(NewsNation) — An active manhunt is ongoing as police search for suspects in the missing case of Ronald Dumas, a father and realtor last seen on a Sunday night in December.

His disappearance is now being treated as a kidnapping and the details about what might have happened to Dumas have become increasingly horrifying to his family.

Ronald Dumas was a family man

Dumas was an award-winning realtor, a full-time chemist and a father with an older son and two young daughters he shared with Talia Berryhill.

“He is a great father,” Berryhill said.

Berryhill and Dumas were no longer a couple when he disappeared, but she said family time was still a priority.

“Every Friday, he grabbed the kids from school or picked them all up so they would be together for the weekend,” Berryhill said.

The adults and children were all close, a true blended family.

Berryhill said she was a little late picking up the girls in December of 2024.

“I didn’t apologize when I came back, which is something I would have done, but I didn’t because he irritated me,” she said. “So we irritated one another and we’re just short in our words. So we spoke and I was like all ‘Alright, bye. You have a good day.’ He’s like ‘Alright.’ He kissed the kids, everybody left.”

Ronald Dumas disappears

Dumas was staying with Byron Pillow, a friend of his since before college, while he saved to buy a house.

The two had gotten into an argument that weekend but Pillow said it was over quickly.

“He said, you know, I’m fixing to go out and get me something to eat, a little drink or something to come back. And he was going to go relax like normal,” Pillow said.

But what happened next wasn’t normal.

Dumas was seen on surveillance video at a liquor store in Huntsville, Alabama, accompanied by two women unknown to his friends.

The transaction looked relaxed, and Dumas paid for the women’s purchases before they all left.

He then took a call and planned to meet a friend across the street at a restaurant arcade.

But Dumas never showed up.

“I fell asleep on my couch. So I knew that Ronnie didn’t come back home, because I would have just heard the key, I’d have woken up,” Pillow said. “That’s when I called and asked, ‘Anybody heard from Ronnie?'”

Searching for Ronald Dumas

It didn’t take long for Dumas’ friends to realize something was amiss.

“When we all realized at one time that we hadn’t spoken to him, we immediately knew something was wrong,” Berryhill said.

Dumas’ car was found more than a hundred miles away, abandoned and blocking a travel lane of I-40, west of Nashville, Tennessee.

The family’s private eye, James Andrews, focused in on the surveillance video, tracking down the women he suspected had answers.

Andrews investigated addresses in Tennessee and even northern Mississippi.

One of the two women identified by police as being with Dumas was Kalisha McKinnie, who is now dead. The other woman was identified as Sabrina Chambers.

A missing case becomes a kidnapping

In the case, now classified as a kidnapping, police honed in on Chambers and four other people.

Police allege Chambers and McKinnie were sex workers who were offering a “two for one” special.

In a court case for Kierra Clark, one of the people arrested in connection with the case, investigators introduced texts between her and a man named Quintarius White. According to police, White is Chambers’ pimp.

“Kierra was texting with Quintarius, and Quintarius told her that they had a guy that they had their hands on and that he had some money in the bank,” Andrews said. “Kierra, according to the state, was texting him basically ways to torture Ronnie.”

Ronald Dumas’ family searches for answers

Dumas’ father thinks that with suspects behind bars, the family might finally get some answers about what happened to him.

The mothers’ of Dumas’ children are in pain themselves after hearing talk of torture. So are his friends.

“Evil is crazy. The evil that’s in the hearts and minds of men is crazy,” Pillow said. “Because, if you knew Ronnie, you wouldn’t want to do something like that to him.”

Huntsville Police had one of the suspects extradited back to Alabama. Another is behind bars in Tennessee. Three more are still wanted.