The views and opinions expressed in Cold and
Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All
parties mentioned are considered innocent until
proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing
also contains adult themes and languages. Listener
discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin
-Sulkowski. And I'm your co -host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover
cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone
and welcome back to Cold and Missing. I'm your
host Allie and it will just be me coming to you
this week. Eli is taking another week off just
to take care of himself and thank you all so
much for sticking with us. I know we took last
week off completely. One of our dogs broke out
in hives. He's okay. Everything's okay. A little
Benadryl and a quick trip to the vet was all
that was needed but we just had to change course
a little bit last week and just make some more
space to take care of the dog as I'm sure any
pet parent out there would understand. But thank
you so much as always for your understanding
and your kind words. But I wanted to get back
to you this week and give you another episode.
We are on a missing person case and we are on
episode 130. So let's go ahead and get into it.
So just as a quick content warning at the top,
this case does involve a young person, and there
are some brief mentions of death by suicide and
sexual assault. Today, we are talking about the
missing person case of LeeAnna Warner, and this
takes place in June of 2003 in Chisholm, Minnesota.
But first, a little bit about LeeAnna. LeeAnna
is five years old in 2003 and is described as
a chatterbox. Her nickname is Beaner, given to
her at birth by her mother that said she looked
like a tiny bean pod. She and her family lived
in the smaller town of Chisholm, Minnesota, which
is about 250 miles north of the Twin Cities.
LeeAnna loved frilly dresses and the family pets.
She had four older siblings and was known as
a light in the house, always talkative, always
having fun, the baby to everybody. And now, a
timeline of events. Saturday, June 14, 2003.
Our timeline picks up as LeeAnna is headed home
in the family car. She had fallen asleep in the
car, and her mom, Kaylin, lets her sleep while
she empties the car out. When she started to
stir, she immediately wanted to go to her friend's
house that lived nearby. She said she wanted
to go say goodbye. Her friend lived just down
the street. She had walked there on her own many
times before, was only about a block away. Her
mother told her that it was fine, but she needed
to be back in a half hour at 5 p .m. So at 4
.30, LEeAnna headed off. She was wearing a sleeveless
denim dress and was barefoot. She was also wearing
a flower earring with a red garnet in her right
ear. Two neighbors saw LeeAnna knock on the friend's
door. Unbeknownst to LeeAnna, her friend's family
had left to go to Walmart, and there was nobody
home. The neighbors who saw LeeAnna knocking kept
going about their day. They assumed the little
girl was going to be let in in a moment. No one
came to the door. It's assumed at this point
that LeeAnna turned around to head back home,
but she never made it back. LeeAnna is never seen
again. As 5 o 'clock rolls around, Kaelin, LeeAnna’s
mother, noticed that she hadn't gotten home yet.
She sends one of her older sisters to get her
and bring her home. LeeAnna’s sister heads over
to the neighbor's house and knocks. No one answers.
The sister then turns around and heads back home
to report this to her mother. Immediately, her
mom and older sisters head back out into the
neighborhood to look for LeeAnna. At 6 .21 p .m.,
so LeeAnna was last seen about 4 .45 to 5 p .m.,
Chris, LeeAnna’s father, gets a call. He works
as a volunteer ambulance worker and heads out
on the emergency. He left without knowing his
daughter was missing. He's out on the call until
7 .45 p .m. When he gets home, he's alerted that
LeeAnna is missing and joins the search. At this
point, neighbors and friends are all out looking
throughout the neighborhood. They're checking
other families' homes. Everybody is out looking
for her. At 8 .48, this would be about four hours
after LeeAnna was last seen. Her parents call
911 to report her missing. Police arrive on the
scene quickly. Cops are there by 9 p .m. and
join the search and start organizing. By 10 .15,
bloodhounds and search and rescue teams join
the search for LeeAnna as well. The search goes
throughout the night. They have a big operation.
There are lots of volunteers helping. Police,
search and rescue, dogs are all going. Early
on, investigators have to make a choice. Do they
treat this like an abduction and spend resources
pursuing that? Or should they spend their resources
searching the area in case she wandered off and
got lost or hurt? Police decide to spend the
resources searching for the little girl in the
area, thinking it most likely that she wandered
off and got lost. Investigators specifically
focus on a four -square -mile radius around where
LeeAnna was last seen. In that four miles also
included a lake. Police continue to search throughout
the night and into the next day, Sunday, June
15th. At 4 a .m., the state police launch a helicopter
to help aid in the search. The next 48 hours
is a frantic search with police, firefighters,
volunteers, helicopters, divers, bloodhounds,
and tracking experts. It's a massive search.
Police and family are just hoping that LeeAnna
wandered off and got lost and that they'll be
able to return the little girl home. Her mother
says, quote, It's like she disappeared into thin
air or someone zapped her somewhere with a laser.
Or that she was just abducted by aliens. Just
vanished. Gone. End quote. Nothing of the little
girl is found in the search. No clues, no leads.
Police looking back at this search say, quote,
it was a Herculean effort to search that area.
We're pretty confident, though I suppose we can't
say beyond all reasonable certainty, but we're
pretty confident that she wasn't in that four
-mile radius. The days turn into weeks and the
weeks into months. At the 50 -day mark, police
announced that they now believe LeeAnna was the
victim of a stranger abduction, completely pivoting
what they had been communicating to the neighborhood,
to the public, and also how they were investigating
LeeAnna’s disappearance. Her father tells the
media, quote, We knew it in our hearts, but it's
not an easy word to hear. Police came to the
conclusion of a stranger abduction after sorting
through over 300 leads and a thorough search
and research of the area around the home. The
State Bureau of Investigation joined the case
to help. One agent with over 30 years of experience
said that he'd never seen a case with so little
to go on. Investigators start by eliminating
everyone in LeeAnna’s life, starting with family
and friends closest to her and working outward.
Police do not believe that LeeAnna’s family had
anything to do with it, and they're eliminated
quickly in the investigation. Police also pulled
names from all the gas stations, hotels, and
campgrounds in the area for the weekend that
LeeAnna went missing. There had been a concert
and a charity motorcycle ride that same weekend.
According to police, nothing came from these
searches. Everyone is looking for LeeAnna. For
months, they're looking for her. Friends of hers
and other kids in the neighborhood converted
an old shed to the official Find Beaner Kids
Clubhouse. Her parents remain hopeful. Her dad,
Chris, says, quote, As a parent, you'd feel it
in your heart if she'd passed on. We haven't
felt that yet. We'll continue to hold the hope
until they can show us otherwise. End quote.
In September of 2003, so LeeAnna has been missing
for three months. A man who had been questioned
several times in LeeAnna’s disappearance is found
dead by suicide. Police had searched his home
in relation to LeeAnna. He lived just a few doors
down from her in the neighborhood. During the
search of his home, police had found child pornography.
Police will later say that this man had nothing
to do with LeeAnna’s disappearance specifically.
There was never any evidence that LeeAnna was
at his home. Later that same month, September
of 2003, Bruce Christensen pleads guilty to making
terroristic threats against Kaylin Warner, LeeAnna’s
mom. Kaylin had asked Christensen to talk to
police about LeeAnna’s disappearance. Christensen
told Kaylin that he would sue for defamation
and threaten to shoot her. He will eventually
go on to murder other people in jail. The reward
for information is upped to $25 ,000 later in
September as well. LeeAnna’s grandfather, Butch
Warner, says, quote, In June of 2004, At the
one -year anniversary of LeeAnna’s disappearance,
and police still have no idea what happened to
her. No clues, no leads, no theories even outside
of a stranger abduction. But police have nothing
to go on. Investigators have ran down more than
1 ,500 leads and nothing turned up. The family
hired a private investigator to help them in
their search. The PI plans to research the area
around the home to see if he's able to find anything
that was overlooked. Nothing new is discovered
in those searches either. In June of 2008, so
it's been five years since LeeAnna vanished, and
police still have no leads in the case. Police
ask people to come forward with any information
that they may have. Quote, they might think that
we've already heard it, but they've never talked
to us. And that's one of the hopes I have. is
that somebody who knows something will come forth
and give us that little piece of the puzzle that
will put this whole thing together and bring
a resolution to the case. It appears that this
public plea helps police. They begin to look
at sex offender Joseph E. Duncan. Duncan had
posted online about LeeAnna’s case. Duncan wanted
to try to figure out who kidnapped her so that
way the finger wouldn't be pointed at him. He
posted online, quote, This is for my own safety.
I figure it's just a matter of time before I
am falsely accused of some crime or another."
Duncan would later be sentenced to death row
in Idaho for the kidnappings and murders of members
of the Groney family. When he killed the Groney
family and kidnapped Shasta Groney, he was on
the run from child molestation charges in Minnesota.
Investigators look into Duncan's life to see
if they're able to place him in or around Chisholm,
Minnesota during the time of LeeAnna’s disappearance,
but I couldn't find any updates if they were
ever able to link him to that area at the time
of her disappearance. The case goes cold for
years. It comes up again in the media at anniversaries
and when they talk about other Minnesota missing
children cases. In 2022, so it's been 19 years
since LeeAnna vanished. Her mother says, quote,
every few years we have to do the new and updated
photographs of what she would look like now,
and that's a struggle for me. Still to this day,
I look for a five -year -old. I can't get that
out of my head, even though I know she'd be 24.
If I saw her today or could speak with her, I'd
tell her how much I love her and that she'll
always be my little angel. I would do anything
in the world to find her and to make up for the
last 19 years we've missed. LeeAnna’s mother will
pass away later in 2022 from lung cancer. LeeAnna’s
older sisters have taken up the fight to keep
her case in the media and to keep searching for
her in order to bring her home and to provide
answers. But that is truly all the details we
have on LeeAnna’s case. So if you know anything
about the disappearance of LeeAnna Warner in June
of 2003 or her whereabouts today, please call
the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children at 1 -800 -843 -5678. So that is the
missing person case of LeeAnna Warner. With this
case, when I came across it, I was really looking
at Minnesota, just the state of Minnesota kind
of came to me when I was thinking about where
to kind of look for the next case. And when I
typed her name in and just, you know, kind of
did a quick internet search just to see, you
know, where the case is today. Sometimes there's
cases, you know, where there has been an arrest,
but maybe the person is still missing. So I always
like to kind of check where the case is as of
today in 2025. I was really surprised when I
Googled LeeAnna’s name because a Wikipedia article
popped up for her. And typically, you know, we
don't cover a lot of cases that do have Wikipedia
articles. Some do. Some are well -known like
that. And this one is one that to me was not
well -known. Maybe it's well -known to our listeners,
but I wasn't as familiar with LeeAnna’s case.
And, you know, reading through just the Wikipedia
article really quickly and then... diving deep
into the newspaper articles and the reporting
at the time. This is a case that is very difficult
and heartbreaking due to the complete lack of
information. There's just really nothing to go
on in this case. And I think that just brings
us right into kind of talking about questions
that I would have for this case. All we really
know About LeeAnna’s disappearance is that she
walked barefooted to a friend's house just to
kind of quickly say goodbye. Her mom's quoted
as saying she wanted to say goodbye to her friend.
So I would assume that maybe they were playing
earlier in the day and maybe she wanted to say
goodbye or maybe good night. See you tomorrow.
It was Saturday. So maybe she wanted to just
say, like, I'll see you tomorrow. We'll play
tomorrow. We'll keep doing what we're doing.
But LeeAnna walked over there about 4 .30, 4 .45
-ish, but she was told to be home in a half hour
at 5 o 'clock. So we know that neighbors saw
her knocking on her friend's door. And I believe
there are two witnesses that saw that. At least
that's how it made it sound, is that there are
a couple different accounts that saw LeeAnna knocking.
didn't pay any attention past that, didn't see
if anyone answered the door, didn't see if she
was let in, if she turned around and started
walking home, if she maybe started walking to
another friend's house. Nothing is known beyond
she got to the front door of the friend's house,
knocked, and they weren't home and they had gone
to Walmart. And that's really all we know. It's
assumed that LeeAnna would have turned around
and started walking back home, but we know she
never makes it there. And there are no other
sightings, at least that we know of, saying that,
like, you know, this color car drove through
or, you know, this person was seen walking. You
know, there's nothing else, even around that
time period, that gives any clue or indication
or even just a lead as to what could have happened
to LeeAnna. I mentioned during the timeline that,
you know, once police are called, they're called
about four hours after she's last seen. They
start searching, but they kind of have to make
an immediate decision. Do they treat this like
a stranger abduction, which statistically would
have been more rare? Or do they treat it like
she has wandered off and maybe gotten lost or
hurt? As discussed in the timeline, they put
the resources towards searching the area as if
she had wandered off and gotten lost. It does
make me wonder if they had pivoted at all or
maybe thrown some resources out for the maybe
least likely option at the time, but now what
is considered the most likely option of a stranger
abduction. I do wonder. if that would have turned
up anything, if that would have done anything.
Because a couple things come to mind that make
me think that, you know, if they had, you know,
right at 9 p .m. when the police arrived, if
they had started treating it like a stranger
abduction, if... They could have pulled some
leads. Of course, this is all speculation at
this point. But, you know, at that point, it
had been four hours. And Chisholm, Minnesota,
is a pretty small town. It looks like there are
kind of these two main roads that would take
you out or, you know, kind of get you going to
more places. So there's Highway 169, which runs
east. And then there's also Highway 73, which
is north and south. So both of those roads could
have gotten you out of town pretty quickly if
a stranger abduction had happened. So while I
don't think the outcome would have been any different,
I'm sure that if everyone could go back to that
night, they would have maybe split the resources
or at least put some officers out at those roads
watching and stopping all traffic in and out
of the area. But of course, you know, at the
time, police made a decision based off of what
was statistically most likely. And, you know,
this is a small town of around 5 ,000. They had
never seen something like this before. Now, over
the years, a few persons of interest have come
to light. And one that I am curious about is
Bruce Christensen. LeeAnna’s mother or not kind
of he was charged against it so he was making
threats against LeeAnna’s mother and threatening
to kill her and you know when she asked him to
talk to police about her daughter's case he seems
to have like blown up and like accused her of
defamation and you know saying all these false
things against him but I don't know what came
out of any interview with police if he even talked
to police I would assume that there was some
questioning done by officers and I I'm just wondering
if there was any more suspicion or if they were
able to rule him out completely from LeeAnna’s
case because this just seems like such a huge
reaction to like have this grieving mother and
to like threaten to shoot her like that's wild
behavior and we do know that this man like later
he will go on to kill someone in jail and he
just kills that person because they're there
it seems like so all in all this is somebody
that I would you know if I could sit down and
ask police anything I would want to know about
him what did he have to offer what did he say
how was his demeanor what did police think about
him And were police ever able to rule him out?
Did he have a really good alibi, like he was
at work or something? Or is that all up in the
air? So that is a person that I would like to
know more about. And I just never could really
find any updates beyond him years later in jail
murdering somebody. And then the other person
that I would be very curious to know. you know,
what police thought about this person is Joseph
E. Duncan. We know that Duncan was accused of
child molestation in Minnesota when he went on
the run and murdered and kidnapped members of
the Groney family. The Groney family murders
and kidnapping happened in 2005, so that would
have been two years. after LeeAnna’s disappearance
and we know that Duncan was writing about it
like on his online blog I tried to find those
posts exactly I tried to dig through the internet
archive to see if I could find them at all but
I couldn't come up with anything besides what
was quoted in the newspapers but overall it seemed
like the tone of these online blog posts was
that he needed to solve LeeAnna’s disappearance
because He was afraid that people would point
to him and accuse him of the crime and that it
was only a matter of time before he was falsely
accused of this or another crime. So he wanted
to get ahead of it and solve it for police. Kind
of seems to be the overall summary of his writings.
Considering what Duncan later goes on and does
and what he's been accused of already in Minnesota
I think he's one of maybe the better suspects
that have cropped up in LeeAnna’s case and I would
be curious if police were ever able to place
him near Chisholm Minnesota during the time of
LeeAnna’s disappearance Duncan did die on death
row in 2021 he was not executed but he died of
natural causes But he's somebody I kept coming
back to. And, you know, even as I dug in more
into the Groney case, there was enough there
in that case. He annihilated this family and
kidnapped two of the youngest, Dylan and Shasta.
And he does end up also murdering Dylan. But
Shasta is found, I think, two or three months
later after her kidnapping. And so it seemed
like he had and focused on, you know, the youngest
girl in this family. So, you know, again, these
are all, like, very thin threads to kind of tie
him to LeeAnna, but it's just something that if
I could sit down and go through the case file,
like, that's somewhere I would go to kind of
quickly. Like, okay, what came? Did police ever
talk to him? What did that interview sound like?
And where did they leave off? able to rule him
out completely and say, no, there's no way he
could have been involved? Or is he still somebody
who, you know, they kind of consider as a person
of interest? LeeAnna’s case honestly has more
questions than solid answers on anything. As
far as the timeline goes, you know, there's only
really a half hour that we have to account for
LeeAnna’s movements during that really critical
time. And then beyond that, There's no clue.
There's no footprints. There's no clothing found.
There's no sightings. There's nothing. There's
just nothing. There's nothing to indicate a direction
that the little girl could have even gone. I
think her mother said early on that, you know,
it really was like she disappeared into thin
air or she was zapped somewhere. And that really
does feel like what happened. It was just thin
air. But little girls just don't disappear into
thin air. LeeAnna’s mother for years kept up the
fight, kept up the search, always searching.
It feels like her family will always be searching
for that little five -year -old girl. But of
course, she would be in her 20s now. And LeeAnna’s
sisters have taken over for their mother in,
you know, steering the ship on this case. They
want answers. They were little girls when this
happened as well. And I can't even imagine. being
so young and having a sibling disappear like
this. So this family needs answers and they deserve
answers. All these years of not knowing and it's
so unfair that LeeAnna’s mother didn't have answers
before she passed. So my future hope in this
case is that we're able to get the family answers
and we're able to bring LeeAnna home and the family
can know where she is. That's really the hope
I have in this case. really there's so little
to go on it's like any piece of information that's
going to come in could potentially crack the
case open because there's so little that like
one thing might be all it needs to just take
it in a certain direction and then really put
the pieces of the puzzle together I know Eli
says this a lot whenever we cover cases that
are you know from the 21st century you know 2000
and on that it does feel so recent so it does
feel so solvable but This does feel so solvable.
I hope that we're able to get LeeAnna home and
get the family the answers as to what has happened
over the last 21, almost 22 years. So with that,
if you know anything about the disappearance
of LeeAnna Warner in June of 2003 or her whereabouts
today, please call the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children at 1 -800 -843 -5678.
On our Instagram, we will, of course, have pictures
of LeeAnna. We'll also have some age progress
photos to kind of show what she would look like
in her 20s because while she went missing when
she was five, we are looking for somebody in
their 20s today. So we will have that at our
Instagram at coldandmissing. You can follow us
there if you're not already. And of course, if
we ever need to take the week off because life
happens, something pops up, we'll always announce
it on our Instagram just to keep you all in the
loop. So please, if you're not, find us on Instagram
at coldandmissing. We also have a website, www
.coldandmissing .com, where we have all of our
old episodes, the official transcripts, if you
or someone you love is hard of hearing and need
that to follow along. Or if you would like to
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it all goes right back into the podcast. We have
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done it already. Thank you if you're going to
do it right now or later this week. We appreciate
it so, so very much. But that is all I have for
you this week. Thank you so much for listening
to Cold and Missing. I'm your host, Allie. Have
a good week and stay safe, y 'all.