Twenty-six years ago today, at about 12:30 p.m., Michael Dunahee went missing from Blanshard Elementary School.
It was March 24th, 1991 when Crystal Dunahee pulled up her son’s hood against the wind, and let him play at the school playground. Michael was four, and never seen again.
No witnesses to his disappearance have ever been identified. He was dressed in a blue hooded jacket, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt, rugby pants, and blue sneakers that day.
At the time, the investigation surrounding Michael’s disappearance was the largest police investigation in Canadian history, and still remains one of the largest today.
Because Michael vanished so quickly from a public place, the police were quick to classify his case as an abduction rather than a missing child case, and all of the detectives in the Victoria Police Department were called in to begin the investigation.
Hundreds of tips began coming in every hour from across British Columbia and North America, and at the time they were all written on carbon paper and had to be sorted manually.
Police believe that if they had the technology that is available today, such as video surveillance, DNA techniques, and a computer system to sort the tips, they may have been able to solve the case.
In 2006, reports of a young man who looked like Michael, and who had been living in the interior of BC since 1991 breathed new life into the case. For several weeks, media carried the story that the Michael Dunahee case had been re-opened after several strong leads, perhaps bringing a conclusion to what happened to Michael.
Nothing came out of the leads, and the young man in the interior of BC was determined not to be Michael after DNA testing was done.
In 2013, another possible break surfaced when a man with the username Canuckels posted on the message boards of the Vancouver Canucks, that the cops were coming for a DNA test.
They had requested a blood sample from a Surrey, B.C. man who they believed could potentially be the missing boy. On September 9, 2013, the Victoria Police Department stated that DNA testing had determined that the Surrey man was not Michael Dunahee.
“We continue to receive tips through our dedicated tip line,” Missing Person Detective Cst. Chantal Ziegler said. “We still hope to receive the one tip we need to bring this investigation to a close.”
If anyone has information about Michael Dunahee’s disappearance, they can contact VicPD’s dedicated Tip Line at 250-995-7444 or, to remain anonymous, Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
