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 donate to our podcast and continue the mission, it all goes right back into the podcast. We have a Buy Me a Coffee link, and you can... make a one -time donation to the podcast. You can find
that easily on our website, www .coldandmissing .com. And if you could take a moment to rate and review us in your podcast player, we would appreciate it so much. And giving us a five -star rating really helps the algorithm get us to other
people and get these cases to other people. So, you know, if you had never heard of LeeAnna’s case before today, Maybe go into your podcast app and just give us a rating so that way LeeAnna’s case can get to somebody else who has never heard it and we can just continue talking about her and continue to put pressure on police that we're not forgetting about her and we want answers in this case so they should keep putting resources towards her case. Again, something as simple
as a review can do that. So thank you if you've 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.