ABERDEEN — It was hot in McCleary June 26, 2009. Lindsey Baum, just weeks shy of her 11th birthday, had spent part of the day beating the heat with a lot of neighborhood kids at a pool party blocks from her home.
Later that evening she, her then 12-year-old brother Josh and a friend left Lindsey’s home on Mommsen Street to see about a sleepover at the friend’s house. Josh peeled back toward his home after a few blocks and the two girls continued to the friend’s house. The sleepover didn’t work out and Lindsey, now on her own, started the 10-minute walk home around 9:15 p.m.
She never arrived.
What followed was an intensive search for the missing girl. Thousands of hours of searching and investigating by multiple agencies and hundreds of volunteers, a half-million pieces of information gathered, search helicopters above, scent dogs on the ground, search warrants executed, about 20 persons of interest developed, but no trace of Lindsey would be found for almost nine years.
Lindsey’s partial remains were found in a remote area of Kittitas County in the fall of 2017, giving investigators, a mother, a family and a community some answers. Lindsey had been abducted, and had been murdered. That added another investigative piece to the puzzle, but 10 years after that hot June day in McCleary there have been no arrests in the case.