^LINDSEY J BAUM - 10 yo - McCleary WA

A newly released search warrant in the case for missing 11-year-old Lindsey Baum
outlines suspicious activity and inconsistent statements that led
investigators to a home outside McCleary last weekend.

The warrant includes statements from friends and family regarding a man at
the residence in connection with strange phone activity, disturbing
conversations involving Lindsey, conflicting alibis and a past
accusation of sexual assault.

In the court filing, investigators say they believe Lindsey has been kidnapped, and after what they have
refered to as a “credible” tip, believed they would find evidence of
her kidnapping at the home.

The Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office has since announced it could not find any evidence of wrongdoing. Some
forensic samples taken at the home and a neighboring property on Sept.
25 along Foreman Road still await testing. Results could take months.

Lindsey went missing on June 26 while walking a short distance from her
friend’s house in McCleary along a house-lined street at dusk. Despite
two confirmed sightings of her within blocks of her house, she never
made it home and investigators have not yet been able to explain her
disappearance.

The search warrant, released Friday, lists dozens of items investigators
were looking for as potential evidence, ranging from clothing matching
Lindsey’s to weapons to cars on the property.

Attempts to contact the man and family members Friday via e-mail were not returned.

In news reports after the search warrants were executed, the owner of the
property said he’s contacted a lawyer about suing the police and the
media, saying they had no right to put the family through the search.

Much of the warrant lists suspicious reports focusing on a man at the home,
who is not being named because he has not been arrested or charged with
any crime.

Investigators say he fixated on Lindsey’s disappearance in the days after she went missing and made disturbing
comments about believing the girl had been murdered when most
authorities still thought her to be lost.

“(The man) told (a friend) he could not believe that a girl had been taken and cut up and
dismembered,” the warrant stated. “It should be noted that the media
and investigators did not believe that Baum was the victim of a crime
until the week following her disappearance.”

A friend also reported the man became “agitated” when investigators questioned him
about the case, the warrant stated. He “obsessed” about Lindsey and the
possibility she had been kidnapped, the court papers said.

The warrant also lists the man as a suspect in an alleged attempted rape in
2000 when he was a teenager. The man allegedly allowed several children
to watch pornography before barricading a 12-year-old girl in a room
and trying to rape her. The girl’s friends reported the alleged
assault, but the girl declined to make a statement to police at the
time.

“She said that she cried and struggled and after about two
hours he released her,” the alleged victim recently told investigators
when interviewed because of the Baum case.

The warrant states police officers also stopped the man on July 31 when Lindsey’s mother
reported his vehicle following her. The man said he thought the mother
had been acting suspiciously.

A car similar to the man’s vehicle was reportedly seen shortly before Lindsey’s disappearance near the
intersection on Maple Street where she was last spotted, according to
the warrant. The man also worked part-time at a business nearby, one
that Baum had been in often.

When contacted by investigators, the man reported he had been at a second job in Olympia on the night of
the disappearance, according to the warrant. The man’s supervisor at
that job told investigators the man was suspended during that time and
could not have been working.

When confronted with the inconsistency, the man provided a second alibi that investigators could not verify.

The warrant also outlines suspicious phone activity that stops suddenly at about the time Lindsey disappeared.

“This is contrary to the pattern of cell phone usage shown in (the man’s)
cell phone records,” the warrant stated. “He normally has frequent cell
phone activity until at least midnight or 1 a.m. each day.”

A person identifying him or herself as a friend of the man’s family in an
online forum said the family has always cooperated with investigators
and has actively tried to help with the search for Lindsey.

“Someone has found someone to blame,” the poster wrote. “This is ridiculous.”

The poster said the family has been upset by the allegations and has had
people trespassing on the property since the searches were launched.

“This is all utter nonsense,” the poster wrote.

Lindsey Baum is 4-foot-9 with brown eyes and brown hair. She was wearing a blue shirt and jeans when she disappeared.

Anyone who might have any information about the whereabouts of Lindsey Baum should call 1-866-915-8299 or via e-mail soadmin@co.grays-harbor.wa.us. Information may also be mailed to PO Box 305 McCleary, 98557.

The ChildSeek Network has also put up a Web site about Baum at: http://www.childseeknetwork.com/kids/Baum.htm.

A man whose family owns two homes searched in connection with missing
11-year old Lindsey Baum is no longer a "person of interest," according
to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office. One day after
investigators confirmed they were looking at the man, they backed-off
that label.

The sheriff's office served search warrants last weekend on the two
McCleary, WA homes and yards., and the man's car. Investigators say
that evidence is now being analyzed at several crime labs. It could
take months to get answers and there's still a chance the evidence
could implicate the man whose homes were searched.

According to court documents, the man in question changed his story
about where he was working on the night of June 26, when the girl
disappeared, and was a suspect in the attempted sexual assault of a
child in 2000.

According to Sheriff's department documents, investigators took a
number of items from the search of the homes and yards, including used
condoms, a disposable camera, black electrical tape, a rifle, and
newspaper articles about the girl's disappearance.

Saturday dozens headed for McCleary to continue the search for Lindsey.
Volunteers said they'd like to see the family get some answers. "I just
want there to be a peace so this family can find out where she's at"
said Megan Griensewic.

The girl's mother, Melssa Baum, admits the last few months have been a
nightmare "it's tough but we have to keep going, I'm not going to stop
looking for her." Baum says Saturday's search was the largest turnout
of volunteers they've had since the girl went missing. About 80 people
showed up, some came from as far away as Renton. "It feels wonderful
I'm immensely grateful to everybody" Baum said.

The girl who vanished from a small Grays Harbor County town this summer is about to get some national exposure. Lindsey Baum's story is going to be aired on an upcoming episode of the "Oprah Winfrey Show." Baum's mother, Melissa, told KING-5 News a camera crew and producer
interviewed her in McCleary last Friday and Saturday. The segment is set to air on Oct. 13. Lindsey Baum was 10-years-old when she was last seen walking home from a friend's house in McCleary June 26.

As the days get shorter and the nights grow colder, search teams looking for
missing 11-year-old Lindsey Baum are stepping up. Dozens
of Fort Lewis soldiers voluntarily dedicated their weekend off to
convoy south to McCleary to help in the search. Immediately after her disappearance, search teams were plentiful and
hundreds were working to try and find her. Now that months have passed,
attention is waning. But there are those who will never give up, and
now national attention will be focused on the case. On Tuesday the "Oprah Winfrey Show" will be featuring Lindsey Baum's
case. Lindsey's mother Melissa spent two days with producers and
cameras. Many are hoping this national attention will help find her. But far from the glamour of national television shows, locals are still doing what they can to help. For the Fort Lewis soldiers, it's a mission of honor dedicated to
bringing Lindsey home. These soldiers are conditioned to carry out
precise tactical orders. Crpl. Westin Floeter has
experience leading a team on potential life and death missions. While
Floeter's personal safety wasn't threatened today, he's aware a life
may depend on how well his team carries out its assignment. "Who wouldn't want to be here," Floeter said. "Anybody with a family
can see the importance therein, especially a family with a military
background, such as the Baums." These volunteer searchers
have a special military connection to the Baum family. Lindsay's
father was part of the 3rd Stryker brigade for years. "Lindsay still calls herself an Army brat," Melissa Baum said. "She always has."
Lindsey was walking home from a friend's
house when she disappeared on the evening of June 26. Despite an
intensive police search including the FBI and high-tech tools, nothing
has turned up. Still those who know and love the little
girl say they will never give up hope that she is alive and will come
home. Lindsey supporters began searching at 9 this
morning in the McCleary area. They will continue searching until dark.

Police Chief George Crumb said he used to look out his office window
from the police station on Summit Road and see Lindsey Baum walking
with her regular group of friends.“She was pretty
much a daily fixture of the area,” Crumb said of Lindsey, who was 10
when she went missing not two blocks from the police station as she
walked to her home from a friend’s June 26. “She seemed to be, you
could even say, the leader of the little group.”
Before she disappeared, Crumb thought nothing of noticing Lindsey -
in this small town of about 1,500, all the locals know the neighborhood
children by name.
“It wasn’t unusual to see her along with everything else,” Crumb said.
As summer has turned to fall, more than four months have passed with
no sign of what happened to Lindsey. Residents say the girl’s absence,
and the fear of what might have happened to her, have the entire town
hurting.
“I totally think it’s affected the whole town,” Diana Hasbrouck,
co-owner of Rain Country Restaurant, said between serving customers
Wednesday, standing with a half-full pot of coffee in one hand. “See
the streets right now?” she added, gesturing toward the empty sidewalks
outside the restaurant. “That’s the way it’s been all summer.”
McCleary no longer is a town where people leave their doors unlocked, said Willa Smith-Creamer, a cook at the restaurant.
“People are more apt to keep their kids inside now,” said
Smith-Creamer, 33, a lifelong McCleary resident. “I used to leave my
doors unlocked all the time, and now I don’t.”
The weekend of Lindsey’s disappearance, the McCleary Police
Department’s four-officer force gave way to detectives with the Grays
Harbor County Sheriff’s Office who are now in charge of the
investigation, supplemented by FBI agents from Seattle.
The investigation has been thwarted at every turn by a lack of physical evidence and no clues about how Lindsey disappeared.
Lindsey vanished after leaving a friend’s home on Maple Street by
herself shortly before 9:15 p.m. to make the half-mile walk across town
to the home she shared with her mother, Melissa, and 12-year-old
brother, Josh, on Mommsen Road.
The last confirmed sighting of Lindsey was about 9:15 p.m., when a
resident driving through town saw her walking on Maple Street between
Fifth and Sixth streets – about the halfway point of her journey home.
At first, investigators explored the possibility that Lindsey had
run away from home or that she might have been hiding in the woods
after a dispute with her brother over a bicycle. That possibility soon
was ruled out.
“Certainly, someone facilitated her disappearance,” Grays Harbor
County Undersheriff Rick Scott said during an interview in his office
in Montesano, about 18 miles west of McCleary. “We believe that she was
taken. We believe her to be the victim of foul play.”

MANY TIPS, FEW CLUES

Scott said investigators have slogged through thousands of leads and
tips. There have been eight to 12 “persons of interest” at various
points during the investigation, but none panned out, he said.
And the tips keep coming. Chief Crumb stood in the reception area at
the McCleary police station Wednesday. He was the only one there to
answer the phone, and he jotted down information from a tipster as he
cradled the phone between his shoulder and head.
“Well, there’s been no suspects; there’s been people of interest,” he told the caller.
Crumb said any tip the department gets about Lindsey’s disappearance
is forwarded immediately to Grays Harbor County Detective Polly Davin,
who is assigned full time to the case.
Tips come in all the time, Crumb said, but many are vague or of
little to no evidentiary value. For example, Crumb said, someone
walking in the woods notified police after discovering a shoe, thinking
it might have been Lindsey’s. It turned out to be the wrong size and
appeared to have “been out there forever,” Crumb said.

AMATEUR SLEUTHS

Crumb and Scott said the case has drawn a number of amateur sleuths
who haven’t necessarily been helpful. Crumb said that over the summer,
someone went to the McCleary assessor’s office, got the names and
addresses of everyone who lives on Maple Street, and posted that
information on a message board devoted to Lindsey’s case, leaving the
impression that any of those residents could have been responsible.
Crumb said that although posting such information online is legal, “it’s inappropriate.”
“I wish they’d tone that down,” he added.
Scott said some who have posted information about Lindsey’s case on
the Internet have created “suspects du jour” who have had “nothing to
do with anything,” he said.
“I think there’s a fine line between wanting to help and being
irresponsible, and some people have crossed that line in making
speculations and opinions that become accusatory.”
Calls also have come from residents who suggest someone they know
could be responsible, Crumb said. Many of these calls seem to have more
to do with an individual’s personal issues with someone than evidence
connected to Lindsey’s disappearance, he said.
“We’ve had a lot of calls like that, unfortunately,” he said.
Crumb recalls that when he moved to McCleary in 1994 to take the
police chief job, his daughter would ride her bike around town when she
was about Lindsey’s age.
“We don’t have as many kids walking around as in the past. It’s on everybody’s mind,” he said.
Things won’t get back to normal in McCleary until the case is
solved, Crumb said. But he fears it might remain unsolved until after
he retires.
“It’s not going to go away,” he said.

MASSIVE SEARCH

In July and August, law enforcement officers and volunteers “tipped
McCleary upside down” in a massive search for Lindsey, Scott said. The
search included helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft from the State Patrol
and search-and rescue-dogs from throughout the Puget Sound area, he
said.
“I would find it hard to believe that you could find a piece of
ground in McCleary that didn’t have one of their footprints,” Scott
said.
Detective Davin said that during the first few weeks of the
investigation, between 40 and 50 law enforcement officers were working
on the case, including FBI agents.
Police spoke to every resident and searched inside and outside more than 150 homes on or near Maple Street, Scott said.
Detectives have reviewed records of people who used credit cards at
downtown businesses during the period in which investigators think
Lindsey disappeared, such as the Shell Station on Summit Road, Scott
said. They even got a list of cell phones whose signals bounced off
McCleary’s lone cell phone tower the evening of June 26, he said.
Linda Cunningham, the owner of McCleary Video on Simpson Avenue,
said FBI agents have interviewed her three times about Lindsey’s visit
to the store with friends an hour or so before she disappeared.
“They (investigators) talked to everybody in town,” she said. “They looked through everybody’s house at least twice.”
Cunningham said her store used to be filled with children renting
DVDs and video games after school. However, “as soon as Lindsey got
kidnapped, parents stopped letting their kids go around,” she said.
“It’s hurting businesses, too. I don’t blame the parents.”
Cunningham added, “I feel so bad, but there are times I just want it
to end. I like to think she will just come home. We just want her to
come home and try to be a normal town again.”

HOLDING OUT HOPE

Lindsey’s mother, Melissa, answered the door with a cough at her
Mommsen Road home Wednesday. Her son, Josh, a seventh-grader at
McCleary Elementary School, was home sick with the flu. Lindsey’s
German shepherd, Kadence, poked her nose through the door and Melissa
Baum came outside for an interview.
She is steadfast in her belief that Lindsey is alive and will be returned home safe.
“I know my daughter’s going to be found,” she said. “I’m frustrated. It’s been four months and two days.”
Everyone in McCleary who has ever come across Lindsey – Chief Crumb,
Cunningham, Kara Kampen (whose Maple Street home Lindsey was visiting
June 26 to play with her friend Michaela) describe Lindsey as sharp,
precocious for her age and talkative.
Lindsey had left her cell phone charging at home the evening she went missing.
When police viewed Lindsey’s MySpace page after her disappearance,
they learned only that she had an affinity for the popular movie
“Twilight,” a story of vampires set in Forks. A forensic search of her
computer showed she had had no Internet communications with anyone whom
she might have met without telling her mother, police said.
Melissa Baum said she’s sure whoever took Lindsey knew her, saying
her daughter is too smart to get into a stranger’s car. If someone
tried to hurt her, she’d fight back, Melissa Baum added.
Police did not issue an Amber Alert after Melissa reported her
daughter missing at 10:50 p.m.; Melissa Baum says they should have done
so. But Crumb and Scott have said that police do not have authority to
issue an Amber Alert unless they know a child has been taken and they
have concrete information to issue to the public – such as a car or
suspect description – that can aid in a child’s recovery.
“We didn’t have that,” Scott said.
There is talk among law enforcement officers in Washington of
changing the requirements for Amber Alerts so they can be issued in
cases such as Lindsey’s, Scott said.
“I don’t disagree with Melissa that there’s some frustration in the whole Amber Alert thing,” he said.
Crumb noted that the vast majority of missing-child cases involve
simple misunderstandings – a child forgot to tell a parent about
sleeping over at a friend’s or left home after a dispute.
Melissa Baum said it’s difficult to see Lindsey’s old playmates
around town. Lindsey’s dog Kadence only recently began gaining weight
after refusing to eat anything for two weeks after Lindsey disappeared,
she added.
Melissa Baum said yellow police tape blocks her family from entering
Lindsey’s room because investigators want to preserve her scent for
search dogs, which already have scoured the wooded areas around
McCleary. Scott added that investigators want to keep Lindsey’s room
untouched because there might be items in Lindsey’s room that later
will become evidence, or that can be used to collect a DNA sample
belonging to Lindsey.
“My life is standing still,” Melissa Baum said. “Everything’s off. It’s changed our whole life.”

WEEKLY SEARCHES

Melissa Baum now is in charge of the volunteer searches in and
around McCleary every weekend. Searchers took Halloween weekend off;
three weekends ago, the search team included more than 70 soldiers from
Fort Lewis who scoured the wooded areas around McCleary, she said.
Crumb said that even though the searches have covered a lot of
ground, the vastness of the forests and swampland around McCleary makes
it impossible to say definitively that searchers have checked every
place where Lindsey could be.
McCleary’s location near several highways increases the number of
locations where an abductor could have taken her, Scott said. The roads
out of McCleary include state Route 8, which leads to U.S. Highway 101
and Interstate 5; and state Route 108, which leads past Little Creek
Casino toward Shelton.
Melissa Baum said she knows investigators are doing all they can but is frustrated by the lack of progress.
“I just feel like it’s taking too long,” she said. “I don’t know what I expect them to do that they’re not doing.”
Melissa Baum said she had a run-in in July with the most publicized
of the “persons of interest” in Lindsey’s disappearance, a man in his
early 20s who worked at a retirement home on the street where Lindsey
last was seen.
Melissa Baum said the man followed her in a vehicle as she drove on
Maple Street. She called police, and officers pulled the car over,
court papers state.
The man said he thought Melissa Baum’s car was suspicious, “so he
followed it around, thinking it might be connected with Baum’s
disappearance,” the search warrant affidavit states.
Melissa Baum said of the episode, “I don’t trust anybody anymore.”
Scott said enough residents had notified police of the man’s odd
behavior to spur investigators to obtain a search warrant for his and
his family’s properties in McCleary on Oct. 2.
According to the search warrant affidavit, the man told conflicting
stories about his whereabouts the night of Lindsey’s disappearance. He
first told police he was working at the retirement home, but his former
supervisor there said he was suspended the night of June 26.
He was a suspect in an attempted rape of a child in McCleary in
2000, the affidavit states, and he told a friend after Lindsey’s
disappearance that “he could not believe that a girl had been taken and
cut up and dismembered.” The friend told police that he “was
obsessively talking about Baum and what had happened to her;
specifically, that he believed she had been kidnapped and murdered.”
Nothing of evidentiary value was found during the search, although
Scott is reluctant to say that the man – or anyone else – has been
cleared in Lindsey’s disappearance. A Seattle TV station’s helicopter
taped the police search of the property and aired it on local
newscasts, but Scott said the man is only one of the eight to 12 people
who have been investigated as “persons of interest” at one time or
another during the investigation.
“I’m reluctant to say that anybody is 100 percent cleared because I don’t have any evidence,” Scott said.
The man whose property was searched has said his family will sue the sheriff’s office.

FALSE SIGHTINGS

Law enforcement officers also have had to contend with false
sightings of Lindsey, Scott said. Early in the investigation, one of
Melissa Baum’s family members called to report that she thought Lindsey
was in the back of a car headed west on state Route 8, he said.
Police assumed it was a legitimate sighting because it was reported by someone who knows what Lindsey looks like, he said.
“Multiple units from multiple agencies set up to converge on the
vehicle,” Scott said. “I’ve got guys doing 100 miles per hour, setting
up to intercept this car.”
It turned out that the woman didn’t actually see Lindsey; she had
information from a psychic that Lindsey was in the back of a car that
looked like a vehicle she later spotted on the highway, he said.
Scott said the example illustrates not only the family’s desperate
search, but also how police have to respond rapidly to every tip,
because they never know which one will be the break that leads to
finding Lindsey.
National media attention focused on Lindsey’s disappearance has
helped get her picture out across the country, Scott said. Her
disappearance has been covered by three national news networks, as well
as “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “America’s Most Wanted” and “Nancy Grace,”
he said.
However, national attention also has led “to false sightings all over,” Scott said.
“It’s problematic because you take a lot of resources to deal with that,” he said.
Lindsey last was seen wearing a blue, hooded, long-sleeve shirt,
blue jeans, black shoes and a mismatched bikini-style swimsuit, court
records state.

McCleary -
An anguished mother still agonizing over the disappearance of her
11-year-old daughter may have reason for some hope -- after her
daughter's face is featured on the cover of "People" magazine.

The national publicity may somehow help find Lindsey Baum of McCleary.

Lindsey is one of six missing children shown on this week's cover of
People -- and featured in a story about missing children and their
families.

Lindsey disappeared in June while walking home from a friend's house.

After several massive searches involving the FBI, search dogs and neighboring counties -- police have no clues and no suspects.