Update on Missing Child: Lindsey Baum

As is usual, I come away confused by the latest articles, posts, and messages about Lindsey Baum, the 11 year old girl missing from McCleary, Washington, since June 26, 2009 -- abducted, it appears, on her short walk home in what was then a peaceful, naive, and quiet town.

In what I *think* is a typographical error, one news source announced that the reward grew to $120,000. The last I heard, just a few weeks ago, it was $20,000.

Now... $120,000 sounds grand, and let's just run with it! [I haven't yet blogged about my opinion of someone driven by monetary gain in this matter, have I?]

Lindsey J. Baum's case was featured on Nightline Tuesday night. The emphasis was on the techniques employed by the FBI's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment (CARD) team -- from interviewing residents and developing profiles to investigating the whereabouts and activities of area sex offenders. The associated ABC News article can be found here.

I recently declared that I would not contribute to the burgeoning use of expressions employing the word "disconnect" as a noun.

There is a real disconnect between what the ABC News show and articles put forward, in terms of the FBI's activity in McCleary, Washington, and the information more locally sourced.

Even so, I will dutifully report that in the wake of this coverage, 12 people have become persons of interest in the case, 2 of whom are apparently of considerable interest.

The best summation of what appears to be a stalled investigation, despite the FBI's special team antics?

"Somebody saw something and somebody suspects something," said Melissa Baum [Lindsey's mother]. "Somebody knows something and they're not coming forward. I think that's my greatest frustration through this all is, I know there's somebody out there and for whatever reason, they're not sharing whatever information that they have."

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I would never have believed that someone could withhold information about a missing child. Of course, I never thought anyone would reach my blog by typing this into their search engine, either:

I know what happened to Lindsey Baum...

Earlier posts about Lindsey on this blog can be found here.