LeeAnna Warner /// Part 1 /// 516 | Forensic Files

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business. All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk
some true crime. Five-year-old Leanna Marie Warner lived with her parents in the remote
Iron Range area of northern Minnesota. This entire area has been mined for iron for decades
and there are miles of abandoned ore mines, pits, and lakes created by mining. The area has mountains of iron ore
tailings and miles and miles of undisturbed forest. It has been described by people from the
area as a vast and endless area of nothingness. The town of Chisholm was founded as a
mining settlement in this area the Chippewa called rough earth. It's about 3 hours north of Minneapolis.
Leanna lived in the town of Chisholm, Minnesota, a small town of about 5,300 people.
The Warner family home was a gray stucco duplex located in a friendly neighborhood with
tree-lined blocks of houses in the developed residential area near the iron mines.
The neighborhood bordered a lake, Longyear Lake, which was a recreation spot for those
who lived in the town. According to everyone who lived there, even in 2003, Chisholm was sort of a throwback.
It was a small community where kids played freely outside, neighbors were friendly,
and bad stuff just didn't happen. Leanna Warner, who was 5 years old, with brown hair and brown eyes,
was known as Beener to almost everyone. The story is that her parents nicknamed her Beener because when she was born,
she reminded them of a little bean pod. The name stuck and family, friends, and neighbors all called her by this
nickname. She was 3 ft 2 in tall and weighed 48 lb. Leanna had a mole on her left leg just
above her ankle. Leanna was described as an outgoing, loving little girl who adored dolls,
Rugrats, Barbies, and babies. There is video footage taken by her parents available online.
She was an adorable, normal 5-year-old. Little Leanna went missing on a warm midsummer Saturday afternoon
from an area in a neighborhood where bad stuff did not happen. The date was June 14th, 2003.
Little Leanna walked down the street to play with her friend and is never seen again.
For 18 years, her family has held out hope, but not a trace of her has ever been
found. How does a child disappear into thin air, seemingly vanishing in an instant off of
the face of the earth? This is True Crime Garage and this is the case of Leanna Warner.
Saturday, June 14th, 2003. Leanna and her mom, Kaylin, had hit some yard sales where Leanna bought a
heart-shaped pillow. Then they spent the rest of the summer day enjoying the lake. In early
interviews, Leanna's mom said that they went to the lake, swam, and played with friends and relatives and returned home
around 4:30 p.m. After the day at Longyear Lake, Leanna, like most 5-year-olds, would be
well, she was tired from running around in the sun and fell asleep in the car on
the way home. When they got to their house located at 19 Southwest Second Street, Leanna woke
up. While her mom was busy unloading the stuff they had bought from the yard sales from the car and making trips in
and out of the house, Leanna asked if she could walk around the corner to their neighbors' house. This is the
Quirk family. Their little girls, Janine, age 4, and Melissa, age 3, were great friends of
Leanna's. Apparently, Leanna hung out with Janine and Melissa almost every day. So, even though Leanna's mom would
have preferred that little Beener come inside and rest for a bit, Kaylin said, "Yes, go ahead."
It was totally standard procedure for Leanna to walk over to the Quirks to play. Kaylin did tell the media later
that she told Leanna to come back home in a half an hour. Although how a 5-year-old would have any concept of
half of an hour is questionable. Katie Quirk, Janine and Melissa's mother, said that Leanna was a daily
visitor to the Quirk house. In fact, Leanna was over at their home the night before on June 13th. She had come over
by herself around 7:15 p.m. and watched a movie with the family. In any event, on this Saturday, Leanna got out of the
car and walked down the block and around the corner. When her mom last saw her, she was
wearing a dark blue sleeveless denim dress with a belt, orange Hanes undies, and a flower petal earring with a red
garnet in the middle in her pierced right ear. The reports say that she was not wearing
any shoes, which would be in line with a little girl who just got back from a day
of swimming. But the shoes will come up again later. Now, the Quirks lived just a few houses
away, maybe a block to the south. Leanna would have to cross an alley to get there
and it was around the corner. One article said that it would take an average adult walking at a normal pace
no more than 2 minutes to get from the Warners to the Quirks. As short as the walk was though, Leanna was not in the
sight line of her mother for the entirety of the walk and no one is really sure how long it was before
anyone noticed that she was gone. So, Leanna walks off barefoot and Kaylin goes inside the Warners' home after she
says watching Leanna as she walked down their street toward her friends' home until she went around the corner.
Two neighbors report seeing Leanna walking that day. The information that one of them gave
police tells us something important. Leanna did not go inside the Quirk's house. This neighbor, who was either
outside doing something or looking out the window, told police that Leanna climbed the steps to the Quirk's home,
knocked on the door. She knocked a few times, but no one answered. It was later confirmed that the Quirks
were not home that afternoon. The neighbor reports that after no one answered the door, Leanna turned around
and started to walk back toward her home. But at this point, the neighbor stopped watching. Presumably, there was
nothing remarkable about this scene, since we know that Leanna was often seen walking to and from the Quirk's home. We
know that kids were all over the neighborhood, and it seems that children were allowed
to walk around unsupervised. The Chisholm mayor, John Shampa, lived in the neighborhood about a block
from the Warners, and said that Leanna, quote, like to run around the neighborhood, but never went far.
So, apparently, Leanna was known to wander around, and clearly, the Warners allowed this.
The neighbor was in the midst of doing something while observing the door knocking and Leanna not getting admitted
into the Quirk's house. And the neighbor turned away and didn't watch anymore. Which is such an incredible tragedy.
If only the neighbor had watched Leanna continue on her walk, she may have never
have vanished. With this case being set in 2003, if it was set in today's time, we would have ring cameras and and so
many more houses have security cameras that face the street, so we would have a better
picture or a better surveillance of what happened to Leanna. And unfortunately, if an abduction did
take place, it may have ended up on one of those ring video footage cameras or Simply
Safe video cam footage video camera footage. Yeah. Some news reports say that Leanna was seen in the area around
6:00 p.m. walking west. Others say more specifically that she was seen walking west on Southwest Second or Third
Streets. And there were also reports that one neighbor actually spoke with Leanna. And
one article says she was seen petting a dog. But not all the reports contain all of
this information. And as we've seen, the timeline on all of this is fuzzy. Police said later that their
investigation was hampered by all of the wiggle room in the timeline. Kaylen reported initially that she
started to wonder where Leanna was around 6:00 p.m. We know that Leanna's dad, Chris Warner,
went out on an ambulance run at 6:21 p.m. He was a volunteer with the Chisholm ambulance service. And it seems
that at that time, he did not know that his daughter was missing. So, it seems likely that Kaylen actually
noticed Leanna being gone later than this. We're going to throw a few questions and wrenches into
this timeline as we go, because I think it's right to do so. The first question that's probably
spinning around in everybody's mind is, why are you letting a child this young walk to a neighbor's house?
Right, that's the first thing I questioned as well. And it seemed odd to me that Kaylen originally says when they
get back to their home, her daughter, Leanna, wants to go down to their friend's house, and then she tells
originally she tells her no. Right. But then the kid does some convincing, and she says, yes, but be back in a in a
half an hour, which seems to me like a why even bother kind of situation, but I really started thinking back to when I
was would have been six or seven years old. Right. Maybe not five, I can't remember, but I can remember the
distance that we're talking about traveling here. I can remember walking by myself or with a with a brother or
with a friend, no parent, no supervision from adults, from my house down to my friend's house on the corner, Tim and
Vince, and regularly making that trip. And it was literally passing like three houses.
And so, I think what we have here, Captain, is a situation where I think it's right to question it. The little
girl is 5 years old, but have her mom, her father, and the Quirk's family, the adults of that home,
saying this was an everyday thing. This was, you know, as normal as could be. Yeah, but it it's different to allow
your child walk down there, but just step outside, visually see them make it into the
house. If you're a parent and you drove your kid to their friend's house, you wouldn't just go, hey, honey, thanks,
get out of the car. And once they leave the car, you don't speed away. You you wait until you see them enter the house.
Right. just saying that you could have done the same thing here. Agreed. It But in this
situation, we have Kaylen who says she watched Leanna walk down the street until she could no longer see her,
because she has to make a turn. And again, I question this too, but then I'd have
to question my own parents, because I know I was doing about the same thing. I think what we have here, too, Captain,
is a situation where a lot of kids in the neighborhood are going about their business and having
fun unsupervised. It seemed to be a pretty normal thing. And then you top that off with a town of only 5,000
people. Mhm. I think a small town sometimes it is plays a bad role in some of these cases. I think sometimes the
small town provides a false sense of security Yeah. to parents, and to children, and to everyone involved. And
like I try to tell other people, you know, that they say, oh, so you live in a bad neighborhood or or
this area is terrible. And yes, that's true. You do have higher crime rates in bad areas, quote unquote bad areas, but
again, look at Sandy Hook. That was considered one of the nicest, safest neighborhoods in America.
Right. Not in the state, not in that county, in America. And if something bad is going to happen,
if there's a bad person out there, it can happen anywhere. only happen in America. And like you
were stating, Kaylen was saying, you can be gone, but for just a little while. Mhm. And so, once she noticed that she's
hasn't come back in a little while, she starts getting a little concerned. Yeah,
her first reaction, as soon as she notices Leanna is not home, you know, didn't return home as she should have,
Kaylen walks down to the Quirk's home herself, but then that's when she finds out that no one is home. Right. So,
according to Kaylen, she started canvassing the neighborhood assuming that Leanna had just wandered to someone
else's yard or home. And again, this kind of plays into what even the mayor of Chisholm was saying, that he would
often see the little girl hanging out, you know, going about the neighborhood looking for friends, looking for people
to talk to and hang out and play with. I also wondered if it's a possibility that
she got turned around and when she came back, got a little confused on which house was actually hers. Yeah, it's
weird when kids have kind of the run of the neighborhood is what I see in this situation. Again, thinking back to my
childhood, I lived on a court when in my younger years, and I felt like I don't know remember what the rules were laid
down by my parents, but I know the way I behaved was kind of like, well, as long
as I'm still somewhere in this court, I won't get in any trouble. Mhm. You know, so I would walk freely between
front yards, backyards, and there was even a wooded area that I would often go into without permission. So, that's I
just kind of see a very similar situation here. This is not just a small community, but this is a tight-knit
neighborhood itself. Chris Warner joined his wife in the search for Leanna when he got home from his ambulance run. This
is said to be around 7:40 p.m. He said that they were walking around the neighborhood calling for her, and they
started to get scared. Kaylen returned to the Quirk's home looking for Leanna again at 8:30 p.m. This time finding
them home. But they had not seen Leanna at this whole point. Right. The 911 call from
Kaylen Warner came in at 8:48 p.m. By this point, Leanna was missing for more than 3 hours.
The official search for Leanna began extremely promptly. And I think a lot of this has to do with the age of the
child. The St. Louis County Rescue Squad set up a command center and organized searches within about an hour of
receiving that 911 call. By late Saturday night, police sent out a helicopter that was equipped with an
infrared tracing system that could pinpoint body heat in the night. Neighbors also pitched in. The Quirks
reported that they all went out to help look for Leanna around 9:00 p.m. By Sunday morning, a major search was
underway. That day, over 300 people joined in the search for Leanna, including town residents, neighbors, and
friends of the little girl. The search started at the Warner home and worked its way outward,
looking in all the places a child could hide or get stuck or trapped. This would
be sheds, boat houses, boats, yards, sewers, barns, and vacant houses. Mhm. Searches were also done of some of the
mine pits, swamps, wells, and other hazards in the Iron Range topography. Do you know if they hadn't sent dogs on
scene? They did. Bloodhounds were sent in relatively quickly. I believe that they
arrived either that night or the the very next morning. I have that in my notes and I promise we'll get to
that, Captain. We did have a statewide alert that was issued on Sunday morning by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal
Apprehension. Mhm. A BCA is their acronym. We'll we'll reference them later. And the Minnesota Crime Alert
Network faxed information about Leanna to over 8,000 businesses and law enforcement agencies.
However, no Amber Alert was issued and this is because uh Chisholm Police Chief Scott Erickson
stated Amber Alerts were appropriate when there was evidence of an abduction and there wasn't here. And we've seen
that in other cases. They have a recommended criteria for when states should use the Amber Alert
System. They don't tell you, you know, they don't they don't box you in and say this
is the only time you should use it. They give you recommendations for the state.
And one of the recommendations is that you have a suspect or vehicle description. And unfortunately, in
Leanna's case, we have people who see her knocking on the door of her friend's house. We have
people that see her walking away from her friend's house. And then we never see anything after
that. Mhm. We don't have a situation where we have a screaming little girl being pulled into a vehicle or somebody
snatching her up and somebody seeing it. We just don't have that. We have no earwitnesses or eyewitnesses to what
happened to this little girl after she's seen walking away from her friend's house.
Yeah, and I don't know what else they would call it, but I think in this situation when you have a missing child,
whether they're abducted or not, how can it hurt to send these alerts out to have
people on lookout for even if it's just simply the age, hair color, the gender, that's it.
I it couldn't hurt. Well, I agree, but I mean they did send out these alerts. It's just what title
are you tagging this thing? Right. They I mean they issued a statewide alert by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
And they issued a crime alert, the Minnesota Crime Alert Network issued an alert as well. I mean it this
went out statewide. They just didn't call it an Amber Alert because it didn't meet the criteria for
technical name like the Amber Alert requires. It seems that at least early in the
situation, police knew that Leanna's reputation was as a wanderer, you know, as they said.
And assumed that Leanna had just kind of wandered off or gotten lost or stuck or
maybe had some accident befall her. Erickson said that on Sunday, this is the chief, that there was nothing
indicating foul play. Chief Erickson held a press conference on Sunday night and described Leanna as
an energetic, outgoing little girl. You asked about dogs, Captain. Dogs were used in the search and they tracked
Leanna's scent to the edge of a road at Longyear Lake, about two blocks from her
house. But then they tracked back to the Warner home. They did not track to the Quirk's house.
Police found a partial footprint lakeside that could have been Leanna's. But we know that Leanna was at the lake
that day and that she had ridden her two-wheel bike to the lake in the past. Later reports, this is
bizarre to me. Later reports say police decided that the footprint was in fact from a different day. I'm not sure how
they can tell this footprint was old or that it could have been Leanna's. different shoe.
And then they knew what shoes she was wearing that day. Yeah, I they describe it as a footprint. Um
Oh, not a shoe print. Yeah, I mean it could have been a shoe print. This is one of those things that
they seem to have come to a lot of decisions and then made up, you know, they seem to have a good understanding
of what it is that they were seeing or what they found, but they don't offer a great description to the rest of the
world about it. Do you find it a little odd that there was no scent towards her friend's house? I do and I don't, right?
Because here's the problem with the with the dogs. The dogs are one only as good
as they have been trained and their understanding of what their job is. We forgot to tell you that their handler
showed up drunk. Well, and I was going to say they're also only as good as the handler. So you're already throwing a
lot of variables in there. I think they're very helpful in some cases and in other cases can be a little tricky. I
mean Mhm. The here's the problem with the dogs in this situation. Do I find it odd that
they didn't go to the Quirk's house? 100% 1,000% But we have two eyewitnesses that saw
the girl there. So we know she was there. So the in my opinion, the dogs are just
not accurate in this situation. The other thing too in regards to the footprint or shoe print or what have
you, yes, maybe there could be it rained the day before or, you know, given the weather outside, how hot it is and such,
that would help you determine how old the footprint or shoe print is. But the other issue I take with that,
Captain, is this lake, as we referenced in the trailer, this lake was frequented by everybody in that
neighborhood. This was a Saturday in the summertime. If anybody's out there thinking that
that Leanna and her mom and her sister were the only three people at that lake that day,
well, you're you can tune into another show cuz you don't belong here in the garage. There were probably dozens, if
not more, people at the lake that very day. On Sunday, searchers waded up to their waist in the murky lake to no
avail. The search continued on Monday with large groups of volunteers and Leanna's parents made a televised plea
for her to come home. Her father, Chris, said, quote, "Please, Beena, come home.
We miss you. We're never going to stop looking for you." End quote. St. Louis County Sheriff Ross Litman
said there was no reason to believe acquaintances or family members would have taken the girl. He cited a
trouble-free home and no evidence of a stranger abduction. But law enforcement was acutely aware that the small town of
friendly residents had also been the site of two events that brought out-of-towners to Chisholm on that very
weekend in June. First, we have the Rock the Range Music Festival that had brought in lots of
people. And there was also the United Way Ride the Range Motorcycle Fundraiser. Reports
state that these events could have brought more than 1,000 people into this small town. So think about that
population increase just for that weekend, the weekend that this little girl goes missing. Mhm. 5,300 residents
in the town of Chisholm. That weekend, it's estimated that there were 6,300 and so people in the area.
Festival-goers were permitted to camp at the old Glenn Mine site. It would be impossible to track down
everyone who attended these events. Law enforcement did what they could do to track down people that may have attended
these events. They used motel, gas station, and campground records to get names of people who attended these
events and questioned them. Well, now we see this all the time in other missing cases. Look at like the Joey LaBeute
case. Guy goes missing when there's a huge the Arnold Classic is in town. Mhm. So
again, when you have those out-of-towners, it's really hard to vet every single person that was there. Mhm.
And if anybody was still in the area that came in for these events, the police asked to check their RVs and
their campsites, obviously looking for Leanna or any sign of her. Police also started looking into known sex offenders
in the area. On Tuesday, authorities were still treating Leanna's case as a search rather than a rescue or
recovery, although they hadn't ruled out abduction. Sheriff Litman said he felt it was
unlikely that Leanna was in the lake. And he believed Leanna could have survived 72 hours in the woods on the
Iron Range. She was known to be pretty adventurous, her grandfather, Butch Warner, said. That if necessary, she
would very likely drink from mud puddles if she had to. And she had been known to
eat army worms. I don't know if that was off of a dare or if this is just one really hungry
kid. That girl likes worms. It's been raining for days here in Columbus and it smells
like worms outside. The search radius like worms. Here's the other thing, too, is
you know, my thought goes instantly when you have a situation where she's she's seen close to the home,
you start then questioning the parents, right? Mhm. And now my issue with the investigation is and look,
we're going to argue with people to the death about polygraph tests. But to me, you bring them in for questioning and
you have them take a polygraph test Mhm. just to see where it stands. They didn't
do that here. And I know that they weren't suspect, but it's like I think you just do it to, you know, you
know, cross your t's and dot your i's. Well, and the other thing, Captain, is that's your best opportunity, right? If
you're hoping to catch somebody, even if if it is the parents that you suspect, you get really one shot at that. You
know, the the investigation is only in the early stages at one point in the investigation. And to me, I would think
that that's when whomever you sit down across the table from and who you are asking them the tough questions, that's
when I think they would be the most nervous. Be it parents, relative, neighborhood person, any type
of suspect, I would think that fresh and early, that's when they're going to be the most nervous and that's when they
are going to show those physical signs of deception or at least anxiety of not wanting to speak with you. So, I'm I'm
right with you there, Captain. I feel like that could have been While I'm not very
suspicious of the parents here, I feel like that was kind of a missed opportunity. We've said this in the
past, even if you're not suspicious, let's go ahead and cross one more thing off of our list. If we can't figure out
who did this, let's figure out who did not do this. And maybe we find who did this along the way.
All right, we're back, you filthy animals. Cheers to everybody out there. Cheers to all the post
workers. Cheers to all the school bus drivers that are going to be bringing the kids
back to school. Yeah, cheers to all the people in the back. Tall cans in the air. Now, regards to in regards to
Leanna's shoes, Mhm. because that's a weird part of this story. And frankly, I don't know what to make
of it. So, we're going to lay it out here for all of you and you can decide for yourself. But one or two articles
addressed the shoes being found on the stoop at the Quirk's house. And Kailyn Warner, her mother, stated to
the media that Leanna's shoes were in fact found there and no one could explain that or why. Well, there's
eyewitnesses that saw her barefoot, right? Correct. It's the shoes thing is a whole weird
thing to me. We don't know when these shoes were supposedly found. Mhm. All the reports say that Leanna had
walked away from her house barefoot. It would certainly be strange if somehow her shoes had been placed there by
someone else, obviously. I think it's more likely that she probably just carried them with her when she got out
of the car and her mother didn't notice that she was carrying her shoes. Right. And then maybe Leanna forgot them when
she turned away from the house. I mean, she's five. She If she set them down by herself and if
in fact that's where they were found, and I don't have any reason to believe that that's not the case, I just I don't
know why the child would set her shoes down. Yeah, let's walk through this real quick. She would Well, yeah, but she'd
put her shoes down so she could ring the doorbell or knock on the door. Nobody answers. When she turns back
around to leave, then she forgets that she simply forgot them. Right. By Wednesday, with no sign of
Leanna, hope was beginning to fade. For the first time, members of the public began to seriously consider the
abduction theory. A local daycare center owner said that in a newspaper article that she hired an extra person to help
watch the kids in her care and she'd like police to publicize the names of local registered sex offenders.
Police said that they had checked all of the known local sex offenders by this point in their search for the little
girl. Again, I hate to bring this up, but like you said, there's a vent that's bringing all these people in. There's a
percentage of those people that are pedos. Well, and this timeline is going to keep getting adjusted, especially
during this first week, which a timeline is very crucial to not only the search for this girl, but any type of
investigation. You're not just investigating if a when you know that a crime has happened.
Here, you're investigating if a crime occurred. Right. And so, the timeline is going to be crucial. I mean, that is
your Bible at this point in the case when you have no evidence and you don't really have any leads on what could have
happened to this girl. As an investigator, that timeline is your Bible. Now, police interviews and
canvassing the neighborhood did bring some new information to light to their search. The timeline was adjusted to
indicate that Leanna had left home closer to 5:30 on Saturday. And you say, "Well,
earlier you said 4:30, now the investigators are saying 5:30." Again, they said at the very beginning of this
case that the wiggle room in the timeline has always hampered their investigation. As we heard, someone in
the neighborhood said that they had seen her walking west at close to 6:00 p.m. Authorities requested that everyone in
the area check their own properties to make sure the little girl was not at their property.
The family made a public statement thanking all of the searchers, saying they were iron rangers, a strong,
compassionate, resourceful people who know the meaning of faith. Presumably, this means that they were drawing on
their strength and not giving up hope. Leanna's grandfather talked to the media, describing his granddaughter as
an inquisitive child who is not afraid of anything. He said her outgoing nature and free spirit could have gotten her
into trouble. The implication was that Leanna was trusting and friendly and might innocently be lured by the wrong
person. The parents of other children in the neighborhood, the grandfather, they're
all describing the same personality when I review this case here, Captain. A little girl that is is very friendly
and very talkative and not afraid of anything. Mhm. And I think the grandfather's words here are very
interesting to me, saying that her free spirit and her outgoing nature may have gotten her into some kind of trouble. I
wonder if we are looking at an abduction here. Do we have a situation where she may
have approached her would-be abductor? Not knowing that, oh, this this person may not be a great person. This person
might not be, you know, had she befriended the would-be abductor at some point earlier on before this day, you
know, weeks prior. Right. Investigators announced that they were further expanding the search. This would include
roadways and ditches throughout Chisholm and flyovers over the local lakes and mine pits. They
plan to retrace their steps and research all of the areas that they had already covered. There were fundraisers that
were held to raise money for the search efforts and hotlines were set up to field calls about any tips and potential
leads. But just when we think that there's nothing to go on other than probably a a few tips here
and there, we we have a decent break in the case. An interesting turn in the case, because
this is late Thursday. So, now Leanna has been missing for 6 days. And the tone of the news reports and
information released by investigators is clearly changing in my mind here, Captain. We have Police Chief Erickson
who directly asked the public to contact his department if anyone had any information on a faded light blue
mid-size car with an antenna mounted in the middle of the trunk. There was no make, model, or license plate that was
available. Erickson said he did not know whether this vehicle was actually significant,
but it was a lead that they were following up on. And Chief Erickson said that areas around the block where the
Warners' home was located had been searched anywhere from two to five times each, including homes in the vicinity.
It seems that most or all neighbors allowed the police to actually access and search their houses. Erickson was
confident that they had the area 98% covered. So, this is going to be like Erickson's legit press conference after
we've had several days of searching and have had no luck looking for the girl. The thing that I like here, Captain,
while it's not extremely specific on the details, you know, no make, model, or license plate of this vehicle,
it's a pretty detailed description of a very I don't want to say very unique, but it is a unique description of a car,
right? This light blue, faded light blue. So, very descriptive on the color, mid-size car with an
antenna mounted in the middle of the trunk. That's not something you see on most vehicles. Yeah, it sounds like
something you'd see in this late '70s, '80s. Yeah, it seems a little out of its time period. And the news reports once
again addressed an adjustment to the timeline. Now, Leanna was believed to have left her home at 4:35 p.m., not
5:00 or 5:30. Two independent witnesses saw her walking across lawns and knocking on the
Quirk's door at 5:15 and she was reported missing at 8:48 p.m. Now, back to the sex offenders in the
area. As you know, Captain, one of my favorite parts in any child abduction case or suspected child abduction case
is the old pervert round up. Get ready for the pervert round up. A spokesman for the Chisholm PD said
that there were roughly 20 to 25 classified sex offenders in Chisholm, but none that were level three. We've
talked about this in the past and I've come under fire for this and I don't know why. I suspect that I came under
fire from probably a level three sex offender. But the level three sex offenders have the highest recidivism
rates out of any sex offender. That's why they are considered the most dangerous. That's why they received the
longest prison sentences and that's why nobody wants to let them out back on the
street. The police are saying here in this area we had zero level three offenders and that's
have level one and level two. level twos. Dirty perverts. Mhm. So no level threes.
This is why their names and addresses were not required to be be released to the public. 30 investigators from
various agencies including the FBI were looking at each one of these guys as well as all of the other tips and leads
and so far had not been able to tie any of these perverts to Leanna's case. One thing that has been noticed since
Leanna's disappearance 18 years ago is that her case didn't receive the level of national attention immediately in
this case such as some other cases like Polly Klaas or another big case from Minnesota, Jacob
Wetterling. This may be because it seems that for almost the first week no one including Leanna's parents really
thought that she had been abducted. And both the Polly Klaas case and the Jacob Wetterling case there were witnesses to
these abductions. So we knew immediately in both of those cases this child has been abducted. Mhm. Leanna on the other
hand just vanished. A spokeswoman for the Missing Children Minnesota organization said that the delay in
treating these cases as abductions early on is quote the disbelief factor. No one
wants to believe the worst can happen in their backyard. Also there's a fear of pointing the
finger at an innocent person especially in a area where only have a lake. So that is going to cause a lot of
issues as far as searching. Also a lot of issues as far as a big hazard for a child that is wandering on their own.
And like they said the wooded area. I'd say that's equal problem. Now it's middle of June, right? So
there's you don't have to worry about the elements as far as it's snowing or being
too cold. But you have to worry about the elements of being in the woods as a small child. Right. And speaking of
own backyards, this is when we're told in our timeline here that eight square miles around the Warner home had been
searched by this point. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was called in to join in the
investigation on Friday, June 20th and spokesman Patrick Farrell said in my own personal experience I haven't
had a case where a child has disappeared so completely. Now Chief Erickson remained optimistic
saying anything is possible, but unfortunately we've found nothing so far. Yeah. And he was holding out hope
they were still going to find this girl, but on Saturday, June 21st the Warner family was notified that the organized
official searches for Leanna were coming to an end. Investigators felt that they
had exhaustively covered any ground where she could have where she could realistically be. The
family thanked all the searchers and asked that people not give up hope and said that they themselves were still
hoping for the best. And I think that's obvious when they point out that very quickly they
are putting up $10,000, a $10,000 reward for information about their daughter. This was publicized just a couple days
later. Like you said she was at the lake before, but there's possibility that she
got back to the lake. Were they searching the lake at all? They searched the lake big time.
They they were in the water searching for her. They were flying over the water searching for her. The lake was a big
focal point of their investigation especially that second day. Mhm. That Sunday morning. And they again as the
sheriff stated at some point after a few days of searching and we've covered all this
area in the beginning you're looking and you're realistically going okay, how far
if she got lost, we're treating this as she wandered off, she got lost, maybe an
accident, something happened to her. Right. How far could a five-year-old get on
their own given the time frame that she's been gone? And so you're using that to really focus and hone in on
where you should be searching and prioritizing those areas. So the lake would have been high priority on that
because this is a a place that not only was she there earlier that day, not only
was this a place that most everybody in the neighborhood went to frequently. We know that she's rode her bike there
at least one time on her own. So this is a place that there's nowhere in this neighborhood or down to that lake
to me that I can see that this girl would not have been comfortable going to by herself. I think the other issue like
you said is they they do a eight-mile radius from the house. That is a very large distance.
Yeah, eight square miles from the Warner home. Yeah, once that search happens and
and they not it's not just that they don't they don't find her, it's the fact that they
find nothing. They don't find a sock. They don't find a footprint. They don't There's nothing.
Well, and we needed to get the word out here, right? About this missing girl. We
already said that there were statewide alerts that went out immediately when she was discovered to be missing, but it
was the Missing Children Minnesota and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children organizations that
highly encouraged the Warners to go national with their daughter's case. And so they went on several national
televised TV shows and they were publicizing the case and a website that they created findbeener.org
and accompanying them on these trips and on these appearances was Chief Erickson.
So they are in close contact with one another. They're working arm in arm in this investigation not just to search
and find the child, but also to publicize the case and make everybody aware that hey, this little girl's
missing and we're looking for. Here's where things get a little interesting to me, Captain.
On June 24th a timeline of what authorities believe happened that night on June 14th, so 10 days later, appeared
in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. So this will be known as the quote-unquote official timeline here in this case.
And it's as follows. At 4:35 p.m. Leanna leaves to walk to the Quirk's home. Mom
tells her to be back in a half an hour. At 5:15 two neighbors see Leanna knocking on the door of the Quirk's
home, but no one is home and she turns around. 5:30 p.m. Kaylin notices that Leanna isn't home yet. She sends
Leanna's older sister over to the Quirks, but she returns and reports that they are not home.
6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Kaylin and Leanna's sister start walking around the neighborhood looking for Leanna.
At 6:21 we know that Chris Warner leaves on an ambulance run to Hibbing, Minnesota. He does not seem to know that
Leanna is missing at this point. At 7:30 more people join Kaylin in the search of the neighborhood. At 7:47
Chris Warner's ambulance run ends and he returns home. He immediately joins the search for his daughter.
At 8:48 Kaylin Warner places the 911 call to report Leanna missing. 9:00 p.m. 12 minutes later Chisholm police arrive
and start searching the neighborhood. 10:15 p.m. Rescue squad personnel and bloodhounds. So the dogs are there at
10:15 p.m. arriving on the scene. 4:00 a.m. Sunday a state patrol helicopter is out searching for Leanna
by air. They moved very quickly. We got to give props where props are due and I think to see the actions
and the efforts put forward immediately in this case is encouraging to me because we've we've
seen this in other cases well, we've not seen this in other cases. I think is the
best way to state that. This timeline though to me, Captain, brings up some questions. If Leanna
really left the Warners home at 4:35 p.m. and neighbor saw her knocking on the Quirk's door at 5:15,
where was she for that 40 minutes? Yeah. We said that it would take the average adult It was time. They did they did you
know, this is all science here, baby. They figured out that it would take the average adult two minutes to make it
from the Warners home to the Quirk's home. So again, that's one of those things. Yes, if you want to question
letting your five-year-old walk down there, go ahead. I don't blame you for questioning that.
Keep in mind it's like a two-minute walk. And it's a it's a walk that she's done 100 times. I question it myself,
not going to lie. But be that as it may, this is the situation. So let's say it takes a little girl double that time,
five minutes to walk down there. Mhm. still leaves 35 minutes of what what what what's going on? And, you
know, little kids get distracted easily. Heck, me and the captain get distracted
easily. Who knows? Hey, look, a squirrel. don't have anybody that's saying that well, I saw her go here or saw her go
there at this time. We have the witness statement of her mother saying, "I saw her walking away
from the house. I watched her until she had to go around the corner." And then we have these two witnesses. I like that
we have two independent witnesses saying that they saw her at the Quirk doorstep
and they believe the time to be 5:15 p.m. Well, we know with eyewitness statements that sometimes they're not
lying, they're just misremembering. But, I don't like her mother's statement. If there's a gap that large of a gap, to
me, it seems like she headed in a different direction before she headed to her friend's house. That's also what the
scent dogs are telling us as well. Cuz they're not following her scent to her friend's house.
So, I just wonder if it's one of those things where your kid's missing and now um again,
you should have watched her all the way. You could have walked her all the way to
your house. People are going to be questioning this. And so, then you make the statement that
you watched her walk towards the house and walk out of sight. And maybe that's not true at all. Mhm.
And maybe it was she's, you know, putting groceries away and she goes, "I'm going to walk down to my friend's
house." And she goes, "Okay, back be back in 20 minutes." And never saw her leave. I would fault her for not being
honest, but I could also see a situation. We've seen these situations turn against the parents very quickly.
And they be there becomes a wit there becomes a witch hunt against parents because they made a
let's say a moment of not the best judgment. Oh, yeah. They unfortunately they live
with that every day. Yeah. For 18 years. I mean, that is Do you want to know what
hell is? That's what hell is. Now, in regards to the dogs, here's the problem again with the dogs. You have to
either throw out the dog information or the eyewitness information that said that they saw the girl knocking on the
door of the Quirks home. You can't have both. Right? Because the dogs never go to the
Quirks house. They go and hit on a scent at the lake. They say that they trace Leanna's scent to the edge of a road
near the lake. We've discussed this in other cases, Captain. Usually, when they trace
a scent to an edge of the road, it indicates that that person got into some kind of vehicle because their scent is
then gone. Right. The dogs then trace the scent back to Leanna Warner's home. Again, they're
only as good as the handler. But, you can't have a situation where the what the dogs are telling you is that Leanna
did not go to the Quirks home. What the eyewitnesses are telling you is that she
did. So, you have to choose which one are you going to accept as something you want to put in your investigation
Mhm. and something that you're going to have to toss out because you might be getting bad information from someone.
Now, here's the thing. If the dogs never go to the Quirks home and you trust the dogs,
now you need to know why people would say that she went to the Quirks home and she didn't.
You see what I mean? It works both ways. No, I agree. And like I said, back to the eyewitnesses, we just we know for a
fact that eyewitnesses are not always completely accurate. So, it's not calling them liars, it's just saying
that maybe you're misremembering. Right. I The thing that I believe here and look, this is
I Yes, I'm I'm choosing. I'm I'm I'm picking one over the other. I'm choosing these eyewitnesses here because what
what we do know given the timeline, regardless of the shift and the change and the wiggle room in the timeline,
what we do know is very quickly after this girl went missing, Mhm. the mother, the daughter, and neighbors are out
searching for Leanna very quickly. Let's say within I think we can agree within a half an hour to an hour and a half,
somewhere in that time range, we have we start seeing people from the neighborhood and joining in on this
search. So, what I'm The reason why I'm choosing to believe the eyewitnesses here is simply that they can speak and
the dogs can't because we have eyewitnesses that are going This is all going to be fresh in their memory. It's
not like you're asking somebody 5 days later if you saw Leanna on Saturday or Friday or Sunday. Mhm. You're asking
them, "Did you see her an hour ago?" "Yeah. Yeah, I did." Well, a couple things. One, if you if you eat enough
dogs will talk to you and you'll be able to understand them. Um and normally, I always pick dogs over humans, right?
Cuz dogs are just better. But, I agree with you here. I I think you have to go with the eyewitness
report. I just I I just don't understand why there's a a gap in time between the
eyewitnesses and Leanna's mother. So, I'm totally with you here. And I Here's what I think
may be a possibility. I think that maybe this little girl was excited about seeing her friends,
hanging out with her two friends. We know that they hung out almost daily. I think that there's a chance that
they're seeing these witnesses might be seeing her later than the time that it would take her to walk from her home to
the Quirks home because I think there's a chance that when she knocked on the door the first
time and no one answered, she might have gone looking for them. And it could be a simple she went around
to the backyard to see if they were out back. Maybe she started to make her way toward the lake or to somebody else's
home that they frequented. I think there's a chance that she may have tried that front door more than
once and gone looking for them in the meantime, uh looking for her friends. Again, Well, now, that's a great point
because if you were to bike, even if it's not that far, you'd you knock on the door. Right.
Nobody answers, you might do the old step back, look at the windows, see if there's any lights on. You might do the
old, "Let me walk around the house. Maybe they're playing out back. Maybe there's a swing set that we haven't
talked about or a play area in the backyard that she went to go see if they're there. Oh, they're not there.
Okay, now I'm coming back around." And and having a second pass. And heck, there could even been a third pass. And
just think about how silly we are when we're all kids, right? When you When you ask, "Hey, can I go hang out with
Can I go hang out with my friends?" You're 5, 6 years old. "Hey, can I go hang out with my friends?" And you're
granted permission to do so. That becomes the most important thing in your little universe for that next
half an hour and hour, right? Seeing your friends and your buddies. And and as you pointed out, I'm again thinking
back to my own childhood. I've referenced friends Tim and Vince earlier and being about that same age and I can
I can recall similar situations. Granted permission, go to their home, nobody answers. Uh where would I go next? Well,
there was a fort that we built 2 yd away. That would be my next stop. They're probably at the fort. If they
weren't there, sometimes they were at Shawn's house and you would see their bikes in the driveway and you could tell
you could walk a few more yards and see if the bikes were in the driveway or not. And so, I worry that we have a
situation here, Captain, where Leanna's playing detective herself trying to figure out where her friends are and now
she's wandering about and maybe as said, the witnesses the eyewitnesses are getting this 5:15 time
from a second attempt at knocking on the door after she's gone out looking the neighborhood for her friends. Mhm. One
thing that's also difficult and troubling here, I mean, this is good for the parents and the people searching for
Leanna that night, but also might be bad because she could be wandering far further and further away from home is
June 14th is close to one of the longest days of the year. So, it would remain light out much longer on this day than
most days of the year. Sunset in Chisholm, Minnesota on June 14th of this year of 2021
was 9:14 p.m. So, it's one of those situations where you go, "Okay, lots of daylight hours between the time
of when she goes missing or when it's presumed that she she goes missing." Mhm. Uh why don't we have more
eyewitnesses? If something happened to her, it seemed to me like it it happened in a
relatively quick in a relatively short period of time. Like you said, to go back in time to
think about how this would play out in your own childhood. But, you know, what Normally,
when I'd ask my parents, like, "Hey, can I go play with my friends?" They would just turn and go,
"Oh, honey, you don't have any friends." On July 3rd, so weeks after Leanna went
missing, investigators had looked into an estimated 1,000 leads or tips. Investigators spoke with 130 sex
offenders who lived in northern Minnesota, calling some persons of interest. On July 9th, investigators
asked for the public's help in finding three men who may have information that would be helpful to this investigation.
They were looking for a Shawn Raymond Bertick of Hibbing, Jason Wayne Smith of Hibbing, and Justin Michael Jenkins of
Chisholm. The Sheriff's Office also asked for the public's help in finding an unidentified white man in his
mid-30s, about 5 ft 10 in tall and 155 lb with bleach blonde hair feathered over his ears and a dark tattoo of a
star or a sun on his right arm wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. This man was supposedly seen on foot in the
Warner's neighborhood on June 14th, the day in question. They also said that they were looking for a navy blue
two-door Cadillac driven by a black male in his 20s or 30s that was either bald or had a shaven head and an older rusty
brown pickup truck with a topper driven by a white man with curly black hair. The Sheriff's Department would not say
why they were seeking these people, but we can presume that persons in the neighborhood reported seeing them in the
area. In an interesting statement though, Sheriff Litman said he believed despite public events in the area at the
time of Leanna's disappearance that the person who was responsible for Leanna going missing was likely from Chisholm.
At the same time, authorities said there was no truth to media reports that identified a 23-year-old convicted sex
offender as a suspect in the case. They denied that there was a suspect and stated that this man was in custody on
unrelated charges. Now we're really seeing the scale of this investigation here, aren't we,
Captain? This is something that we've seen in other cases, specifically the Delphi case, where you start seeing the
the long arms of the law are reaching out and they are casting a wide net on known offenders, suspects, people seen
in the area, questionable behavior, all of that stuff. That's what's going on here. That's what's going down at this
point. Mhm. And we saw at the Delphi case how many search warrants and how many arrest
warrants were the arrest warrants were carried out. There was like 40, 50, 60 carried out
within days because now all of a sudden the priority level jumps big-time to start finding people, the the bad guys.
Start rounding up the bad guys at this point. And that's what we're seeing an amped up, not only just amped up, but
here to the point where they're saying to the public, "Hey, we're looking for these people by name. We're looking for
people that were described to be looking like this. We're not saying any of them
are suspects. Any of them could have useful information to this investigation." Well, like you said, there's a bunch of
people visiting this town during that time period. So now as this is going out more regionally, you have
people coming forward and saying, "Hey, I know that this dirtbag in my family was visiting there
at the time. He's capable of abducting a child. So now they got to find that individual which might be living a
criminal life and then that criminal or that that dirtbag now has to explain to the
police where he was at. And where you know, what's his alibi? And sometimes they're not as cooperative
with police police because their alibi is that they're actually doing some other kind of criminal
activity. Well, and even if they weren't getting reports that people that were named specifically were in the area at
that time cuz we're kind of guessing here, but you also have to wonder, is that simply that these know these known
individuals, the ones that they're referencing by name, are these people that have outstanding warrants or are
sex offenders? I don't know that they are. But we weren't able to find them when we
started doing our roundup or we started looking for bad guys to talk to or serving these arrest warrants. These are
people that we could not find and we want to know why we couldn't find them. And then the people that were that
you're asking the public for and you're simply giving a description of them, well, that's very interesting too
because obviously these are not people that are they're being told their names. So if people saw them in the
neighborhood, you have the the neighborhood person telling police "Here's a description of the person. Why
is that interesting to me? Why am I bringing it up to you, Mr. Lawman? Uh that's because I'd never seen this
person in the neighborhood before, but I saw them on that day and that's the day
that we're talking about." And so now as an investigator you're going, "Okay, I want to find bleach blonde hair guy. I
want to find the African-American male with the shaved head. I want to find the guy driving the creepy camper pickup
truck. Why? Because I want to ask them what you were doing there that day and if I can
clear you or if I can immediately tell that there's little reason to suspect you of any wrongdoing based off of the
information you're able to prove to me and tell me that day then I I also want to talk to you not just to
clear you or check you off my list, I want to ask you, "Did you see anything that day? Did you
hear anything that day? Maybe you're the witness that we've been looking for that
can give us the clue that's going to lead us to this little girl." So much more to get to. Please join us
here for episode two and until tomorrow, be good, be kind. And don't litter.

LeeAnna Warner /// Part 1 /// 516 Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com LeeAnna Warner was just 5 years old when she went missing from her neighborhood in Chisholm, Minnesota back in 2003. LeeAnna was last seen walking home from a friend’s house, which was a block and a half from the Warner residence. LeeAnna went to play with a friend at 4:30pm but no one was home. LeeAnna was last seen walking on Southwest Second or Third Street, westbound between 5 and 5:15pm on June 14th, 2003. The Chisholm Police department believe that LeeAnna was the victim of a rare “Stranger Child Abduction.” At the time of her disappearance LeeAnna was 3 feet 2 inches tall, 48 lbs., and she was wearing a sleeveless dark demin dress with an attached belt, orange Hanes underwear and a flower shaped earring with a red garnet. If you have any information please call 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) or submit information online (CyberTip report) at www.Missingkids.org

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Brief Summary

Leanna Warner, 5, vanished in Chisholm, Minnesota, in 2003; search efforts yielded no leads or evidence of abduction.

Key points

The Disappearance of Leanna Warner. Five-year-old Leanna vanished from her neighborhood, sparking a massive search effort.
Community Search Efforts. Over 300 people joined the search for Leanna, showcasing community support.
A Father's Plea. Leanna's father makes an emotional appeal for her safe return.
The Search Intensifies. Authorities expand the search area and adjust timelines as hope begins to fade.
A Unique Description. Police Chief Erickson describes a faded light blue car as a potential lead.
The Disbelief Factor. A spokeswoman discusses the reluctance to believe in abduction cases in familiar areas.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

How does a child disappear into thin air?

Introducing the mystery of Leanna Warner's disappearance.

6:13WatchAug 30, 2021

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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