Sara caught a ride to Muskogee with Jerry Raney on Jan. 30, 2006. He said he dropped Sara off near the McDonald’s restaurant at U.S. 69 and Okmulgee Avenue, where she was last seen about 8:30 to 9 a.m.

Sara’s grandmother, Lavonne Totten, said Sara didn’t like Jerry Raney, “but she was pretty spunky. She said one time he could do you in and he knew enough people that nobody would ever find you.”

Jan Combs of Muskogee said she’d known Sara since Sara was a little girl and played with her granddaughter.

“I lost a daughter three years ago and came because I felt like the family needed to be supported,” she said.

Terry Smart said Sara was too forgiving and subject to being led astray.

“I just loved my Sara — and this is a way to keep her memory alive for her child and the rest of us,” said her mother, Laura Raney.

After candles were lit, Sara’s longtime friend, Virginia Alberty, went to the courthouse steps, telling all Sara’s friends to “get up here for Sara.”

She told them the person responsible for Sara’s death is “going to get what he deserves. We’ll see her again.”

One young man sat on the steps and cried as music wafted through the air with the words “you’re beautiful.”

Raney is being held without bond in Muskogee County/City Detention Facility on several unrelated felony cases.

One involves a November 2007 charge of planning and scheming to kill a number of people, including Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson and the chief investigator in Sara’s death, Faye Banks.

Other felony charges pending against Raney:

• Possession of a firearm after former conviction of a felony.

• Filing a false claim of insurance on a car reported stolen that had been sold after the vehicle identification number had been switched.

• Threatening to perform an act of violence (against a jail employee).