A missing toddler’s parents have been named suspects in his disappearance after being “less than truthful,” a central Idaho sheriff said Monday.
DeOrr Kunz Jr., 2, vanished July 10 from his family’s campsite close to the Montana border at Timber Creek Campground. The boy’s parents, Jessica Mitchell and DeOrr Kunz Sr., have been “less than truthful” under questioning and polygraph tests, and investigators believe the couple knows where their little boy is and whether he’s alive, said Lemhi County Sheriff Lynn Bowerman.
“They’re not able to tell the same story twice because they’ve told so many stories,” Bowerman told KTVB-TV. “We’re getting changes in the stories all the time.”
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Efforts to reach the Idaho Falls parents, who live about 175 miles southeast of the campground, were not successful Monday afternoon.
Bowerman told East Idaho News that he doesn’t think arrests are imminent because, he said, “We don’t want to charge them too early should we find DeOrr and things change.”
A staff member in the Lemhi County Prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether or when charges might be filed in the case. FBI agents joined investigators with the sheriff’s offices of Lemhi and Bonneville counties in interviewing the parents and other witnesses this past weekend, according to East Idaho News.
The parents have said the boy went missing after they left him with his grandfather and a friend of his grandfather to go on a 20-minute walk. The toddler’s family hired Texas-based Klein Investigations and Consulting to probe the case and held a fundraiser earlier this month to help pay the company’s fees, East Idaho News reported.
“Six months ago today since the last time I seen my son my little boy,” Kunz wrote on Facebook. “Six months since he stood next a picnic table and I heard his little voice and that was the last moment my life went from great to upside down… that little boy taught me how to be a man to love and care and happiness I miss my son every minute of everyday. I just want my amazing son back and my great life to continue daddy misses and loves you goobs.”
Investigators believe the child was not abducted, Bowerman said. Senior investigator Philip Klein of Klein Investigations said Monday night that he had seen the sheriff’s comments in local media reports.
“Our investigation has not uncovered any information that contradicts his statement,” he said in a prepared comment.
A team led by senior investigator Philip Klein has also ruled out a wild animal attack but not a “death — either accidental or with intent,” Klein said earlier this month. The company dismissed rumors of a pending arrest as “at best erroneous” in a statement from Klein posted on its Facebook page Jan. 16.
“We ask the public’s help in stopping this rumor as it is not fair to the family or the community in spreading these false statements,” Klein said. “We pledge to the public that this case is very solvable and to simply calm down right now.”
With News Wire Services
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