¶ Podcast Introduction and Warnings
One hundred and thirty million people take road trips every year. 15,400 of them are never seen again. Have you heard the story of the passenger that's been circulating online lately? A young couple set out on a van life trip, but a few nights in, they came across a brutal car accident on the side of the road. I'm not talking about a typical crash. Something about this was off. And there's one detail that keeps coming up.
The car they found had three deep scratches carved into the side. Not dents, scratches. They stopped, they saw it, and then they left. But here's where things got strange. Not long after, creepy things start happening. They began to feel like they weren't alone in the van. Like something followed them from that road. People online have started connecting it to something they're calling the passenger.
Supposedly, it attaches itself to anyone who encounters it and marks their car with three scratches. And once that happens, it doesn't let go. If these reports are true, this couple didn't just witness something on that highway, they carried it with them. From Andre Overdahl, director of Autopsy of Jane Doe, comes passenger. Only in theaters may twenty second, get tickets now.
Podcast is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and
Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children.
This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned.
¶ Christopher Meyer Missing, A Chilling Sketch
Richard Huffman felt sick to his stomach. It was summer of 1995, and the newspaper in his lab told him something he wished wasn't true. Another child was missing from rural Kenakee County, Illinois. He scanned the article, reading detail after detail, his heart racing with each new bit of information. The missing boy was 10 years old. His name was Christopher Meyer. He had vanished while fishing on a river. He was spotted talking to a man at the water's edge.
and then he disappeared. Police provided a sketch of the man, and the newspaper article urged anyone who knew him to call the police immediately. When Richard looked at the drawing, He immediately recognized the dead eyes staring back at him. They were the same eyes that had borne into him from the defense stand fourteen years ago during the trial for the murder of his five year old sister Tara. This is the story of Timothy Buss. I'm Courtney Brown.
And I'm Colin Browen.
And you're listening to Murder in America.
🎵 Music
¶ Tara Sue Huffman's Happy Childhood
Bradley, Illinois sits fifty six miles south of Chicago, just off Interstate fifty seven in Kenkake County. In nineteen eighty one from the highway it didn't look like much. A water tower, a strip of fast food signs, a few stoplights before the road wound through flat, open farmland. But if you drove a little further in, Bradley would open up into something else.
A thriving community that felt quintessentially American. Modest ranch homes and kids playing basketball in the front yard, vegetable gardens sprouting out back. Block after block of working families who punched in, came home, and watched their kids ride bikes until the streetlights came on. For the most part, the town of 11,000 people ran on a factory schedule. The majority of the people who lived there worked at either the Crowler Furniture Company or the George D. Roper Manufacturing Plant.
They weren't just businesses. They were the heartbeat of the town, the reason people settled there in the first place. And like most blue-collar towns, Bradley carried a particular kind of pride. A collective understanding between the people who live there that everyone is working hard and that everyone is looking out for one another.
That's the mentality Barbara and Charles Huffman had as they cradled their newborn daughter, Tara Sue Huffman, in their arms on August 14, 1975. They envisioned a bright future for her, long days playing outside in the nearby woods, fishing at the local creek. Riding her bike through the peaceful streets with the other neighborhood kids. It was the childhood they had seen all of Tara's older siblings experience, right there in Bradley, Illinois.
You see, by the time Tara came along, Charles and Barbara had already raised seven kids, and by all accounts, they had done a great job doing it. Most of Tara's siblings were in their mid to late teens. But some were well into adulthood, successfully raising families of their own nearby. So she was the baby of the family, the little angel who reminded everyone of the sweetness of childhood.
She was the one her brother skipped football games for, just because they wanted to take her fishing, the one her sisters took for ice cream on the weekdays. And nearby arcades on the weekends. According to Tara's older sister Glenda, quote, when mom brought her home from the hospital, she stole our hearts. We all spoiled a smart, giving, and loving little girl. End quote.
¶ The Idyllic Bradley Neighborhood
As a result, Tara grew up surrounded by love from her older siblings, but also her nieces and nephews. When she was four, her older brother Randy had a little boy named Nick. Most people aren't ants before they hit kindergarten. But Tara took the job seriously, doting on her nephew the same way her siblings doted on her. And listening to all the family stories passed down about Tara, it's easy to see why she was so loved.
Darn was one of Tara's favorite words, mainly because whenever she said it, her family would laugh. Every night, when dinner was ready, it was her job to run into the living room and let her dad know. She did this, like clockwork, by running into the room and loudly announcing, My dad, my dad, dinner's on the darn table.
Her parents weren't mom and dad, they were always my dad and my mom. They were two titles that her parents were incredibly proud of. Because Tara wasn't just a little girl with sparkly eyes and a sunny disposition. She was a wild child at heart. The outdoors, though, was where Tara thrived. She'd run barefoot through the grass, flipping over rocks on a critter hunt. Frogs, snakes, lizards, bugs, it didn't matter to Terra.
Every little wiggling living thing was something to be celebrated. Here's what her nephew Nick had to say about that.
She would always go pick up frogs and snakes. She wasn't afraid of'em. She'd go chase those and then. go try to give'em to me and I wasn't a big fan of frogs and snakes, you know, when I was two. But that's what I'll always remember her doing is being the girl that Used to snatch those up.
After Tara tried to hand Nick her critter of the day, Nick would take off running, little eggs going as fast as they could, and Tara would go right after him.
By the fall of 1980, Tara was sharing that playful personality with her fellow kindergartners at Bradley East Elementary School. She made friends quick, and pretty soon, every day after school, she was running to a new friend's house to ask them to play with her outside. It's something kids and Bradley had done for generations. They played outdoors and explored their independence and the safety of their neighborhood. For the most part.
No one was worried about kids being outside on their own. This was a town where people looked out for one another. As fall turned to winter, and winter turned to spring of 1981, the worst that had happened to any of the kids in the neighborhood.
¶ Tara's Disappearance: May 21, 1981
were some scraped knees and a few grass stains on their back to school clothes. No one had any reason to think that there was danger lurking in the town. That is until the day That changed Bradley Forever, May twenty first, nineteen eighty one.
It started out like any other Thursday morning in the Huffman household. Barbara was up first, slinging breakfast and ushering the teens off to school. It had rained the night before, and there was still a mist wafting off the grass as the high schoolers rushed out the door to make it to class on time. Tara's day started about an hour later than the high schoolers at around eight, which gave her a little extra time to eat her cereal and gush to her mom about the upcoming day.
Because Tara's class had gotten perfect attendance, they won a trip to a local roller skating rink. Tara was excited, beaming even. When you're a kid, being able to go on a school trip is like winning the lottery. On top of that, they only had to do a half day, meaning that as soon as the roller skating was over, Tara and all her classmates would get to go home to enjoy the rest of the day. At five years old, it doesn't get much better than that.
When Tara and her classmates got off the bus at the rink, shortly after 9 30 a.m., everyone was in good spirits. The rink was loud, the speakers pumping out some poppy 80s tunes. Tara wasn't hesitant to lace on her skates and try out her luck on the rink. Holding hands with her classmates for balance, she slipped, giggled, and fell her way around the rink, having more and more fun with every pass around. By the time she and her friends stumbled their way out of the rink, it was lunchtime.
Tara sat down and dug into her lunch. A hot dog, a cookie, a small carton of milk, and a Pepsi. It was the same meal that the coroner would uncover in her stomach, hours later. At 12 15, right after lunch, Tara's mom and one of her sisters picked her up at the rink. Tara was elated, telling them all about the fun she had had.
On the way home, Barbara spotted a few yard sales in the nearby neighborhoods. No one was in a rush. It was a warm Thursday afternoon, and they had all the time in the world. So for about an hour, the three explored some yard sales. Paging through toys, trash, and treasures to get themselves a good deal.
There was a sense of ease in the car as they made their way home that day. It had been a good day. They pulled into the driveway around 1.30. The rain that had peppered the town overnight had mostly dried out. And the sun was now shining. It was the perfect weather to be outside. So as soon as Tara stepped inside, she swapped out of her school clothes and into something comfier: shorts and a t-shirt. As quickly as she changed,
She darted for the door, eager to get outside. But Barbara stopped her, asking where she was going in such a hurry. Tara replied, excited, quote, to play with the Smith kids. Now the Smiths lived just down the alley, right behind the Huffman home. Tara had been there more times than anyone could count. So Barbara smiled at her daughter and told her to have fun, but not to be gone too long. Tara waved goodbye and ran out the door.
Barefoot into the sunny afternoon, the back door closed behind her, and just like that, she had left her mother's life forever.
¶ The Search and Timothy Buss's Presence
When Tara reached the Smith's home, she did what she always did. She knocked, and Mrs. Smith came to answer. When she finally did, Tara asked if her kids could come out to play. But Mrs. Smith gave her a sympathetic smile and told her that today, the kids were staying in to watch TV.
Tara glanced behind her at the sunny afternoon. The idea of sitting inside when it was this nice out didn't even feel like an option to her. So she thanked Mrs. Smith and continued on her way. There were other kids on the block. When Tara couldn't hang out with the Smith kids, she always managed to find more friends to spend time with. Likely, she figured this time it would be no different.
She was in a good mood. She wanted to be outside where she felt at home, where there was sunlight to bask in and frogs to catch and games to play. So, she made her way deeper into the familiar neighborhood. She had no idea that back home, her older brother Richard had a surprise waiting for her, a surprise she would never get to experience.
Around 2:30 p.m., Richard pulled into the family driveway. That morning, he had spotted a small painted turtle in the road. Knowing how much Tara loved animals, he decided to bring the turtle home for her to keep as a pet. He carefully placed the turtle in the back of his truck. By the time he got home, he was so excited to present Tara with her new pet. When he told his mom his plan, Barbara called the Smith House to see if they'd send Tara back home.
But on the other end, misses Smith had bad news. She didn't know where Tara was. She hadn't stayed to play. Now, initially for Barbara, this wasn't as much of a concern as it was an annoyance. After all, Tara was friends with half the neighborhood. She had probably met up with another classmate, gone to their house to play, and not even thought anything of it.
So Barbara set the phone down, grabbed her purse, and left to go find her. She knocked on a neighbor's door to see if maybe they had seen Tara, but they hadn't. Undeterred, Barbara moved on to the next house, and then the next, and the next. Each time a neighbor opened the door, they had the same news for her. They hadn't seen Tara. Barbara kept moving from one neighbor to the next.
But with every passing house, her steps got a little faster. That spark of annoyance that ignited in her when she spoke to misses Smith began to turn into something else. An all-consuming, rapidly growing panic. She scanned every yard, every alley, every park, as she passed from house to house, but there was no sign of her little girl. She started to call out for Tara as she moved between homes. A few neighbors came out onto their porches.
friends, curious what all the fuss was about. One of them asked Barbara if she was okay, and that's when she said it for the very first time, the reality that she wanted so badly to deny, but couldn't any longer. My daughter is missing.
By the time Barbara got back home, her hands were shaking, and she was forced to face the truth. Her daughter was really missing, and she needed help. At five o'clock PM, Barbara called the police. She gave them all the details they needed. Terrace height, weight, What she was last seen wearing, where she was going, what her last known location was. But saying the time she was last seen out loud made Barbara terrified.
The last time anyone on the block had seen Tara was 1.30. It had been at least three and a half hours since she vanished. They were behind. Barbara could have shut down completely. She could have panicked, but she didn't. She hung up and immediately went back outside to lead a search for her daughter.
Meanwhile, Tara's father, Charlie, who was on leave from work due to a broken ankle, stayed at home manning the phone. Tara's brother Richard and her sister Sandra were some of the first two on the scene, helping canvas the neighborhood. It didn't take long before the entire east side of Bradley was flooded with searchers calling out Tara's name. No one had to be asked.
Neighbors raced outside when they heard the news and immediately got to work. It was what people in communities like that did. One person's missing child became everyone's, and within a few hours, Over two hundred people were searching the streets, woods, and streams for Tara, including her own friends and classmates. For some of the kids, at first, it was almost like a game.
For Michael Boyd, one of the neighborhood kids. All of the panic felt a little silly. Here he is speaking with director Drew Gadboys in the Kankiki Tragedy documentary.
As a kid you just thought, well they're gonna they're gonna find her and everything's gonna be fine because th it's
Quiet here.
Nothing bad ever happens here. And we thought that, okay, it's a little girl. She, you know, she's sleeping in someone's backyard. She's at a friend's house, whatever.
Others didn't carry that same sentiment. Tara's brother Richard raced through the streets, desperately screaming out his sister's name. On a street near the family home, he paused to catch his breath and felt a wave of unease pass through him. He lifted his gaze to see a boy sitting on a porch. Staring at him.
I had noticed this young boy sitting on the porch and he was looking at me and he has had this w you know, just an odd expression on his face. I can remember thinking to myself, you know, who is that kid? You know, why is he looking at me like
🔊 Rapping
¶ Discovery of Tara's Body, Family Grief
He had no idea that behind him, that boy had stood up, walked to a group of nearby adults, and joined them on their search for Terra. Richard Hutton recognized the boy. He had no reason to. But those who lived closer to his home and who had kids who went to middle school with him knew the boy as a troublemaker. His name was Timothy Buss, and shortly after joining the search, he made a startling, far too convenient discovery.
The search through Eastern Bradley expanded to a nearby creek. It was one that Tara had caught her fair share of frogs in and spent plenty of time near. There was some fear as they approached the water that maybe Tara had fallen, hit her head, and managed to drown in the creek. The searchers scanned the creek warily, all of them except for Timothy Buss, whose eyes were locked on something different: a makeshift dump obscured in the underbrush.
If you've lived in a small town or rural area, you've probably seen your fair share of these. Old spots in the woods where, decades ago, farmers offloaded their old rusted equipment, tires, and bottles. Spots that, over the years, have transformed into a sort of neighborhood secret. A place for people to get rid of things that'll cost too much to drop off at the dump or take too much effort to get there.
After approaching the pile of junk, Timothy slowly stripped away the outer layers of the pile, construction debris, pieces of foam, plastic. And then he came to another length of foam rubber. And another, and that's when he saw it, part of an arm. He kept going, pulling pieces of trash away, until finally the full picture came into view.
A little girl. Her face was covered in blood. Several wounds etched purple, black, and red across her head. And her eyes, surrounded by the dried blood, were open, staring up at the sky, but seeing nothing. The little girl was dead. The only clothing on her body was a t shirt, which had been pushed up around her armpits, exposing her chest.
Her pants had been removed by whoever put her there, and tragically, that same person had stuck a branch into her rectum that was still protruding from her body. The sight was utterly disturbing. the kind of stuff in nightmares. But thirteen year old Timothy Buss didn't flinch. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, hoisting her up by her armpits, and called out
I found her. She's dead.
Fellow searcher Alan Kaufman was the first to respond to those horrible words. He bolted towards Timothy. The late evening sun blazed from the west, obscuring his vision as he reached the young boy. When the scene in front of Alan finally came to light, it felt like he had been punched in the stomach. There was Timothy, holding up the dead girl with a blink expression on his face. Later, Allen would describe this scene as, quote, the most pitiful sight I've ever seen, end quote.
Timothy called out to him again, saying he needed help because she was too heavy, but Alan couldn't make his feet move towards the girl. Instead, he told Timothy to stay there and keep everyone else away while he ran for the police. As soon as he saw the uniforms, he called out to them. We found her. She's dead. But he hadn't realized who was standing nearby, who was leading the search with police. When he blurted out those words, he hadn't realized that Barbara Huffman was within earshot.
The heat hit Barbara first, then a wave of nausea. Her vision went. Her legs collapsed out from under her. And there in the forest, Barbara fainted. Nearby, Tara's brother Richard, stumbled to his mother's side. He pulled her close as she came into a world she no longer wanted to be in. They held each other and cried. Shaking, sobbing, and mourning the loss of the girl who had been the sunshine of their life.
As Richard held his mom, he knew neither of them would ever be the same. No one in their family would ever be the same. But maybe, just maybe. He could diminish the pain just a little bit. Remember, Charles, Tara's father, was at home, manning the phone and waiting for news. Richard was shattered, but he didn't want his dad to find out from a stranger or a neighbor. He wanted to be there.
So he got in his car and he drove to his childhood home, where his dad sat at the phone, listening to people call out for his daughter, hoping that soon she'd be walking in the front door.
When Richard walked in instead, Charlie asked, Did they find her? Richard responded that yes, they had found her. Then there was silence. silence that they both understood could only be broken one way. Richard told his father, She's gone. From that moment on, Charlie was never the same. Tara had been his baby girl. She had been, admittedly, an unexpected surprise, but the greatest one of his life.
When Barbara learned she was pregnant with Tara back in nineteen seventy five, she had joked with the doctor, Richard's going to lose it. With seven kids on one salary, their financial situation had been less than ideal. The last thing they needed was another kid. But according to Terrace's siblings, when Barbara told Richard she was pregnant, he beamed. He smiled and laughed and hugged his wife like he had won the lottery, and when Terra came into his life, he knew he had.
She quickly became his little shadow. In the weeks leading up to her death, she had even waited on her dad, serving him snacks on a tray and pretending to be a nurse when he was bedridden with his workplace injury. She had been his little bunny, his best pal, his frog catching, snake wrangling princess. And now she was lying dead in a pile of trash with police surrounding her body.
¶ Unraveling Timothy's Story: Evidence and Alibi
Back at the scene, Lieutenant Green Street of the Bradley Police Department secured the area around Tara's body, and he began to process it for evidence. Wading through the sea of trash, they managed to find Tara's shorts and underwear. In addition, they found a broken off piece of a stick that matched the one that had been inserted into Tara's rectum.
An autopsy would later determine that the stick had been inserted post mortem and that her cause of death was a blow to the head. There were several abrasions on her forehead and all throughout her skull. Painting a picture of a young girl who was struck repeatedly with a blunt object until she took her final breath. But the lack of blood at the scene indicated to detectives that she had likely been struck and killed elsewhere.
Now how someone brought her to the scene without anyone noticing, that was a mystery. At least until one detective peered inside a fiber barrel at the edge of the dump. There, spattered all throughout the interior, were specks and pools of rapidly darkening blood.
The lid, which lay nearby, had a palm print on it. Whoever had brought Tara here had done it using that barrel. Police didn't even get the chance to ask the public about the barrel before they got a call regarding it. A call that changed everything.
Because, while police were processing the scene, nearby homeowner Judith Wilkins paced in front of her window, watching as cop after cop race down the usually quiet street. By then, news had already spread that the little Huffman girl was dead and that it was no accident. It was becoming all too clear there was a killer in Bradley. It was something that would make anyone on edge, but Judith was unsettled by something else. Her husband, a former cop, asking her what was bothering her.
At first she downplayed her fears, telling him it was probably nothing, but slowly she told him what had happened that afternoon.
Sometime after two, a teen had come to the door and asked if he could borrow a wagon that was sitting in her front yard. He looked nervous. He was sweating profusely, and he didn't make eye contact with Judas as he explained why he needed it. He said that he had cleaned out his father's garage and had gathered the junk he was throwing away in a large fiber barrel, but the barrel was just a bit too heavy for him to carry, so he needed a way to get it to the dump. Despite his nervous demeanor,
There seemed to be nothing wrong with his request, so Judith obliged. From there, she watched as he made his way down the road, with the barrel resting in the wagon. The boy returned the wagon a little bit later, and then he went on his way. It seemed like nothing at first, but now, as the town of Bradley cowered in the flash of red and blue police lights, the encounter had a whole new meaning. Мистер Вікинг звіщан right now.
Within minutes a squad car pulled up outside the Wilkins house and took the wagon for evidence. One of the officers handed Judith a form and told her to fill it out with every detail she could remember. Quickly, Judith did just that, and she and her husband hurried to the police station to deliver the completed form. Judith felt like she had done her duty, and that maybe, just maybe, this would put an end to the mystery that was consuming the town.
Maybe it would bring peace to the poor Huffmans who were dealing with an unimaginable loss. At the same time, however, she was worried. What if the boy really was just dumping trash? What if she was sending an innocent teenager to the wolves?
Those are the thoughts that were swirling in Judith's head as she made her way into the police station. But the instant she opened the door, all of her thoughts were silenced. Because there, sitting in the lobby, was the boy, the teen who had asked to borrow the wagon. She was so stunned that she didn't even greet the police officer standing nearby. Instead, she turned to him and asked who the boy was. The officer responded, He's the one who found the little girl. He found the body.
But Judith didn't say a word. She wasn't sure enough. So she handed over the form, thanked the officer, and walked back to her car. It was only once she was sitting there, away from Timothy Buss, that she felt confident enough to tell her husband. That was him, she said. That was the boy who came to the door. Now it wasn't until later, when they were safely home, that Judith called the police to tell them.
At the time of her call, Timothy was being led into an interrogation room by juvenile officer Catherine Bergen, and by his side was his father David. Before he even opened his mouth, Officer Bergen had a list of observations about him growing longer by the second. There were hairline scratches that covered his face. On his pants along his thigh, there was a dark brown stain consistent with blood. She also noted that before he left,
She'd have to gather his clothing for evidence, but first she had to get his story. As the officer asked Temothy to walk her through his day, he didn't hesitate, and he told her a story that went like this.
Timothy hadn't gone to school that day because there had been a field trip scheduled and his family didn't have the money to send him. So instead he left his aunt's house, where he had been staying, and walked to a home next to the Smiths. If you can recall, the Smiths were the family that Tara visited just moments before she vanished. When he got to the Smith's neighbors, he helped the man who lived there wash his car.
Afterwards, Timothy said he went back home, had hamburgers with his cousin, and watched some TV. At around 2.30, he visited a friend, Gary Khloe, and at about 3, he came back home. Afterwards, his grandmother, Alice Bus, picked him and his siblings up and brought them to her house to play softball. When he returned to his aunts at about 630, he learned about Tara's disappearance and decided to help in the search. Then, by chance, he found her body.
That was Timothy's original story, but there was a problem with it. As you just heard, Timothy claimed that he had been hanging out with his friend Gary right around the time Tara had been killed. But Officer Bergen knew Gary, and she knew that he had moved to Florida with his father several weeks prior. So this Gary kid wasn't even in town, but she kept a straight face.
She thanked Timothy for his time, asked him to wait around for a moment, and she stepped outside to make a phone call. When Gary's mother answered the phone, she was confused. She told Officer Bergen what she already knew. Gary wasn't home. He wasn't even in Illinois. He was over one thousand miles away, living with his father in the sunshine state. So there was no possible way he had been with Timothy Buss at two hundred thirty that day.
When Officer Bergen returned to the room, she was calm, friendly even. She told Timothy and his father that they needed to get Timothy's clothing for processing. Throughout the interview, she couldn't help but glance at the stain on his pants. A stain that she was certain, without even running any tests, was blood. And if that blood matched Tara's, she'd have the key to put him behind bars. Timothy handed over his clothing without any issues. He posed for a photo of the scratches on his face.
And finally, he was fingerprinted.
¶ Timothy Buss's Troubled and Violent Youth
At 5 in the morning on May 22nd, Timothy Buss and his father walked out of the Bradley Police Department, but it wouldn't be their last time speaking with police. And surprisingly, despite being just 13 years old, It hadn't been Timothy Buss's first time either. In his short life, Timothy had landed himself on the Bradley Police Department's radar several times. And looking at his history, there had been plenty of signs that things weren't quite right with Timothy Butt.
Timothy Duane Buss was born on october fourth, nineteen sixty seven in Fort Hood, Texas, the oldest of four children. His parents, David and Rosemary, moved to Kenkaki, his father's birthplace, before Timothy started kindergarten. And unfortunately, their relationship didn't last.
In September of nineteen seventy three, when Timothy was five years old, his parents separated, and his mother, Rosemary, went to the court and voluntarily gave up her parental rights. Just like that, in an instant, she severed herself from her kids forever. Timothy was in kindergarten, and he didn't understand at the time why his mom had vanished.
All he knew was that she hadn't wanted them, and also that shortly after she vanished, she started a new family. She had a new husband, new kids, a new life, and she never looked back. Timothy never got a phone call, a birthday card, a letter, nothing. He and his four siblings were essentially dead to their mother.
His grandmother, Alice Bus, watched what that did to him. After Rosemary left, five-year-old Timothy would go out to the driveway and just sit there. All day long. Just sitting, waiting for his mother to come home. But she never came back. His father, David, was still in the picture, technically, but by his own admission he was barely there. In nineteen ninety-six he confessed to a court that he was a terrible father.
He admitted that his social life and his work came before his children, and whenever his kids got in the way of things that truly mattered to him, he didn't hesitate to hit them with a belt. Alice, as well as one of Timothy's aunts, tried their best to take care of him and his siblings, to give them the love they were so desperately missing, but it wasn't easy. Timothy alone was a handful.
At just twelve years old, he stole a neighbor's motorcycle and took it for a joyride through the streets. When officers discovered what he had done and tried to pull him over, Timothy doubled down and went full throttle, accidentally crashing the bike. When police raced to his side to see if he was okay, he ran, leading them on a foot chase through the neighborhood until, finally, an officer was able to take Timothy down. For that incident, he was put on probation.
But that was just one of many, many incidents.
Timothy was known for being a bully. Shortly before Tara's disappearance, he actually choked two boys at a local church by leaping behind them and wrapping a wire around their throat. The image is chilling. What's even more chilling is that, despite that incident, Timothy was still wandering free. As if he had done nothing wrong. But he kept doing things wrong again and again and again. A neighbor reported that Timothy had defecated on his car that was parked in his driveway.
Other classmates reported that Timothy liked to brand himself and others with hot metal. He frequently got into fights at school, smoked in front of adults, and ran away from home. By nineteen eighty, his home was no longer with his grandmother, but with his aunt, who happened to live just down the road from the Huffman. The Huffman family had no idea that there was a budding criminal just down the street.
However, the Bradley Police Department did. In early May, just before Tara's murder, Timothy was pulled aside by a police officer after a violent altercation with another student. Now what the argument was over, no one knows. But during it, Timothy pulled a boy off a bicycle, beat him on the pavement, and then burnt him repeatedly with a cigarette butt.
However, the most police could do was warn each other to keep an eye on the kid. And on the morning of May 22nd, 1981, they really took that mission to heart.
¶ Timothy's Arrest, Trial, and Conviction
The morning after Terra Sue Huffman's murder, the east side of Bradley awakened to police cars lining the street. Officers went door to door, the same doors Barbara had knocked on the evening before looking for her daughter. But this time they weren't asking if anyone had seen a little girl. They were asking what people had seen that afternoon, who was on the block, who was walking through the alley.
But they noticed.
And the neighbors had one thing to say. One unnamed witness claimed to have seen a boy carrying a large fiber barrel south down the alley that afternoon. Another had watched him pulling a wagon with that same barrel toward the dump. Another had seen him coming back with the wagon empty.
And one neighbor, who had watched him going through their yard, noticed him crouching down, etching something into the gravel with a stick, a stick roughly the same size and shape as the one that had been found in Terra's body. All of these statements, as well as circumstantial evidence, enabled police to get a search warrant that very day for Timothy's aunt's home where he had been living. And inside the doors of that house, police found the mother load.
There, investigators discovered blood on the doorframe of Timothy's bedroom, as well as on the tile below it. Eventually, that blood was confirmed to be consistent with Tara's blood type. Just like the stain that was on Timothy's pants. Timothy had Tara's blood on his pants. The same blood that was on the walls inside his home.
His alibi for the time of her murder, that friend Gary he was hanging out with, was actually in Florida. Investigators went back through everything Timothy had told them, and the more they looked, the more his story fell apart. Now no one could place him anywhere near where he said he was between two hundred thirty and three o'clock in the afternoon, but multiple people could place him somewhere else, in the alley with that barrel, heading south towards the dump.
The evidence was building. A few days after the murder, investigators brought Timothy back in. This time, it was for a lineup. The first juvenile lineup Kanakee County had ever seen. Witness after witness picked him out. Judith Wilkins identified him as the boy who had come to her door that afternoon and borrowed her children's wagon. Police knew it was incredibly likely that Timothy was their killer.
But the court of public opinion, well, they had no doubts whatsoever. Word spreads fast in small towns. And Bradley, during the wake of Tara's murder, it traveled at lightning speed. Tara's older brother Richard couldn't contain himself. He went looking for Timothy more than once, canvassing the neighborhood, asking around, trying to hunt his sister's killer.
Police sympathized with him. They could see the pain he was enduring. But time and time again, they had to step in and stop him from looking. Another murder was the last thing this town needed. They believed that the law and justice would prevail. And on May 28, 1981, it seemed like maybe they were right. Just one week after Terra Sue Huffman walked out her back door barefoot and disappeared, Timothy Buss was arrested.
But there was no fanfare, just confusion. Because although a suspected killer had been caught, that killer was just 13 years old. How is anybody supposed to reconcile with the fact that a child was capable of such evil? For those close to Timothy, the notion was impossible. His father, David, did not believe it, neither did his grandmother Alice. As far as both of them were concerned, Timothy had nothing to do with what happened to Tara Huffman, and nothing was going to convince them otherwise.
The police, however, were convinced. Timothy Buss was charged with the murder of Teras Sue Huffman. Because of his age, his case began in juvenile court, but following a hearing under the Illinois Juvenile Court Act, it was determined that the severity of the crime warranted Timothy being charged as an adult. He was formally indicted by a grand jury in Kankaki County for the murder of Terasue Huffman, and his bond was set at$100,000. At first,
But when his family managed to pull together the one hundred thousand dollars, the judge called an emergency hearing to raise the bail. Ultimately, his bail was increased to a million dollars. So Timothy remained at Kankake County Detention Center, awaiting his trial.
🎵 Music
When the trial began on November thirtieth, nineteen eighty-one in Wilt County, the prosecution wasted no time laying out the evidence against Timothy. The palm print on the barrel's lid came back as a match for him. The blood in his home and clothing was a match for Tara. He had been seen taking that barrel to the spot where her body was found. Now, the defense hammered back, arguing that all the evidence was circumstantial.
Defense attorney Lawrence Dirksen even went so far as to call the state's case meaningless and incompetent, pure ass nonsense. He claimed that no one had seen Timothy hurt Tara. Sure, the blood on his pants matched Tara's blood type, but plenty of people had the same type of blood. There was no way to say for certain that it was hers. Ultimately, however, it didn't take the jury long to determine that the evidence was enough.
After just six hours of deliberation, Timothy Buss was found guilty of the murder of Terra Sue Huffman, and the 13-year-old was sentenced to 25 years in prison for her murder.
¶ Incarceration, Lack of Remorse, Early Release
When the verdict was read, defense attorney Lawrence Dirksen slammed his hand against the table in front of him. Behind him, Timothy's father, David Buss, began to sob. All the while, Timothy sat in his chair, motionless, staring at the judge with a blank expression. His defense attorney pointed at the jury and yelled out, I dunno how in the hell twelve people, twelve goddamn hypocrites,
But before he could finish, the judge cut him off, threatening to charge him with contempt of court. The decision had been made. The evidence was overwhelming. Yet still, according to the Edwardsville Intelligencer, as Timothy was led away, he said to swarming reporters, I don't know why I have to go to jail. I didn't do it.
For him and his family, the sentence was dumbfounding. Twenty-five years was inconceivable, but the prosecution knew that it wasn't likely he'd serve that whole term. He was young, and if he behaved himself in prison, he'd likely be given a second chance.
But as we know, good behavior wasn't exactly Timothy's strong suit. Initially, he had to begin his sentence at a juvenile facility due to his age. At the Illinois Youth Center, he garnered a reputation for his odd behavior, pathological lying, and desperation to escape the consequences of his actions. During required therapy sessions, he showed no interest in improving himself.
Or even taking responsibility for what he had done. Consulting psychologist Marvin Zapporin wrote in a 1982 report, quote, He hates everything and everyone without prejudice. And he is ready, willing, and able to vent his spleen on any available object. Now, that same psychiatrist indicated that he had sociopathic tendencies. But he made it clear Tim was not psychotic. He showed day in and day out. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Now, at some point during his incarceration there, guards raced to his cell after hearing a loud, repetitive thudding. Inside, they discovered Timothy using a dumbbell he had been given to exercise. To chip away at the stone walls of his cell. He was trying to quote, dig a hole to escape. The dumbbell and many of his privileges were taken away. But over the next eight years, he tried to escape seven times.
Four times through group efforts with other inmates, and three times through suicide attempts. But when he was 21 years old, he was officially moved into the adult prison system. And while there, he seemed to settle down a bit. There were no more escape attempts, but also no real growth. He continued to tell anyone who would listen that he had been wrongfully convicted. In his eyes, He was the victim.
But in the eyes of the public, he was a monster, which only made his release in August of nineteen ninety-three more distressing. Despite being sentenced to twenty-five years, after serving just twelve and a half years, Timothy Buss walked out of prison a free man.
¶ Timothy's Post-Release Criminal Path
At first, he returned to live with his father in Kankaki County, but word quickly spread, and residents were not happy to have him back, especially the Huffmans, who were crushed that he had freedom while Tara was six feet underground. Randy Huffman, her brother, told the State Journal, We feel the judicial system has failed us. And many others in the community felt the same way. Timothy's father started receiving threatening phone calls. They claimed to be terrified for their safety.
So within weeks of his release, Timothy packed his bags and moved to Sarasota, Florida, to live with one of his childhood babysitters and longtime family friends, Sarah, and her husband Tim. At that point, Timothy Buss was 26 years old.
He had spent nearly half his life in prison. Tara and her husband Tim knew him as a little boy, the child they had looked after years ago, the one they had stayed in touch with through everything. But little did they know, the boy and this man were not the same person. Now, for a while it seemed like it might work. Timothy was under their roof. He had structure. He had people around him who genuinely cared about what happened to him. But steady employment was a problem from the start.
He moved from job to job, unable to hold any of them down for very long. And soon, the company that he kept began to worry Sarah and Tim. Several days a week they discovered Timothy bringing underage girls into their home. At twenty six years old, he was hanging out with thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year olds. They began to suspect that not only was he having inappropriate relations with them, he was doing drugs with them as well.
So, after just six months of living there, Sarah and Tim told him it was time for him to get a place of his own.
It was then that the guardrails came off entirely. Timothy stopped working. He began selling crack to find his life. And he began a relationship, if you can even call it that. The girl he was dating was fifteen years old. Sadly, she had been forced into sex trafficking at an even younger age. But after they started dating, the two began to steal from local Walmarts. Pawning the merchandise to fund their drug habits.
Timothy was in a free fall of his own making. As May of 1995 approached, it was clear that things in Florida were not working out. So he and his girlfriend packed their bags and decided to try their luck in Illinois once more. Initially, Timothy's grandmother Alice took them both in. Then, after some time, they found a place of their own. Given the age difference, their addiction, and Timothy's history, the relationship was doomed from the start.
He was reportedly controlling of his underage girlfriend. Eventually, she reconnected with her family and went back to Florida to begin her life anew. Meanwhile, Timothy stayed behind, living in a town that hated him, and growing more and more disconnected from the family members he had left.
In 1995, he attended his sister's wedding. He later disclosed to a psychologist that it was there he realized he felt like a stranger, even around the people he had grown up with. Perhaps those family members knew that he was dangerous.
¶ Christopher Meyer: A Boy Who Loved Nature
And they were right. Timothy Buss was essentially a ticking time bomb, and the residents around him, many of whom had just moved to Kenneckee County, had no idea what was ahead.
Mika Moulton was one of those people. In August of nineteen ninety five, she settled into a new home in rural.
Rollaroma.
A park just southeast of Bradley. She had been drawn to the area by its safety and its access to nature. A river wound around town, and there were lush parks on nearly every street. It was perfect for her three children, James, a thirteen year old, ten year old Chris, and two year old Cameron. Chris, her middle child, had a deep love of nature, one he had carried with him all his life. And despite being just ten, Chris had already experienced more than many people do in their lifetime.
He was born on January 5, 1985, to Jim Meyer and Mika Moulton. Jim was a U.S. military pilot, and Mika was in the Air Force, which meant that the early years of the family's life was spent hopping from base to base in Europe. During his time there, Christopher learned to speak German. Not just a word here and there, but actual full-on conversations. He was comfortable speaking with shopkeepers, teachers, and friends in German, despite his own parents not knowing the language.
And that independence is something that followed him all his life. In a lot of ways, Chris grew up more quickly than most kids. You see, despite his brother James being three years older than him, Chris often took on a caretaker role with him. James had autism and often needed help with daily tasks.
But Chris was always happy to help his older brother. The two were inseparable, a constant steady force for one another, which was needed. Because after moving around Europe for a few years, the family made their way back to the U.S. and settled in Walla Walla, Washington. While there they had Cameron, who was eight years younger than Christopher. And saying Chris loved his brother would be an understatement.
Very quickly, Cameron became his best buddy. He'd spend hours pushing him around the house in a laundry basket, dubbed his race car, while he made engine noises and warned his little brother about make believe obstacles. From the outside, the family seemed perfect. But sometime around 1994, their traditional life began to crumble. Jim and Mika went their separate ways. Mika moved to Aroma Park, Illinois, and not wanting to uproot the kids entirely, she and Jim made a decision.
They would spend the school year with Jim and his new partner Terry and Walla Walla, but during the summer, they'd fly to Illinois and spend their entire break with their mother. It was untraditional, but it seemed to work for everyone. Quickly, Chris found his rhythm in Aroma Park and made a big group of friends. People who knew Christopher described him the same way. Beautiful blue eyes, blonde hair, dimples, always laughing, always sunkissed and freckled from long summer days spent outside.
It seemed like his sweet personality just radiated from him. He paid attention to the people around him and showed them that he cared. In the summer of 1995, before his family friend's birthday, he remembered she liked butterflies and got to work all morning drawing her the perfect birthday card with a big, beautiful butterfly on it. Butterflies were her favorite, but they were also his.
Chris loved being outside. He loved wildlife. If he saw an animal that had been hit on the side of the road, he'd beg his mom to pull over so he could see if there was a way to save it. He loved to fish, but he refused to keep or kill anything he caught. For him, fishing was just a way to get closer to the animals he loved. He spent almost all summer fishing at a boat launch near his house, as well as a part of the river nearby, affectionately dubbed the bayou by local kids.
Throughout the summer of nineteen ninety five, Chris was there nearly every day, playing with kids, swimming, catching and releasing fish, coming up with new games to play. But as June turned to July and July turned to August, those long summer days seemed to be getting shorter and shorter. Chris knew it wouldn't be long before he was back in Washington, back to school, back to his usual routine. He was eager to get every last bit of joy he could out of the rest of his summer.
So, on August 7, 1995, despite it being early in the afternoon, Chris begged his mom to let him and James go down to the bayou. At first, Mika was hesitant. It was already about 1 p.m., but Chris was hard to deny. She described him in Moms of the Missing by Steph and Hugh as quite a character. He was one of those jokesters that always knew how to get you on his side.
That day, Mika smiled at her son, who was looking up at her with begging eyes, and she told him that he could go. But he had to be back by five, or he would miss dinner. What happened after that is a blur to her. In Moms of the Missing, she disclosed that the most important detail for her of that afternoon is still hazy. I don't know for sure if he knew how much I loved him. I just wish I could remember if I told him that when he left to go playing.
Chris grabbed his stuff, hopped on his bike with his brother James, and made his way towards the boat lawn. The heat hit them the moment they pushed off. 97 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. Mika watched them leave the driveway and pedal down the street towards the river. It was a sight she had seen more times than she could count. But this was the last time she'd ever see it.
¶ Christopher's Last Encounter at the Bayou
James and Chris made it to the river sometime after one. They spent the afternoon doing what they always did: playing with the other kids in the neighborhood, fishing, and splashing around. At about three, James was ready to go home, but Chris stayed. There was still time to play, so he sat at the edge of the riverbank, throughout his line, and waited for a fish to bite. That's where he was when around 4 p.m., a man walked over. He had dark hair, a mustache.
And he was wearing a turquoise tank top and blue jean cut off shorts. He puffed on a cigarette as he talked to the boys on the dock. He mentioned he grew up in Aroma Park, that he had family there, and was looking to fish. But when the boys glanced at his tackle box, they noticed the lures were far too large for river fishing. Chris asked him why he had the wrong lures.
And the man told everyone that he had just come from Florida, so his lures were all for saltwater fishing in the ocean. But he'd make do. He had a pole, he had a tackle box, and on his hip he had a fillet knife. So the boys assumed he was just there to fish, like he said.
But around four o'clock, Christopher and the man were seen walking along the path towards the parking lot. Christopher leaned his bike against a nearby tree and walked over to the car, where he and the man talked for a few minutes. Then Christopher jogged down to the water's edge and washed the mud from his shoes.
Some of the other boys who were still down on the dock tried to get Chris to play for a little longer, but he shook his head. He had to be home soon. One of the boys told him he still had time to play, but Chris was resolute. He had to go. Nearby in the parking lot, the strange man's car moved slowly.
Circling. It pulled towards the exit, heading in the direction of Harry's bait shop. At the same time, Christopher got on his bicycle. He rode out of the parking lot quickly, in the same direction as the car. The other boys watched him go, and just down the road at home, Nico waited for Chris to pull into the driveway. Five o'clock came and went. Miga still waited. She checked the time. 5 05, 515, 520. By 522, she felt a surge of annoyance. Chris knew better than to be late.
In fact, just a week prior, when he had lost track of time and come home after dinner, his mother made him sit down and write a list of all of the reasons she wanted him home on time. In Moms of the Missing by Stephen Hugh, she stated, quote, I never told this before, but his answer shocked me.
He wrote on the paper it was important because if he was not home on time, I might worry that someone had taken him. It was almost like he knew what was going to happen, like he read the future and foresaw his own fate. End quote.
¶ The Second Search, Timothy Buss Identified
As five twenty-two turned to five thirty, and five thirty crept towards six. Mika's frustration turned to fear. Eventually, as night fell, she drove down to the boat launch and walked along the stretch of the river, a flashlight guiding her way. Some of Chris's friends were still there. She asked them one by one where her son was. Each kid responded that he had left to go home around 4 30.
Now, by chance, a police officer happened to be in the area. When he saw Amika calling out Chris's name, he approached her and asked what was wrong. She blurted out that her son was missing, and immediately the officer called for backup. Within minutes, the boat launch was transformed. Search teams, canines, police cars, fire departments from Aroma Park and Canake.
There were boats going into the water, volunteer citizens showing up to help. But at first, the officers were fairly resolute in what they believed had happened.
The speed of that river we have a lot of drownings, a lot of people falling and disappearing that river, so that makes it dangerous and it's
So A couple of times that night Mika heard searchers asking around, did they find a body? She lost it each time. There's not going to be a body, she told them. They're going to find Christopher. She couldn't let herself think otherwise. She couldn't let herself feel that he wasn't coming home.
But as searches of the river continued and detectives spoke with witnesses, that worry was only further cemented. Two boys said that there had been a man at the dock that day. He had dark hair and a mustache, and he had been talking with Christopher. According to the other kids, when Christopher left the boat launch, the man had gone with him. But nobody had seen either of them or Christopher's belongings since.
However, the next morning, August 8th, the first few pieces of physical evidence came to the forefront. While looking near the Kankaki River, searchers found a shoe floating near the boat launch. They pulled it from the water carefully, and it only took Nika's seconds to identify it as one of Christopher's Chicago Blackhawks high tops. Later that same day, searchers found his bicycle thrown into the brush of a wooded area on the opposite side of the boat launch.
Chris had no reason to go over there, and it was clear to detectives that someone had carried it there and left it, trying to hide it. All the signs were pointing to something much more sinister than a drowning. In Moms of the Missing, Mika disclosed, I kept saying to myself that this did not mean he wasn't okay. They found his bike, not him. I forced myself to believe he was coming home.
Mika didn't know what to do. She didn't know who to call or what came next or how any of this was supposed to work. The days blurred together. She struggled to eat. People constantly bombarded her with questions she didn't know the answer to, and told her information she didn't want to hear. Desperate for some solace, she reached out to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She was looking for anyone who had been through this before, anyone who could tell her what to do next.
Meanwhile, investigators worked with witnesses who had been at the boat launch to put together a composite sketch of the dark-haired man with the mustache. Who had been seen with Christopher? Copies of that sketch went everywhere, to neighboring law enforcement agencies, to the local media, and into the hands of anyone who might recognize the face.
One of those people was Tara Huffman's older brother Richard. He was still living in nearby Bradley at the time. And when he saw the sketch in the newspaper, his world collapsed for the second time.
Uh it was about the day after Christopher disappeared when there was a police composite in the newspaper. And instantly when I seen the picture I s I knew it was Tim
bus. Richard had no idea that Timothy was still in the area. No one did. The realization that he was back in their community and may have committed yet another crime was absolutely crushing. As the days passed, it became clear that Richard wasn't the only one who believed Timothy Buss was the man in the sketch.
Witnesses started coming forward. A man named Charles Henry had been driving home from work on august seventh when he noticed a car parked along the road near the river. A man was standing behind it, the trunk open. As Henry drove past, the man turned and the two of them made eye contact. Charles said the man had a fillet knife and a leather case protruding from his back pocket. When the composite came out, Charles recognized the face immediately. He contacted the police.
Another witness came forward. A woman named Bobby Fancher had been driving to work on Route 113 at twelve forty-five in the morning on August 7th when she noticed a car pull out from a dirt road just west of Hunting Area 7 in Kankaki State Park. She saw the same car at the same location the following evening at nine twenty five PM. The driver had a mustache. When she contacted police, she identified it as Timothy's car.
And the damning evidence just kept coming. A neighbor of Timothy's, Candace Atkins, had seen his car at the apartment complex around one o'clock on august seventh, the afternoon Christopher disappeared. But by four and six that evening, it was gone. The following day on August 8th, Candace watched him sit in his car for a long stretch, completely still, staring at nothing, agitated, telling people to be quiet, to leave him alone. He had never acted that way before.
¶ Timothy Apprehended: More Damning Evidence
On August 9th, investigators went to Timothy's father's house in Aroma Park. David Buss was shocked to see them. He told them Timothy was living with his brother and Joliet. Officers put the apartment under surveillance, but by the time they got there, Timothy was gone. That night, 30 minutes north in the town of Braidwood, a front desk clerk at BMP Motel stood in front of Timothy Butt. She recognized him. She had seen his face in the composite sketch.
But as he bought a room for the night, he told her a completely different name, Jem Benton. Regardless, she handed over his room key and as soon as he walked back out into the night, she wrote down his license plate number. When she was sure he was out of earshot, she called the police to tell them that she thought the man from the sketch was in her hotel. They ran the plate number and confirmed her suspicions. The car was registered to none other than Timothy Buck.
He was trying to hide. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't going to work. Officers got into position. They waited through the night, watching to make sure Timothy didn't try to flee again. At eight o'clock the following morning, he walked out of his room. The officers were ready. After a long night of waiting,
They were on the cusp of getting something out of Timothy. But what they weren't expecting was just how much evidence Timothy gave them. On his way to the car he stopped at a dumpster near the entrance and carelessly dropped something in. Then he got in his car and he left.
While one pair of officers discreetly followed him in their unmarked car, another pair approached the dumpster, and there, resting in the trash, was a pair of boots soaking wet and covered in blood. The boots were taken into evidence. Meanwhile, Timothy drove to a park in Wilmington, along the Kankiki River, the same river where Christopher Meyer had spent the last afternoon of his life.
Three officers followed. They watched, as Timothy spoke to an elderly man who was fishing. But just as he did, an officer approached Timothy and announced himself. He said he would like to speak with him. Timothy was visibly nervous. He couldn't stand still. His eyes moved anywhere except towards the officer in front of him. When one of the officers lifted a camera, Timothy turned away from it and raised his hands to block his face.
He agreed to go with them to the station, and just hours after arriving, Timothy signed a form, consenting to the search of his vehicle. When investigators opened the trunk of his 1986 Chevy Spectrum, they found some of what they were looking for. They found some jumper cables with traces of blood. There was more blood on the dent puller. The carpet soaked through to the padding underneath.
On the floor of the back seat there was a hammer. The mud on the claw had dried and crusted over, but they still didn't have a body. And until they ran some tests, they had no choice but to let Timothy go while they scrambled to get warrants for his arrest.
¶ Mika Discovers Timothy's Horrific Past
Around the same time, word reached Mika's house. The house had been full all week, neighbors, friends, people stopping by to sit with her, to help with the phones, or to just be there with her. Someone from her work came in and said it out loud. Oh my God, they have Timothy Buss in custody. The room went quiet. Mika looked around. Nobody would look her in the eye. She asked who Timothy Buss was. Nobody answered. She asked again and again. Still, nothing.
Everyone in the county knew who Timothy was. They had seen the coverage. They had been there when Tara's mangled body was found, and with his name in the mega. It was clear to them what had happened to Christopher, and no one could bring themselves to speak. Mika was furious. She left the house. She had a cell phone, a loner from the phone company, one of several things people had offered her during that week, and with it, she crossed the street and walked into the woods to call her mother.
Nobody will tell me who Timothy Bossett Somebody just said they have him in custody, and nobody in that house will tell me anything.
Her mother gasped. She tried to put Mika off. Don't worry about it right now, she said, but Mika kept pushing. And finally, her mother told her exactly who Timothy Buss was. and what he had done fourteen years earlier. just down the road. On August 10th, Timothy was charged with aggravated kidnapping. Because Christopher's body hadn't been found yet, it was the only charge they could file against him. The judge ordered him held without bond while the public continued to scan the forest
¶ Christopher's Gruesome Discovery
streams, and parks, desperate for answers. Then, finally, they got them. On Saturday, August 12th, pieces of Christopher's clothing turned up around the gravel parking lot in the Kankaki State Park. On a path leading from the parking lot, searchers found a piece of his t-shirt on the ground. His Ninja Turtle underwear was hanging in a nearby bush.
Now detectives had an area to search. Day after day they combed through brush, trees, and along the riversides. But it wasn't until Tuesday, August 15th, that they found what they had come for. At hunting area 10, they found a single blonde hare. They kept going. Through hunting area 9, 8. And at hunting area 7, they parked and made their way on foot through a gap in the dense brush. And then it hit them. The smell.
They moved deeper into the woods until they reached a sheet of plywood lying on the ground. Beneath it, in a shallow grave no more than eight inches deep, was the body of a young boy. The tips of his shoes broke the surface of the dirt above him. He had been sliced four times across the shoulder, stabbed twenty-eight times in the back, and twenty times in the chest and abdomen. It was clear that he hadn't gone down without a fight.
A large contusion to his jaw led detectives to believe that when stabbing didn't knock Chris down, the killer changed tactics and hit him with a blunt object, knocking him unconscious. Then the killer took things further. With the same knife he had used to stab Christopher nearly forty times, he cut off his penis. It was a brutal, horrific sight. And somehow, detectives had to tell his mother what they had found.
¶ Grieving for Christopher: A Symbol of Hope
Several miles away, Mika was startled by her doorbell ringing. In recent days, friends and family had been floating in and out. Something about the formality, though, of the ringing bell set her on edge. When she opened the door and saw a detective standing there, her stomach dropped.
My doorbell rang. And when I looked at the detective And she came in and said a child's body had been found, but they couldn't identify that it was Chris. And I looked right at her and I said, But there's no other children missing.
The loss was all-consuming. Two weeks after Christopher was found, his family gathered at the Aroma Park Methodist Church to say goodbye. People who had never met Christopher sent flowers. They surrounded a royal blue casket at the front of the church. Christopher's grandfather stood up and spoke. He asked the people in that church not to carry anger with them over what had happened to his grandson. He wanted to see the good of the community, the love.
And as the procession made its way around town, you got to see glimpses of it. Cars pulled over to the side of the road, construction workers who stopped their work. They took their heart hats off and held them over their hearts as the family passed by. As the young pallbearer struggled to carry his casket, a monarch butterfly was circling nearby. It landed on the shoulder of Peg Skyberg, the family friend Christopher had drawn the butterfly for when he learned how much she loved them.
A mourner standing nearby said quietly that Christopher was there with them. For weeks, butterflies seemed drawn to Christopher's grave in Aroma Park, Illinois. In Moms of the Missing, Mika spoke about an incident about a week after the funeral. She sat at her son's grave and a butterfly landed on her shoulder. She tried to brush it off, but the butterfly wouldn't move.
She stated, I ended up stroking it, and when I went back to my car, it followed me. It was like Christopher saying, Hey mom, it's all okay. Today I can still go up to a butterfly, put my fingers under it, and it will just set me. I believe missing children send signs to their parents. I believe that children are much closer to angels than we are as adults.
¶ Timothy's Second Trial, Death Sentence
People in the community wanted justice. Following Chris's discovery and burial, additional charges were filed for Timothy Buss. He was now facing charges of first degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated unlawful restraint, which made him eligible for the death penalty. At his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty. But when his trial began on june thirteenth, nineteen ninety six, that plea was put to the test.
DNA analysis of blood, found in the trunk of Timothy's car, determined that a person with that profile would occur in the population only one out of four hundred and nineteen million. A footprint found near where Chris's body had been located matched the right boot Timothy had dropped in the motel dumpster. Same pattern and same size. The soil caked on the hammer found in his back seat was consistent with the soil at the burial site.
Forensic entomologists examined the insects recovered from Chris's body, and they determined that he had died before sunset on august seventh. The same afternoon, he rode his bike down to the river. The same night, people saw Timothy Buss speaking with Chris in that very area.
The defense struggled to counter any of the evidence. Timothy's father testified on his behalf, and so did his grandmother. Defense experts took the stand and told the jury about learning disabilities and a defect in his frontal lobe. They argued that it explained his decisions and his actions, but no one was buying it. The jury went out to deliberate, and during those hours they sent a request back. They wanted to see photographs of the crime scene.
Almost four hours after closing arguments, they filed back into the courtroom, and Timothy Buss stood up. The judge then read the verdict: guilty on all three counts. And after that, Timothy Buss was sentenced to death. Christopher's family felt a wave of relief when the verdict was read, and they weren't alone.
Terasu Huffman's siblings and parents sat alongside them, comforting them. Barbara Huffman later told the courier, Timothy Buss never should have gotten out in the first place. Christopher should still be living. For Mika, Barbara had been a person to lean on, and as Timothy was sentenced to death, it felt like justice for both of their children. Yet, on the other side of the aisle for Timothy's family, it was a betrayal.
¶ Advocacy and Lasting Legacy
and, allegedly, they decided to take it out on Mika.
Within the first year after the trial, Mika received a letter. It wasn't signed, but she knew exactly who it was from. Timothy's grandmother always called him Timmy. No one else did. The minute Mika saw him referred to Timmy in the letter, Mika knew exactly who had written it.
In the letter, the person blamed Mika for what had happened to Christopher. She wrote that Mika should have known what Timothy was capable of, and that she never should have let her son go down to that river in the first place. But Mika had never even heard of Timothy Buss before Christopher disappeared, but the letter left a mark. The question of whether she should have done something differently, whether she could have stopped it.
He had been going to that boat launch all summer, every day, with all of the other kids in the neighborhood. The guilt wasn't hers to carry, and yet she did something with it. Mika Moulton became an advocate for children's safety. She connected with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the same organization she had reached out to in the desperate days after Christopher disappeared.
Through the National Center, she became a part of a program called Team Hope. Team Hope pairs parents who have lived through the disappearance or exploitation of a child with families who are going through it right now. Mika knows what those first days feel like. Not knowing what to do or who to trust or how to hold yourself together, she knows what it's like to sit in a courtroom and listen to the details of what happened to your child and not be able to show a single emotion.
She's been trained to help other families navigate, but she once had to navigate alone. And she isn't the only one in her family doing this incredible work. Mika's son Cameron, who was just two years old when Christopher went missing, now works as an advocate for children, teaching parents and kids how to protect themselves. On the twenty first anniversary of his brother's passing, he posted this on Facebook.
Teaching communities how to protect themselves, stay safe, and telling them that they can be survivors too has become a passion of mine. The spark that ignites in people's eyes when they realize they're able to stay safe never dulls. Twenty-one years ago today, my path was paved in a different way than others, but I still walk it, knowing that others can be helped by a tragedy that forever changed the perspective and life of our family.
Now, on this same day, I walk into a conference in Dallas dedicated to child safety and well-being. Funny how this works, isn't it? Everything happens for a reason. So, thank you, Chris, for allowing myself and my family to do so much and help so many, to meet phenomenal people and create fantastic memories. Thank you for watching over us and keeping us safe. But most of all, thank you for being my brother.
¶ The Tragic Cost of Second Chances
Today, Timothy Buss remains behind bars at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. In the year 2000, the governor of Illinois halted all executions in the state. As a result, Timothy Buss's death sentence was commuted. Now, he's serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. But even though there was justice here, it feels very unfair.
At just 13 years old, Timothy Buss took the life of a vibrant five-year-old girl, Terasue Huffman. A girl who loved animals, who loved to play outside, and loved her family more than anything. And despite taking her life, Timothy was still given another chance, and he used that chance to take the life of another young child.
For Chris's family, the pain is still unimaginable. Every time Mika visits her son's grave, she's reminded that she's not far from the Kanaki River, where he spent his last summer. He should have finished fifth grade. He should have gone to middle school and high school. He should have kept looking out for his brother James the way he always did. Right there beside him whenever James needed him. Like Tara, he should have grown up and built a life.
Instead, he was 10 years old, and he rode his blue bicycle down to the river on a warm August afternoon, and he never came back home. His mom Mika later said, quote, God loaned me ten and a half years of twinkling blue eyes, dimples, and joy. It's now time to lift up Chris and ask God to use this child as our special angel.
¶ Podcast Conclusion and Support
In honor of Chris and Terra, we will be making a donation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an organization dedicated to finding missing children, reducing child sexual exploitation, and supporting the families affected by these crimes.
Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Murder in America. We have a really big series coming in June, end of May that we are excited to dive into with you guys. But we just want to thank everybody for listening. And we did have some issues recently with ad placement that is totally out of Courtney and I's hands. It has to do with our parent company and the hosting platform. So
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