LeeAnna Warner, a young American girl, disappeared from Chisholm, Minnesota, on June 14, 2003.
On the day she went missing, LeeAnna was last seen walking home from a friend's house between 5:00 and 5:15 p.m.
LeeAnna was just 5 years old when she disappeared.
Background
LeeAnna Warner was born into the Warner family, which includes her mother Tiffany Kaelin Whittaker, her father Christopher Warner, and herself.
LeeAnna's parents had both been divorced before.
Christopher and Kaelin met and started living together toward the end of 1996, and they gave birth to LeeAnna on January 21, 1998.
The Warners had moved to Chisholm only a few months before LeeAnna disappeared.
LeeAnna was described as an outgoing, friendly, and very brave child, with survival instincts that were unusual for her age.
Disappearance
On June 14, 2003, LeeAnna was last seen walking barefoot home.
She was coming from her friend's house, which was about a block and a half from her own home.
Kaelin Warner informed the authorities that they had just returned home from the Side Lake Rummage Sale.
Despite Kaelin's concerns that LeeAnna needed to rest, her daughter decided to go play with a friend who lived just a few streets away.
Kaelin allowed her to go, provided that LeeAnna was back home by 5 p.m.
LeeAnna left for her friend's house at 4:30 p.m., a short walk that her parents say she had done many times on her own.
When she arrived, it was clear that no one was home at her friend's place, so she decided to head back home.
By 5 p.m., when LeeAnna hadn't returned home, her mother began to panic.
Around 5:30 p.m., Kaelin started searching for her daughter and enlisted the help of people in the neighborhood.
By 9:00 p.m., despite the extensive search effort, there was still no sign of LeeAnna.
At this point, Kaelin and Chris reported their daughter missing to the local police.
Investigation
The Chisholm Police Department arrived shortly after receiving the call from the Warner family.
Another search party was organized this time with the help of the authorities.
The group searched for over 48 hours but could not find any clues about what happened to LeeAnna.
In the weeks after her disappearance, authorities conducted a thorough search using helicopters and bloodhounds.
Still, LeeAnna was nowhere to be found.
A month after LeeAnna vanished, a local resident discovered a child's footprints near Longyear Lake.
This was the same lake where LeeAnna had been with her mother on the day she disappeared.
The Chisholm Police Department had the lake drained in an effort to find LeeAnna or her body.
But no evidence of her presence was found in the lake.
In 2020, Chisholm Police Chief Vern Manner said that they still had several persons of interest.
He explained that they couldn't label them as suspects due to a lack of evidence.
Over the years, the police have received more than 1,700 leads.
Due to a lack of concrete evidence, they have never identified a definitive suspect.
Theories and Persons Of Interest
While there is no concrete evidence proving that LeeAnna was kidnapped, the police consider it the more likely scenario.
They believe that if she had simply wandered off, she would have been found by now.
There are several other suspects and theories related to her disappearance.
However, none of these have been proven to this day.
Some of them include:
Christopher Warners Ex-Wife
Kaelin and Christopher were not considered suspects and they were never asked to take lie detector tests
However, Christopher had been experiencing domestic issues with his ex-wife and had even sought a restraining order against her.
He also claimed that she had made threats against Kaelin and LeeAnna.
Despite this information, authorities believed that Christopher's issues with his ex-wife were not related to his daughter's disappearance.
Matthew James Curtis
One of the main suspects in LeeAnna's disappearance was a 24-year-old man named Matthew James Curtis.
In August 2003, Curtis was arrested for possessing child pornography.
He was questioned multiple times by the police whether or not he had anything to do with LeeAnna's case.
Because of his previous charges and his proximity to LeeAnna, authorities suspected that Curtis might have been involved in her disappearance.
The police obtained a warrant and searched his pickup truck for DNA samples.
However, after a thorough search of his truck and belongings, there was no evidence that LeeAnna had been in the vehicle.
As a result, there was no direct evidence linking Curtis to the case.
In September 2003, the day before he was scheduled to appear in court for the child pornography charges, Curtis' body was discovered in his pickup truck.
The truck was found a few miles outside of Chisholm.
Authorities claim that Curtis suffocated himself with a plastic bag.
The investigation into his death was closed and officially deemed a suicide.
However, Curtis's death sparked significant speculation and controversy.
Some people believed he was murdered and that his body was staged to appear as a suicide.
Currently, there is no evidence to support this claim.
Joseph Edward Duncan III
Joseph Edward Duncan III was a convicted sex offender.
He previously faced charges of kidnapping two children in Idaho.
While authorities were investigating his computer for an unrelated case, they discovered an encrypted document that mentioned LeeAnna's disappearance.
Duncan also maintained an online diary.
In 2004, he wrote in the diary that he was afraid of being blamed for LeeAnna Warner's disappearance.
His knowledge of the missing Minnesota girl prompted an investigation into whether he was involved in her disappearance.
However, authorities found no concrete evidence to charge him.
Evidence also showed that Duncan was not in the Chisholm area at the time of LeeAnna's disappearance.
A little old lady
Christopher and Kaelin told authorities that, in the weeks before her disappearance, LeeAnna had been acting strangely.
One afternoon, LeeAnna's parents came home to find her playing with a case full of Barbie dolls.
They told authorities that they never bought those toys for her.
When Kaelin asked where she had gotten the toys, LeeAnna said that "a little old lady" had given them to her.
A week before her disappearance, LeeAnna packed a suitcase with all her favorite things and told her parents she wanted to live with her new family.
They also found her sleeping in her closet one night.
She said she was scared that monsters outside her window were going to get her.
Investigators looked into this but found no evidence suggesting that anyone had used toys to lure LeeAnna away.
Unidentified suspects
At the time of LeeAnna's disappearance, several witnesses reported seeing a man in his mid-thirties walking around the neighborhood.
He was described as about 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 meters) tall and weighing around 155 pounds (70 kilograms).
He was said to have a dark tattoo of a star or sun on his right arm.
To this day, the man has not been identified.
Around the same time, witnesses reported seeing a maroon and blue Cadillac driven by an African-American man.
The man seemed to be in his twenties or thirties and had a bald or shaved head.
There were also reports of an older, rusty brown pickup truck driven by a Caucasian man with black curly hair.
None of these men have been identified and it remains unclear whether any of them had anything to do with LeeAnna's disappearance.
As of 2024, LeeAnna would have been 27 years old.
Sadly, she has not been found and her case remains unsolved.
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