sramek’s death and covered it up. A sentencing finding is not the same as a jury verdict convicting a defendant of murder, but it allowed the judge to address conduct connected to Sramek’s death when determining the punishment for Coates’ federal convictions.
Strand sentenced Coates to 35 years in federal prison and five years of supervised release. Lawson was ordered to serve 10 years in prison followed by three years of supervision. Federal prisoners are not eligible for parole. The men remained in U.S. Marshals Service custody while awaiting transportation to federal prisons after the sentences were imposed in July.
Federal officials said the outcome reflected investigators’ refusal to let the passage of time end the inquiry. What had started with a public appeal for help locating a missing teenager became a multistate investigation involving physical evidence, drug trafficking, firearms, witness testimony and alleged attempts to hide both evidence and information. The prosecution supplied a measure of legal accountability, but it did not answer every question that existed when Sramek was first reported missing.
Sramek’s remains have still not been recovered. The federal sentences close the current prosecution of Coates and Lawson on the offenses for which they were convicted, while the record now includes Strand’s finding concerning Coates’ responsibility for her death. More than seven years after Sramek left Trenton expecting what her family understood to be a short trip, the location of her body remains unknown.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 26, 2026.