Thank you for this. So awful to hear some of these things. I can't imagine the heartache her foster parents are going through.
Noting some of the text in case the video or article someday goes "poof":
- JJH was Oakley Carlson’s foster mother. She and her husband had Oakley with them from the age of 7 months until just before her third birthday.
- Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Schrader is part of a team of investigators searching for Oakley and looking into what happened to her.
“We processed the house and interviewed the children that were there at the house, and none of them had seen Oakley,” said Schrader. “It had been some time since she had been seen. Now, they’re young children, and they can’t answer you directly, but it led us to believe that Oakley wasn’t even there at the time of the fire. And it had been months prior to that that any of the children had even seen her.”
Investigators saw other signs that Oakley had not been at the house.
“We did not notice any bedroom set up for Oakley downstairs where everybody else had bedrooms set up,” said Schrader.
On top of that, Schrader said they saw no clothing belonging to Oakley. The family had moved to a hotel in nearby Tumwater but they were back and forth to the house — another red flag, according to Schrader.
“It was their vehicle that they left the Tumwater hotel with, and then traveled back down to Oakville, had one car seat in it,” said Schrader. “And there was a 2-year-old sibling as well as a 6-year-old sibling of Oakley that would have been in the car at that time. So that right there, that’s a clue that something’s wrong.”
“I think about the abuse that happened,” JJH said. “Like hearing from the police reports about Oakley being starved, or that she was beaten with a belt, or that she was locked in a cabinet. That’s the stuff I think about before I go to sleep. Because if Oakley would have stayed in my care, that would never have happened to her, ever.”
