ID ID - Michael “Monkey” Vaughan, 5, last seen near home, Fruitland, 27 Jul 2021 #2

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I don't have time to look for the link right now, so I'll say IMO - in one of the authorized video interviews, mom said that there was only one camera on their street at that time, and unfortunately it faced the driveway and not the street, so Monkey was not seen on camera.
I did a typed transcript of that video, and remember typing it. (Transcript is either in this thread or thread #1.) IMO
Thank you. That's what I thought. He was not seen on video, as far as we know.
 
I've only heard he was "seen by multiple neighbors outside the home". Never seen it said he was caught on video - if so, why wouldn't we have seen it? No need for LE to hold it back?
This is my recollection as well.. although (IMO) didn't the info about multiple neighbor sightings come from mom? I can't remember anything about us hearing from the witnesses or having any of it corroborated by LE, either.
 
This is my recollection as well.. although (IMO) didn't the info about multiple neighbor sightings come from mom? I can't remember anything about us hearing from the witnesses or having any of it corroborated by LE, either.
I think the neighbour/babysitter said publicly that she saw him outside the home, as he had knocked on her door, wanting to play. She said she sent him back home?

So the question still stands---did he go back home then or not?
 
This version is MSM. And it’s bothered me that he was looking for older neighborhood kids to play with. Did he often play with older kids? Teens?


She says her son was looking for older neighborhood kids with whom he could play.

“He went to a neighbor’s house. And another neighbor’s house, and another neighbor’s house,” Neal said.
 

Watching presser, Channel 2 Boise
haven't cleared all leads.
Positively identified blue car. Identified man seen jogging.
Have not identified white Honda Pilot. Believe it belongs to resident in area.
Have not identified white male adult black shorts walking toward splash pad. Releasing photo of him, will be on FPD website. want to talk to him.

Questions to police chief: Have parents been cleared? Did not answer directly, said parents cooperative.
Looking into friends and family close to the Vaughans, and outside of the Vaughans.
Have there been anyone you've searched who have been non-cooperativ? Yes there have been.
Multiple persons of interest. No suspects.
Briefly showed both parents and I think the grandfather leaving the presser.

IMO: my take-away is that there is at least one suspect, who has not been cooperative. Putting up his picture to put pressure on him?
 
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Watching presser, Channel 2 Boise
haven't cleared all leads.
Positively identified blue car. Identified man seen jogging.
Have not identified white Honda Pilot. Believe it belongs to resident in area.
Have not identified white male adult black shorts walking toward splash pad. Releasing photo of him, will be on FPD website. want to talk to him.

Questions to police chief: Have parents been cleared? Did not answer directly, said parents cooperative.
Looking into friends and family close to the Vaughans, and outside of the Vaughans.
Have there been anyone you've searched who have been non-cooperativ? Yes there have been.
Multiple persons of interest. No suspects.
Briefly showed both parents and I think the grandfather leaving the presser.

IMO: my take-away is that there is at least one suspect, who has not been cooperative. Putting up his picture to put pressure on him?
Quoting my own post: I must have misheard. I can't find anything about a picture of the splashpad guy being released. Guess I should go get that hearing test. Sorry if I posted mistakenly!

Listened again; the chief did say he was putting up a picture of the splashpad suspect on "his official website" later today.
 
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Quoting my own post: I must have misheard. I can't find anything about a picture of the splashpad guy being released. Guess I should go get that hearing test. Sorry if I posted mistakenly!

No, it's there in the article, fourth paragraph:

"A photo of that person will be released to the public later Friday."
 
Quoting my own post: I must have misheard. I can't find anything about a picture of the splashpad guy being released. Guess I should go get that hearing test. Sorry if I posted mistakenly!

Listened again; the chief did say he was putting up a picture of the splashpad suspect on "his official website" later today.

There is nothing wrong with your hearing. Police chief did say that a picture of the splashpad guy will be released later today. It is also mentioned in the article you linked:

There was also a man seen walking through Crestview Park before the time of Michael's disappearance who has not been identified. This man is not a suspect, but police want to talk with him for additional information.

A photo of that person will be released to the public later Friday.
 
Picture of the man is in the article


There was also a man seen walking through Crestview Park before the time of Michael's disappearance who has not been identified. This man is not a suspect, but police want to talk with him for additional information.

Fruitland PD released a photo of this individual for the first time on Friday. Detectives also released a new image of a white Honda pilot -- hoping to verify the owner.
 
Press Conference

22nd July.

Chief - Since the evening of July 27th, 2021, the Fruitland Police Department, the Idaho State Police, the FBI, Law Enforcement agencies across the country have investigated the disappearance of five year old Michael Vaughn. We haven't stopped - every day we have unfinished business and I'll tell you that every day is an anniversary of the disappearance of Michael Vaughn for us. LE, the family, the families of LE in our community...our investigation remains intense and strong. I want to take a moment to just kind of cover some significant aspects of the case to provide some context for those who aren't completely familiar with our case or those who might be jumping in a little bit later. A lot of it I've covered in prior press conferences but I wanted to cover it again today.

Michael Joseph Vaughn was last seen at his residence on Southwest 9th Street at approximately 6.30 p.m. Tuesday, July 21th, 2021. LE received the first call by 911 at 7.21 pm and we began an immediate search of the area. And I should note that LE across the country receives these type of calls every year. Numerous calls like this, we call them wander offs and they conclude, but after finding the child safely with friends or family, clearly it's typically a breakdown in communication. You need to know the first missing and endangered alert went out at 8.20 with different alerts to - e-mail, phone calls, text messages being issued to area residents until 11.20 that night. Michael's image and information went out to LE nationwide on a database called the National Crime Information centre or NCIS and Michael's also been entered into the State of Idaho Missing Person Clearing House and the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. The Fruitland Police, Payette Police and Payette county deputies and citizens searched through the night until support arrived the following morning. The ensuing response was immense. We had over 100 LE officers from federal state and local agencies, including the FBI, Child Abduction rapid deployment team, along with trained search teams, converged on our small city of Fruitland. Our physical search efforts were conducted by experts from the Idaho Fish and Game, the Idaho Search and Rescue, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, both Fruitland and Sand Hollow fire departments, multiple LE agencies and coordinated citizen searchers. The search included over 200 residential homes, properties, including outbuildings, a septic tank, garbage cans, vehicle irrigation ditches and drained canals. Trained search teams and LE, along with specialized K9 teams from across the country, searched over 3,000 acres of farm ground, along with areas surrounding the city and out into the county. Sophisticated drones, boats with sonar, boats with canines, kayaks, paragliders. I would say that if we could have damed the Snake River we would have. With the help of residences and businesses we were able to retrieve hours and hours of security camera video, and we continue to reference that video while working on our leads.

Let's talk about since the disappearance of Michael...when I tell you our investigation has been intense and daily I can assure you that it has been. Since the disappearance detectives and investigators across the country have logged tens of thousands of man hours to bring this case to conclusion. We've gathered an immense amount of data and continue to work through it with experts from several agencies. We've applied for and served over 27 search warrants, but that may seem low, but I'm telling you that we've also performed probably triple that in mutual consent type searches. The search warrant and consent searches we've performed have yielded high volumes of data and search warrants are still being written today. The data requires expertise from LE partners and this takes a lot of time to decipher. We continue to use all of our investigative resources to include that of the Idaho State Police and our friends at the FBI. Further the Idaho State Police and the FBI have assigned investigators to work specifically with the City of Fruitland PD on this case and our partnership is healthy and strong. We continue to call upon the Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue teams with their specialised K-9 units and we've received some recent leads that have put us out in the area again searching more acreage, and I can't thank them enough for what they've done for us. On a moments notice they're jumping and running for us. Although unsuccessful with these searches we can't stop and we appreciate the continued support from all our members and I would tell you that the number of acres searched will continue to grow.

In our efforts to develop a detailed timeline of events leading up to Michael's disappearance we've processed over 1,000 leads. We've cleared many of these leads but not all have been cleared because some require assistance from outer state, more investigators and probably, more importantly just time to work these things through, to make sure we can bring each lead to a conclusion. This process is exhaustive and it takes a lot of time and we believe someone out there will ultimately provide us with some information that'll help us solve this case. It's important to note that as we continue to refine our timeline we now believe that Michael disappeared in a smaller window of time and that's probably between the time of 6.40 pm. and 7.00 pm. on the 27th.

Earlier in the investigation we needed assistance in identifying two vehicles and two pedestrians that were seen in the area around the time of Michael's disappearance. You guys need to know that we positively identified the blue Dodge Avenger we were looking for and the man that we saw jogging in that area. Those have both been identified, vetted and investigated and to an end. The white Honda Pilot 2016-18 that we have leaving the area at approximately that time...again, we believe that it belongs to a resident but we haven't quite been able to clear that and verify that, so that's kind of still outstanding for us. The man seen walking through the area of the splash pad of Crestview Park leading up to the time of Michael's disappearance - he's not come forward and he has not been identified. So the man is described as a white male adult late 20's early 30's, he was seen wearing black shorts, a white tee-shirt with cut-off sleeves, dark coloured shoes and a hat. I need to make it perfectly clear that he is not a suspect, but we need to talk to him so that we can determine his whereabouts to see if he witnessed anything that would be helpful in this investigation. I plan on releasing a photograph of that individual in my FB official posting later today so you'll all have that.

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You need to understand that this is a multi-faceted investigation, so many leads are working...we're working many leads at the same time, so some leads are temporarily abandoned as priority leads come in and that's happened to us on multiple occasions. Once abandoned and we clear the priority leads then we pick those things right back up and we're working on them again until we can work them to conclusion. It takes an intense effort and a lot of work to document all of the leads as they are coming in and at the conclusion of this investigation I'm hopeful we'll find the answers. It's important that our case is organised and very strong. So I will tell you this is a criminal investigation so with that you need to know that the majority of our investigated efforts just cannot be made public at this time.

As members of the community we agonise with the family and we've dedicated our resources to bringing Michael home. We believe the continued distribution of this story will generate more attention and tips that can be investigated by our department and our partners. So anyone having any information regarding Michael's disappearance I would ask that you please reach out to us. No titbit of information is too benign or too obscure, it just helps us process the overall picture. We appreciate the efforts of the community, members of the media partners. We keep this case at the forefront by promoting and sharing the story and we encourage all of you to continue sharing the official poster from the Idaho Missing Person's Clearing House.

I would like to introduce a new partnership today - It's called the Homeward Bound program. The program was first started by Trooper Pageant, with the Washington State Patrol in 2005...she was working with the WSP commercial vehicle division. Trooper Pageant worked with Gordan trucking with the vision that posters of missing children being displayed on the sides of semi-trailers travelling around the country could bring much need awareness and possibly recovery. With the help of the (?) Department or the Idaho State police we've been able to partner with the Homeward Bound program which will carry Michael's information across the country on semi-trailers. As designed by Trooper Pageant this will expand the exposure of Michael's case on the interstates, highways and roads of our country which will bring new leads and potentially help us bring Michael home. We're hoping to have semi-trailers outfitted with Michael's information near the end of August and get those on the road.

I would ask anyone with any information to continue to send tips to findmichael.org or if you are outer state and you have information that you think that would help us bring Michael home I'm encouraging you to contact your local LE team. They will then get in touch with us and we can start working those leads as they come in. Please share what you have. You can also contact Crime Stoppers at 343-cops, you can remain anonymous. The reward for the information leading to Michael's safe return has grown to $52,992. This fund has been maintained by the City of Fruitland - it's secure. This will remain in place until Michael comes home. I just ask that you continue to pray for Michael for strength for his family and a steadfast resolve for those who are working to bring him home. Thank you for standing firm with Michael's family and our continued LE efforts.

Reporter: People were saying that the family....(impossible to hear with all the traffic noise)

Chief - I would tell you that people like to deal in absolutes and there is nothing about this case that is an absolute, so we will continue to investigate all aspects and all avenues in this case and as I've said before, the family continues to be extremely cooperative and working with our investigation and so...that's just kind of where we're at.

Reporter - (inaudible) strong that he was abducted. Is there anything that you can say, that you can share with us what led you to that conclusion?

Chief - Due to the number of searches with trained teams and the acreages searched that is the reason why, without success, that is the reason why there's a higher probability of abduction that's what led us to that. Again, as we continue to work through this thing there are still no absolutes, so when I say everything's on the table - it's still on the table.

Reporter - (Inaudible - asks about known or stranger abduction) Is there any avenue that you're focusing more on?

Chief - We're looking into that but I think....like I said these leads and what we're doing is happening at the same time, so yes we're looking into friends and family close to the Vaughn's and we're looking outside as well.

Reporter - Has the public made it harder to investigate (inaudible) convoluted with theories that are flying around?

Chief - Yes. Yes it has. You know there's a number of theories and as a matter of fact we develop many theories throughout the week as well. Once we develop those theories, plausible situations, then we vigorously get after that. And so I certainly don't want to discourage any information that's coming into the Fruitland PD because the leads have been...we're over 1,000 leads now and we have to have that. I believe that in the midst of that there's going to be that titbit of information that breaks this case and helps us bring him home.

Reporter - (Paraphrasing - Could the lack of information from LE have led the public to come up with all these different theories?)

Chief - Yeah, I think it could be but you also need to understand that we have an obligation, in order to keep our case organised and strong - when this thing is concluded it's important that we hold that information close, at least at this point. There'll be a time for that, a time for public disclosure, and right now it just isn't. So that's the reason for my hesitancy to put out updates, because we are in the daily work of this investigation and it's daily. While it's certainly not a distraction, if I have significant information that needs to be passed then I'll get it out there to you, but we're just working this thing on a daily basis.

Reporter - Is there anything you can say about person of interests in this case? How many POIs...?

Chief - I'm not going to get in too deep on the POIs but I will tell you there are multiple.

Reporter - Are there any people that you've interviewed or searched that have been uncooperative?

Chief - Yeah, there have been.

Reporter - (inaudible)

Chief - Without getting into too much detail, I will tell you - properties, vehicles, electronic devices, everything you think that we would be serving search warrants on, more than likely, we've served search warrants on it.

Reporter - (Asks about multiple POIs - I'm going to guess that she asked if he could name any)

Chief - No.

Reporter - Can you tell us a bit about your daily efforts (inaudible)

Chief - Our day to day efforts start with an intelligence briefing first thing in the morning. We go over aspects of the case and current leads that we're working to try to develop new strategies. We pull in our partners from the FBI and the Idaho State Police and we start with a direction for that day and everyday starts the same. But I will tell you, it has been this way since the day Michael went missing. We do the same thing everyday and it's intense and so we're able to clear a lot of leads that way, we're making a lot of progress, working through the data like we have been from the beginning.

Reporter - In your investigation have you been able to tie this to other missing children or abductions that similar?

Chief - You know...we haven't. Although I know there are some similarities, such as the Summer Wells case, but we just haven't been able to tie that to that case.
 
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