CANADA Canada - Lonnie Boudreau, 10, Ottawa, Ont, 5 Feb 1981

The recent article said he was 4'6" and 86 lbs. I hope someone gets the doenetwork site corrected. Big difference.
 
He was 11 when he disappeared, so in the next couple of years he could have grown quite a bit taller, right? Does anybody have more details about his disappearance? I have seen a photo of a boy who looks like he's maybe 12 or 13; he looks very much like this boy, but he doesn't look like a kid who is under 5 foot and weighs less than 100 pounds.
 
Does anybody else see the similarity between Lonnie and this UID? I think that their faces look quite similar. It was thought that the UID was a runaway from Canada as well, considering where he was found.
 
The 1981 Disappearance of Ten-Year-Old Lonnie Philip Boudreau - True Crime Diva

OTTAWA, Ontario — Some people might say Lonnie Philip Boudreau never stood a chance. At 10 years old, he had already endured quite a bit for his age.

Lonnie was born in September 1970 to Elmer and Linda Boudreau. He has an older sister, Lorie. Lonnie was brilliant, with an IQ score of 116 at the age of six. Family and friends described him as high-spirited, smart and fast.

In 1975, his parents divorced, and he and Lorie went to live with their father in Carlton Place for two years; the children saw their mother on weekends. It is unclear why their mother did not receive custody of the children, but the divorce devastated Lonnie.

In 1977, Elmer Boudreau met another woman who had three children of her own, and they moved in with him and his children. But Lonnie disliked her, and his problems soon escalated.

Boudreau discovered a daycare agency affiliated with the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) and, through the agency, found Mel and Pam Spallin, who watched Lonnie while Boudreau worked during the day. Lonnie enjoyed spending time with the Spallins, especially Mel Spallin, who would take him on fishing trips and occasional visits to a Quebec farm.

By mid-1977, the CAS had placed Lonnie under the temporary full-time care of the Spallins. The agency’s officials believed Lonnie and Lorie should eventually be reunited with their mother.

During a visit with his mother on Christmas Day, Lonnie began showing signs of hyperactivity. His mother immediately asked the CAS for custody of her son, and soon after, he and Lorie moved in with her at her White Fathers Avenue (now Pères-Blancs Avenue) home in the Vanier neighborhood.

Boudreau protested the order because he and his girlfriend had broken up, and she moved out. However, the CAS threatened to take Boudreau to court if he interfered.

But Lonnie was unhappy and constantly telling his mother he wanted her and Boudreau to get back together; she told him that was impossible and never going to happen.

In Spring 1978, the CAS assigned Lonnie a counselor, Dave Plummer. It took four to five months to gain Lonnie’s trust, but once Plummer did, the boy began opening up, and his attitude improved.

Several months later, Lonnie started exhibiting behavioral problems and became jealous when Lorie accompanied him on weekend visits with their father. To make things better, Boudreau decided to have separate visits with the children, but eventually, Lonnie became upset when Lori visited alone. Boudreau decided to spend more time with Lonnie “because of his tantrums,” he later said.

But the problems continued. During the spring of 1980, the CAS placed Lonnie in a home with other children his age for six months. Afterward, Lonnie returned to his mother. He appeared to have finally adjusted to his family’s separation, and his behavior improved.

Lonnie attended Grade 4 at Assumption Separate school, but the half-French, half-English curriculum was too difficult, and he struggled with schoolwork. He also had a hard time making new friends, and his problems soon resurfaced.

In late January 1981, Lonnie had an argument with his father over the amount of time Boudreau spent with him. Boudreau told Lonnie he would end their visits if Lonnie’s attitude did not improve. His father’s harsh scolding disheartened Lonnie, and he constantly asked his mother when she would be getting back together with Boudreau. Linda Boudreau again informed him that was not going to happen.

A few days later, Lonnie tied a rope around his waist, lowered himself out of his bedroom window, and fled. He knew his way around every inch of Vanier. Police found him about two miles away in the Cineplex on St. Patrick’s Road after a four-hour search.

Because of his little escapade, Vanier police dubbed him “Tom Sawyer” after Mark Twain’s famous character, who embarked on several adventures with Huckleberry Finn, from Twain’s classic book “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

Plummer spoke with Lonnie for about 20 minutes after the police found him, and never in that entire conversation did Lonnie indicate he would run away again.

But 24 hours later, Lonnie Boudreau was gone.

Where is Lonnie Boudreau?

At 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 5, 1981, Lonnie, 10, asked his mother if he could watch television in the basement. Fifteen minutes later, Lonnie had vanished.

He was last seen wearing a blue and red lumberjack shirt or jacket, a blue V-Neck velour sweater with white stripes on the collar, blue corduroy pants and ski-doo (snowmobile) boots.

Police spent the following weekend searching for Lonnie but found no sign of the child.

According to Linda Boudreau, shortly before he disappeared, Lonnie had watched a movie called “The Prince of Central Park,” about a young brother and sister who ran away from home to nest in a treehouse in Central Park, NYC. Lonnie told his mother, “That looks neat.”

Search and Investigation​

The assumption from the get-go was that Lonnie crawled out through the basement window and ran away again. However, it did not appear that he took any personal belongings, as far as I could find.

Linda Boudreau thought maybe Lonnie had hitchhiked to his father’s home in Carlton Place, about 50 km away.

Authorities were positive Lonnie was staying with friends in town but refused to say how they knew this information. His friends said he was probably sleeping under apartment stairwells, but the police searched several apartment complexes and found nothing. Officers believed Lonnie would safely return within 24 hours.

Police claimed Lonnie was “streetwise” and had been spotted panhandling for food on Rideau Street a few days after his disappearance. Authorities said the boy knew how to panhandle and shoplift. However, Plummer contradicted the police and said Lonnie did not know how to do either.

There were several alleged sightings of Lonnie, including one at St. Laurent Shopping Center, but police could not confirm a single one. Lonnie was a typical-looking boy with blond hair; whoever the witnesses had seen could have been any blond male child around the same age.

Linda Boudreau released a letter asking for her son to return home and included a message to friends: “If you are his friend, please be a good friend and help Lonnie face his problems and not run away from them.”

But Lonnie’s friends were loyal to him and said that they would not report it to the police if they did see him because they knew Lonnie would not want to go home.

Police checked several leads, but they could not find Lonnie and said he kept eluding them, staying one step ahead. If that was the case, authorities publicly acknowledged that a 10-year-old boy had outsmarted them.

Two weeks after Lonnie vanished, police ended the search and claimed all of the media attention surrounding Lonnie had kept the boy from returning home.

In late February 1981, authorities requested assistance from the local chapter of Operation Go Home (now Operation Come Home). Founded in Ottawa in 1971, the organization helped runaway children return to their families. Police believed that several runaways in the area could bring Lonnie home.

About three months after Lonnie’s disappearance, police made contact with a girl Lonnie’s age. She was able to get word to Lonnie that she wanted to meet him. The girl and an officer converged by the water fountain in the St. Laurent Shopping Center. At the meet-up, she pointed to a boy walking towards them and said, “There he is, that’s him coming now.” But the boy heard a security guard’s walkie-talkie and fled. Police never confirmed the boy was Lonnie Boudreau.

Both Vanier police and Lonnie’s parents maintained that Lonnie had run away and was alive and safe somewhere.

Investigators never suspected foul play. For that reason, they never searched Lonnie’s parents’ homes or suspected them of any wrongdoing, even though Lonnie and his parents had problems.

Additionally, authorities never accepted that Lonnie might be dead, even 10 years after he disappeared. They assumed he had left the area.

In 1985, Vanier police merged with Ottawa police. One of Vanier’s detectives, Gerald Theoret, who helped investigate Lonnie’s disappearance, stayed with the department after the merger. In an April 1991 article in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Theoret said he still believed Lonnie was alive and thought Lonnie would show up when he turned 21 later that year. He never did.

Mysterious Phone Calls​

Linda Boudreau claimed she received several mysterious phone calls after her son’s disappearance. During the first call, a young male voice asked for Lorie, who was not home at the time. Only after Linda Boudreau hung up the phone did she realize the caller was her son.

She received subsequent phone calls, but nobody spoke, only silence on the other end. She and the police believed the caller was Lonnie, but the police never identified the person.

Parents’ Odd Behavior​

Lonnie’s mother and father never wavered from the runaway theory. Nor did they ever mention the possibility that their son had met with foul play.

Linda Boudreau stated that if her son returned home, she would place him in the custody of the CAS for a year. She previously said Lonnie wanted to return to foster care; however, his friends denied it, saying he never wanted to go back.

In May 1981, she started taking sleeping pills and tranquilizers and was hospitalized with a suspected ulcer and bad nerves.

Then, in July 1982, during an interview, Lonnie’s mother said she was not sure she would recognize her son if he returned home because “a kid changes an awful lot around the age of 10,” she reasoned. A strange thing to say because a child’s looks do not change dramatically in 17 months.

Both parents were interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen in April 1991, ten years after Lonnie vanished. Elmer Boudreau said that if his son returned, he would probably “just stand there and stare for a while” and did not know if he would hug Lonnie or hit him.

A month later, Lonnie’s mother told a reporter with the Ottawa Citizen, “Every time you people bring up the past, all the hurt and pain of remembering that day comes back.” She seemed bitter and defensive instead of happy to have media attention on the case.

In a different article, Linda Boudreau recalled that same year that she had seen a boy in 1983 who resembled her son.

“I looked at him. He looked at me and then turned and took off. I swear it was him.” She never mentioned reporting the sighting to the police or why she did not chase after the boy to confirm he was her son.

After a failed relationship and arguments with Lorie, she had a breakdown at some point and decided it was time for her to move on.

“I just said I wasn’t going to drive myself up the wall over this. If he wants to come back, I’m not hard to find.”

Lonnie Boudreau has never been found. It is unclear where his parents are today, but by 1986, his mother had moved out of the Vanier home. His father had moved to Ottawa by 1991. Lonnie’s sister Lorie had a son in 1985. She would now be in her mid-50s.
 
The mom recently posted on another site and casted suspicions on others around him. Someone asked her to come on here and become a verified user. Here's hoping!
 

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