This story was initially published by East Idaho News.
It’s a mystery that has baffled people around the world for the past 10 years.
On July 10, 2015, Idaho Falls toddler DeOrr Kunz Jr. vanished from the Timber Creek Campground in Lemhi County. Over the past decade, investigators have visited the remote campsite dozens of times, multiple searches have been conducted, private investigators have performed their own analysis and countless theories have emerged about the case.
To this day, nobody has been arrested or charged in connection to his disappearance and the question asked 10 years ago remains the same: where is DeOrr?
The camping trip
DeOrr and his parents, Jessica Mitchell and Vernal DeOrr Kunz, left Idaho Falls the afternoon of July 9, 2015, for a camping trip in Lemhi County.
Deorr’s great-grandfather, Robert Walton, and his friend, Isaac Reinwand, drove in a separate vehicle and met up with the young family at Timber Creek Campground, a remote area around 125 miles northwest of Idaho Falls near Leadore.
By the time the two groups arrived, it was dark. Reinwand slept in a tent, Walton slept in his camper and DeOrr slept with his parents in the back of Walton’s blue Chevy Blazer.
The next morning, July 10, Reinwand recalled seeing DeOrr as everyone ate breakfast. The child was wearing large cowboy boots and “clumping around” the campsite, Reinwand told EastIdahoNews.com in a 2016 interview.
Around noon, Mitchell and Kunz said they took DeOrr to the Stage Stop Junction store in Leodore, around a 30-minute drive on rocky terrain from the campground. They returned to the campsite and the parents went off to explore.
“They left DeOrr in the care of the grandfather. They went fishing for a little bit and then came back and he was gone,” former Lemhi County Sheriff Steve Penner told EastIdahoNews.com this week. “(Walton) thought he was with them. Isaac was off in the creek fishing.”
Kunz and Mitchell began looking for their son. When they couldn’t find him, Kunz jumped into his truck and drove down a dirt road so he could get cell phone reception to call for help. Mitchell’s phone was able to get a signal from the campground and she called 911 at 2:28 p.m.
“My 2-year-old son…we can’t find him,” Mitchell told the dispatcher. “He was wearing cowboy boots, pajama pants and a camo jacket, and he’s got shaggy blond hair.”
Nobody else was camping near the family that day and the site has a large hill on one side with an 8-10 foot descending hill leading to a creek on the other.
“It’s such a small area – that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. They just assume, ‘How could you let your kid out of your sight?’ Well, this area is pretty well blocked in and there’s no way you couldn’t not see him,” Kunz told EastIdahoNews.com in 2015.
Search efforts
Over the next 48 hours, search and rescue teams scoured the area on foot, ATVs, horses and in helicopters. K9 dogs were brought in and divers focused on a nearby reservoir and the creek.
“We searched that real intently. It’s not very deep, but we put divers in there on their bellies and removed all the log jams and brush piles and things like that,” Penner said.
John Bennett, who is now the Lemhi County Sheriff, was one of the divers. He recalls over 200 people showing up around the third day to help look for DeOrr.
“Search and Rescue coordinated grid search efforts. Basically, you could hold hands and we went in a line walking step by step through the campsite,” Bennett said this week.
In the days after his disappearance, Kunz and Mitchell said they believed their son had been kidnapped and made a public plea for him to be returned.
“Who would harm us this way?” Mitchell said. “Especially knowing how much he means to us. He’s everything to us…If somebody has him, please don’t hurt him. Just bring him home safely where he belongs.”
Posters and billboards featuring DeOrr’s photo were plastered across eastern Idaho. The Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office and FBI were brought in to assist the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office. Tips poured in from across the country, including a possible sighting of the toddler at a Motel 6 in California that turned out to be false.
Mitchell, Kunz, Reinwand and Walton were interviewed by law enforcement and have been cooperative since the beginning, according to Penner. Kunz and Mitchell voluntarily took lie detector tests and former Sheriff Lynn Bowerman said in July 2015 that investigators did not suspect foul play.
But in January 2016, Bowerman named DeOrr’s parents as suspects and told EastIdahoNews.com they had been “less than truthful” in interviews and polygraph tests.
“Their timeline keeps changing, where they were at keeps changing, and movements and statements about DeOrr Jr. keep changing,” Bowerman said at the time. “Their statements don’t match, and it’s frustrating because we have absolutely no idea where DeOrr is. There have been so many inconsistencies that it’s hard to tell the truth from everything they’ve said.”
Penner and Bennett do not consider Mitchell and Kunz suspects; rather, they say everyone at the campsite that day is a “person of interest” because they were the last people to see DeOrr.
Rumors, national media and private investigators
As the search for the young boy heated up, so did rumors and online speculation.
Theories were shared on social media and commenters attacked Kunz and Mitchell on websites, YouTube videos and other platforms. In response, officials issued a statement reminding the public that “details regarding this case will come from the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office, and we will not release information based on speculation or unverified facts.”
In June 2016, DeOrr’s face was featured on the cover of People magazine with the headline “Without a Trace” and documentaries, television shows and podcasts have been produced about the case.
In 2017, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age-progressed photo of DeOrr, showing what he could have looked like when he was 4 years old.
Over the past 10 years, three private investigators have conducted their own examinations into the case.
Frank Vilt worked with the family early on and believed initially that DeOrr was abducted. But, in early 2016, he ended his involvement and said Kunz and Mitchell lied about their son’s disappearance. Vilt died in August 2023.
Philip Klein, a private investigator based in Texas, then joined the case. He spent months interviewing the parents, Walton, Reinwand and other family members. Klein concluded DeOrr was the victim of an accidental homicide and Mitchell and Kunz were involved.
The third private investigator, David Marshburn, is currently working with the family and has a different theory. He believes the parents had nothing to do with the disappearance and says Reinwand knows more than he is saying. Reinwand insists he had nothing to do with the disappearance.
Penner and Bennett told EastIdahoNews.com they will not comment on other investigators but appreciate tips that are shared with the sheriff’s office.
Where the case stands today
Penner and Bennett visited Timber Creek Campground with EastIdahoNews.com on Wednesday. They both walked around the campsite, stared into the creek, lifted up rocks off the ground and then drove around the reservoir.
Penner estimates he’s been here 100 times over the past 10 years and has repeatedly said, “When someone is lost, you look for them.”
Even though he is no longer sheriff, he remains on the Lemhi County Search and Rescue team. He and Bennett are close and neither one of them plan to stop looking for DeOrr.
Over the years, bones have been found at the campsite. Investigators send photos to anthropologists at Idaho State University and in each case, they’ve turned out to be animal remains. In one instance, a bone was sent to the FBI in Quantico for testing but, again, it was from an animal.
Other possible evidence has been processed, but so far, there have been no solid leads.
“Everything that we have sent to the lab has been analyzed and it has not produced anything. None of the evidence has had a positive outcome,” Penner said.
The four adults at the campsite have tried to remain out of the spotlight over the years. Walton died in 2019 and when contacted for comment this week, Reinwand said he was trying to “put this behind him and move forward.”
Kunz declined to comment but his attorney, Allen Browning, says his client “1,000% had nothing to do with his son’s disappearance.” He says Kunz and Mitchell have endured nonstop vitriol from the public over the years, forcing Kunz to leave Idaho Falls. The couple is no longer together.
In a statement to EastIdahoNews.com, Mitchell said, “Each of the 3,647 days have felt the same. The pain of him missing is still as real as day 1. I love and miss my son every day.”
Trina Clegg, Mitchell’s mother and DeOrr’s grandmother, says she and her family still visit Timber Creek Campground because the peace of the area gives her hope that she will see her grandson again.
“Our family is still grieving every day and does our best to stay positive for something to develop in this case,” she tells EastIdahoNews.com. “We still pray every day for an answer to what happened 10 years ago that still haunts us with heartfelt pain and grief, missing our sweet Baby DeOrr.”
Clegg adds, “If Baby DeOrr hears this, please know, sweet handsome DeOrr, you have a very devoted family that loves and cares for you every day and hopes one day you will come home.”
Don’t miss a special edition of Courtroom Insider with East Idaho News' Nate Eaton Thursday night at 7 p.m. MDT. Nate will take a closer look at the disappearance of DeOrr Kunz and have new interviews with investigators. Watch on the East Idaho News YouTube channel.
