Disappearance of LeeAnna Warner

At the time of her disappearance, LeeAnna stood between 3 feet 0 inches (0.91 m) and 3 feet 2 inches (0.97 m), and weighed approximately 50 pounds (22.7 kg). She is described as being a petite, Caucasian female, with brown hair. Her hair was cut into a short bob cut at the time of her disappearance. She had dark brown eyes. LeeAnna has two main distinguishing characteristics, one being the mole above her left ankle and the other being a dimple on her left shoulder.[3]

The last thing that LeeAnna was seen wearing was a sleeveless blue denim dress (some sources state a denim shirt) with a belt, orange underwear, a flower earring with a red garnet in her right ear, and no shoes or socks.[3]

Kaelin and Christopher were never considered suspects and they were not required to take lie detector tests. However, Christopher had been having domestic problems with his ex-wife and had even sought out a restraining order on her. He also claimed that she had made threats towards Kaelin and LeeAnna.[8]

Despite this information, authorities felt that Christopher's previous problems with his ex-wife were not connected to his daughter's disappearance.

Years after LeeAnna's disappearance, Kaelin and Christopher moved away from Chisholm to try and start fresh, claiming the town no longer felt safe, or like home, to them.[9]

One of the main suspects that was identified as potentially having a role in LeeAnna's disappearance was a man by the name of Matthew James Curtis, who was aged 24 at the time. In August 2003, Curtis was arrested for possession of child pornography. He was interrogated a number of times by the police about whether or not he had anything to do with LeeAnna's case.[3]

Due to his prior charges and his proximity to LeeAnna, authorities suspected that Curtis had played a role in the young girl's disappearance. They were granted a warrant and searched his pickup truck for DNA samples. However, an extensive search of his trucks and his belongings revealed that there was no evidence that LeeAnna had ever been in the vehicle. Therefore, there was no way to directly connect Curtis to the case.[3]

In September 2003, the day before he was supposed to appear in the local court for the child pornography charges, Curtis' corpse was found in his pickup truck, a few miles out of Chisholm.[10] Authorities claim that Curtis suffocated himself with a plastic bag. The investigation into Curtis's death was closed and officially ruled a suicide.[3]

However, there was a great deal of speculation and controversy surrounding his death, with some believing that Curtis was murdered and that his body was positioned to make it look like a suicide.[8] Currently, there is no evidence to support this claim.

Joseph Edward Duncan III was a convicted sex offender who was accused of kidnapping two children in Idaho.[5]

When the authorities were going through his computer for an unrelated case, they came across an encrypted document which made reference to LeeAnna's disappearance. Duncan also kept an online diary and in 2004, Duncan wrote in this diary, explaining that he was afraid that he was going to be blamed for the disappearance of LeeAnna Warner.[5] He also discussed his dissatisfaction with the investigation into him and his discontentment with being labelled a sex offender.

His knowledge of the missing Minnesota girl led to an investigation about whether he had anything to do with the young girl's disappearance, however the authorities could find nothing concrete to put him on trial. A timeline of Duncan's most recent activities also revealed that he had not been in the Chisholm area at the time of LeeAnna's alleged abduction.[5]

Christopher and Kaelin told authorities that in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, LeeAnna had been behaving strangely.

One afternoon LeeAnna's parents came home to her playing with a case filled with Barbie dolls and their clothes, despite them never having purchased the toys for her. When Kaelin asked her where she had gotten them from, LeeAnna said that she had been given them from “a little old lady."[11]

A week prior to her disappearance, LeeAnna packed a suitcase with all her favorite things and told her parents that she wanted to go live at her new family's house. They also found her sleeping in her closet one night, claiming that she was afraid that monsters outside her window were going to get her.[11]

Investigators looked into this and determined that there was no evidence to indicate that anyone had used toys to lure LeeAnna away from her family. The information was dismissed.

At the time of LeeAnna's disappearance, numerous witnesses recall seeing a man in his mid-thirties walking around the neighborhood. He was described as being approximately 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) tall and around 155 lb (70 kg). He allegedly had a dark tattoo of a star or a sun on his right arm.[3] This man has not been identified.

Around the same time, witnesses identified a maroon and blue Cadillac that was driven by an African-American man who appeared to be in his twenties or thirties and had a bald or shaven head. There were also accounts of an unfamiliar older-model rusty brown pickup truck that was driven by a Caucasian man with black curly hair.[3]

None of these men have been identified and it remains unclear whether any of them had anything to do with LeeAnna's disappearance.