Lindsey Baum and the Intersection of Predators, Preteens, and Secrets

Lindsey Baum left Kara Kampen's home in McCleary, Washington about 9:15 p.m. on June 26 after a brief visit with Kampen's daughter Michaela (Kayla) and never made it home, a distance of 4 blocks. One witness told law enforcement of seeing 10 year old Lindsey Baum midway through her walk home. The surveillance camera at the gas station Lindsey Baum would have passed subsequent to the witness sighting recorded no images of Lindsey walking by. The search and rescue dogs, brought in 3 days after Lindsey Baum's disappearance, failed to detect Lindsey Baum's scent. The search and rescue teams turned up nothing to explain Lindsey Baum's disappearance.

Did Lindsey Have a Clue to Her Own Disappearance?

Did Lindsey herself have a premonition concerning her disappearance? A message on Lindsey's Baum's MySpace page dated May 29 reads, "i've been getting a lot of nightmares latley and i have this bad feeling that something bads gonna happen." The emoticon accompanying this message indicates that Lindsey's mood was scared. Two and one half hours earlier when she joined MySpace, Lindsey Baum had indicated that her mood was good. Did something change besides her mood during that time period?

Did Lindsey Baum talk to anyone between the two postings?

Online Bloggers Slam Lindsey Baum's Mom and Her Friend Kayla's Mom

Reading about Lindsey Baum- or any missing child- is heartbreaking. But reading online comments about Lindsey's case- too many of them critical of Lindsey's mother Melissa Baum and of Kara Kampen for letting her walk home at night- makes me wonder about the effect of the blogger commentary.

Kara Kampen, who pens under the name MomWhoWrites on Associated Content, told of her regrets concerning June 26 in an article titled Lindsey Baum, 10, Missing from McCleary, Washington:

"Lindsey Baum was last seen when she left our house Friday night while it was still light outside after walking my daughter home from her house. It seemed like a typical Friday night but that changed an hour later when I got the call from her mom that she never made it home. Looking back on that night I am haunted by the sound of my daughter asking if Lindsey can stay the night and me saying "no", it echo's in my mind relentlessly. If only I had said "Yes...""

A commenter on one of Kara's follow-up articles speculated that Lindsey Baum never left Kampen's home and that Kampen and her husband killed Lindsey. Elsewhere on the internet, amateur crime solvers have picked apart Kara's honesty and her accuracy in reporting the facts of what happened the traumatic night that Lindsey Baum disappeared. Some of the blogger sleuths derided Kara's motive for writing about her daughter's missing friend.

And some bloggers link Lindsey Baum's possible abduction to alleged deficiencies in Melissa Baum's parenting, as if this distraught mother didn't have enough to worry about.

Lindsey and Kayla's MySpace pages have been debated, the girls themselves criticized for appearing too grown up.

Blogger sleuths are even speculating as to whether Lindsey Baum's 12 year old brother might have killed her.

Thinking back on my own preteen experience with a predator who stalked me and my friend Annemarie when we were just a little older than Lindsey Baum, I fear the effect the negative speculation might have on Lindsey Baum's friends' willingness to break the informal code that causes kids to keep secrets from adults.

My Own Preteen Experience with a Predatory Stalker

When the stalking began, neither Annemarie nor I (both age 12) told our parents. If we told them there was a predator stalking us, we feared, they wouldn't let us walk freely around the neighborhood as we were accustomed to doing.

We decided instead to leave clues "just in case." We each wrote out identical descriptions of the stalker's light blue car and his license number and placed our slips of paper in our respective underwear drawers. While we weren't mature enough to grasp that our safety trumped our temporal freedom, we were smart enough to know that if we disappeared, someone investigating our disappearance would find it significant that we kept identical notes with a license plate number on them in our dressers. And, that, our developing preteen brains reasoned, would set police on the stalker's trail.

"Before that stalker did something dire to you?" you might reasonably ask.

You've just encountered one of the glaring gaps in preteen logic.

The Stalker Followed, Watched, Waited for the Right Moment

Day after day the stalker sat in his parked car, watching us.

One day the stalker parked across the street a half block down from our school bus stop and stared at us as we waited for the bus. We pointed out the predator to the other kids at the bus stop, describing how he had been following us lately. Apparently, no mature member of this preteen group mentioned our disclosure to any adult, because no parental cloak of protection descended on us.

Afternoons, the stalker parked his car in the parking lot of the store where we went to buy candy after getting off the bus. He sometimes arrived there before we did and awaited our arrival, peering at us in his rear view mirror.

On Wednesday nights, the stalker drove by us and circled back around again in the dark as we walked home from "Sunday school." His car slowed to match our pace as we passed the small patch of woods on our route.

As the stalking became a regular part of our daily lives, we still kept this predator's existence secret from our parents. Whatever this predatory stalker might try to do- like pull us into the car- we naively believed we could successfully resist. But just in case, there was that insurance policy in our respective underwear drawers. We felt pretty clever and capable up to that point.

Stalker Reveals His Target

Then came the day our stalker revealed his target. I said "goodbye" to Annemarie at the street corner and turned towards home. Her screams were the next thing I heard.

I turned around to see her racing toward me, her face registering shock and terror.

"He talked to me," she gasped. I didn't have to ask who she meant.

After months of watching, the stalker had broken his silence. And he had chosen her to speak to- when she was alone. What did this predator say that upset her so much?

"Hello."

Nothing more. But Annemarie was seriously spooked

Still we did not tell our parents. That light blue car continued to appear wherever our routine took us in the following months. The stalker knew our schedule.

The Predator Strikes

Annemarie's father got a job as a night janitor at a school in our neighborhood. One night, Annemarie accompanied him to work. She was wandering the school halls alone when the outside door swung open and in walked the stalker, straight toward her. She screamed in deadly fear, making a frantic dash toward the hallway where she had last seen her father.

Fortunately, Annemarie got to her father before the stalker got to her.

When her father searched for that predator-stalker inside the building, he was gone.

I don't remember if even then Annemarie told her father the whole truth. I think that all she told him was that a strange man had come into the building and was walking toward her and scared her. But maybe Annemarie's screams scared the predator as much as he scared her. Because after that night, we never saw him again.

What If Lindsey Baum Had a Secret?

With no evidence of a struggle, law enforcement is considering the possibility that preteen Lindsey Baum was abducted by someone she knew. But just like with her MySpace page comments, the friendly abductor is merely a theory.

Some in the blogosphere expressed suspicions that congregants of a church Lindsey has attended include several registered sex offenders. Could Lindsey Baum have met a predator at church?

Do her preteen friends know something- even if they don't recognize the significance of what they know? And would they be inclined to tell? Police are surely investigating this angle along with all the others.

I can't help but wonder if the thoughtless negative commentary being publicly tossed around might chill the helpful instincts of Lindsey's friends and others who might have a shred of information that could help uncover what happened to Lindsey Baum.

If you were 10 and scared and thought you might know something.... If you thought maybe you should have said something a lot earlier... If maybe Lindsey Baum wouldn't be missing if you'd spoken up... Imagine being 10 and fearing being publicly blamed for your friend's disappearance, just like what happened to Lindsey's mom and her friend Kayla's mom and even Lindsey's brother, himself still a child. Would you volunteer information, particularly information that might stir up a lot of trouble without proving relevant?

Lindsey Baum Missing Persons Flyer

Sources: personal experience; http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1890148/lindsey_baum_10_missing_from_mccleary_pg2.html?cat=9; http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1943900/lindsey_baum_still_missing_the_search.html?cat=48; http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1910902/no_news_is_not_good_news_10_year_old.html?cat=9; http://boards.insessiontrials.com/showthread.php?t=355444; http://scaredmonkeys.com/2009/06/28/10-year-old-lindsey-baum-missing-in-mccleary-wa-since-friday-june-26-2009/; http://scaredmonkeys.net/index.php?board=51.0; http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3937768; http://www.myspace.com/477760045.