The most confounding missing children's case in Canadian history
Michael Dunahee was snatched from a crowded field in broad daylight with no witnesses ... and 30 years later that's about all investigators know
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The Dunahees and the Victoria Police did everything right: Authorities were summoned immediately, a description of Michael was disbursed to the media, and a tip line and command post were established within hours. One of the first tips was an alleged sighting from a child, who reported a man in his late 40s in a brown van at the park. “We did put a lot of resources into the brown van tip. In fact we did locate a brown van — a number of brown vans — and we eliminated the owners and drivers through interviews,” now-retired VicPD Detective Inspector Fred Mills
told CBC in 2016. “The brown van was a big thing for a while until we could discount it.”
Hundreds more tips flowed in on that first day, all written out manually on paper.
Most people now working this case knew exactly where they were the day after Michael Dunahee disappeared. Victoria Police’s current spokesperson Bowen Osoko was a teenager delivering the Winnipeg Free Press with Michael’s face on the front page. “There’s something about this file … it is kind of a loss of innocence — not just for people in Victoria and British Columbia but all across Canada. People went ‘uh-oh, if that can happen in Victoria,’” said Osoko.
Actress Winona Ryder was in Victoria filming
Little Women when Michael disappeared, and has since publicly expressed an interest in the case. In a 1994 Rolling Stone profile, Ryder can be seen flipping through papers containing details of the Dunahee case.
A few months after Michael was taken, Michelle Robertson — now the chief investigator for the Dunahee case — was a young mother standing outside a Victoria toy store with her son, a little boy with a blond bowl cut, when two police officers approached them. Politely but firmly they separated the pair and asked Michelle “ma’am, is this your child?”
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The Dunahee case is still open, meaning police files are not disclosable to the public, which has only helped to fuel an undercurrent of wild speculation as to his fate.
“I am pretty sure I saw him on a cooking show that was aired out of B.C. That was about two years ago,” wrote Mary Love on
one of the many crime blogs on Michael. “He was sacrificed to the Devil,” a Victoria local told the National Post.
Crystal and Bruce were investigated and cleared by Victoria Police early in the case, although they too have found themselves the target of theories.
Speculation can both hurt and help, and the digital age has ushered in whole internet sub-communities of “websleuths” who are occasionally known to crack cold cases.
One of the best examples was when U.S. blogger Joy Baker was
instrumental in identifying the killer of Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year old Minnesota boy who was abducted during a bike ride in 1989. Through public crime records and other web-based resources, Baker surmised that Wetterling’s case was linked to the kidnapping and sexual assault of another 12-year-old, Jacob Scheirel. Scheirel then identified his attacker who confessed to killing Wetterling.
According to Valerie Green, author of
Vanished: The Michael Dunahee Story, there are three persistent theories in this case. One is that Michael was taken and murdered by a sex offender. Two, he was abducted and raised by a woman or couple who couldn’t have kids. And the final and most dubious theory: That he was killed in a ritual sacrifice — a theory helped along by Victoria being the birthplace of the
widely discredited Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic of the 1980s.
Statistics on child abduction and trafficking are very limited in Canada. The RCMP released its first national statistics on missing children in 1987 and on child trafficking only in 2015. “It’s difficult because we don’t necessarily have the statistics that have been consistently kept over the years to allow us to make a connection,” said Lindsey Lobb, a spokesperson at Missing Kids Canada.
But there are documented cases of children under 13 in Canada who vanished without a trace, like Michael, and were presumably taken by a stranger.
In 1958, two-year-old Cindy McLane vanished while playing in the front yard of her home in Willow River, B.C. In 1983, 10-year-old JoAnn Pedersen disappeared from outside a corner store in Chilliwack, B.C. In 1984, Tania Murrell disappeared during the one-and-a-half block walk between her classroom and home in Edmonton, Alta. In 1985, 8-year-old Nicole Morrin disappeared after going to meet a friend in the lobby of her family’s Toronto apartment. All four of these children were never seen again and their cases remain just as cold as Michael Dunahee’s; no body, no crime scene, and no verifiable witnesses.
From what is known from similar cases, if Michael was taken by a stranger it’s likely he never made it off Vancouver Island. According to a landmark U.S. Department of Justice
study on missing children homicide, a child taken by a stranger is usually killed within the first three hours of their abduction; 44 per cent within the first hour.
That same study revealed the average perpetrator as male, unmarried and around 27 years old. Half of the killers lived alone or with their parents and were either unemployed or in semi-skilled occupations like construction. The study also revealed that two-thirds of child abductors had committed a similar crime before.
In 51 per cent of cases studied, the perpetrators’ name came up within the first 24 hours of investigation. Most chilling of all, a further 10 per cent managed to insert themselves into the investigation, sometimes posing as helpful citizens to the parents of the child they abducted.
Several elements of Michael’s disappearance echo that of Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who vanished on his way to a bus stop in the New York City neighbourhood of SoHo in 1979. Patz became famous as the first missing child featured on a milk carton. Like Michael, he too had disappeared while just out of his mother’s sight.
After almost 40 years of investigation and relentless petitioning of the public by Etan’s parents, in 2012 Pedro Hernandez confessed to strangling Etan in the basement of a bodega where he once worked. In 2017, the 56-year-old Hernandez
was convicted of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in jail.
Crystal Dunahee is now the president of Child Find Victoria, an organization that fingerprints children for their parents to keep on file in case they go missing.
When Michael was first taken, the police asked the Dunahees what “level” they wanted to take this to — how much media coverage and exposure, low-key or national. The Dunahees said they wanted to go big as they could make it.
Historic cases are notoriously expensive and will usually peter out without strong public interest. Michael’s case has gotten so far largely because of Crystal’s relentless advocacy.
In March, the Dunahees hosted the 30th annual Michael Dunahee Keep the Hope Alive run — virtually — to raise money for ChildFind BC. They also took part in a press conference at the Victoria Police unveiling of a new age-progressed sketch of Michael.
The Dunahee’s daughter Caitlyn is now 34, and has started a young family. Crystal and Bruce remain married, a rare feat for the parents of a missing child, and are planning their retirement.
Last year, a story out of China electrified the hopes of parents like the Dunahees around the world. After 32 years and 300 false leads, Chinese mother Li Jingzhi was
reunited with her son, Mao Yin, who was abducted at age one and sold on China’s infant black market.
For the Dunahees, this case could still have a similar happy ending: An adult Michael raised by different parents with only fleeting memories of his original life in Victoria. As to whether Crystal still believes he’s alive she says “we haven’t been told anything else otherwise.”
To report tips about the disappearance of Michael Dunahee, use Victoria Police’s new web portal.
The most confounding missing children's case in Canadian history | National Post
