Mark Himebaugh.Photo:Courtesy Himebaugh Family
Courtesy Himebaugh Family
But now, investigators tellPeople Magazine Investigatesthat new developments in AI could help them finally crack the case. The new episode – titled “Where Is Mark Himebaugh” – airs on Investigation Discovery and streams on Max Monday, July 24, on ID at 9/8c. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
There have been promising leads before: a firefighter recovered one of Mark’s hand-me-down LA Gear sneakers on the beach.
“I got excited,” his mother, Maureen Himebaugh, tells PEOPLE, saying she thought to herself, “He’s got to be out there, there’s his sneaker.”
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But the lead ran dry.
Police also worked through the theory that Thomas Butcavage, Jr., 57 and of Pennsylvania, had kidnapped Mark. Butcavage, who was sentenced to 18 to 36 years in prison after being convicted of sexually assaulting young boys, resembles a sketch of the man witnesses saw chatting with Mark the day he disappeared. And a male sex worker also told police that Butcavage had shown him a video of a little boy that looked like Mark. (Butcavage claims he had nothing to do with Mark’s disappearance and police say that “nothing concrete” connects him to the case.)
Police released this age progression photograph of Mark Himebaugh in 2020.National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Much has changed since Mark’s 1991 disappearance. If still alive, he would not resemble the freckled red-headed boy that begged his mom to let him leave their Del Haven home that fateful fall day to see about a brush fire. But advances in technology could help investigators fill in those gaps. In 2020 police shared with the media an age-progression photo of what Mark would look like around the age of 40. Investigators are also using AI to comb back through the evidence already collected, looking for patterns that might, decades later, finally lead them to an answer about what happened to Mark.
Shortly after her son’s disappearance, Maureen told a local outlet that she was waiting for her son to come home. Now, all these years later: “I’m still waiting,” Maureen says. “And hoping that I’ll get closure.”
People Magazine Investigates: Where Is Mark Himebaugh?airs on Investigation Discovery and streams on Max Monday, July 24, on ID at 9/8c.
source: people.com
