How Did Missing Three-Year-Old Elijah Vue’s DNA End Up in a Suitcase at a Thrift Store?

Surveillance cameras in Two Rivers, Wisconsin captured Jesse Vang pulling up to the donation door of a St. Vincent de Paul store on February 19, 2024 and dropping off a dark-colored suitcase. He’d borrowed a neighbor’s Nissan Altima. He’d left his phone at home playing a Netflix movie. When investigators tracked down and tested that suitcase, the Wisconsin State Crime Lab found one DNA profile inside. It was Elijah Vue’s.

The next morning, Vang reported the three-year-old missing. He told police the boy walked off during a nap. That story was already being coordinated — Elijah’s mother Katrina Baur sent Vang a message within sixty seconds of the 911 call telling him what to say. She deleted it. Investigators found it anyway. What unfolded over the next seven months was one of the largest searches in recent Wisconsin history. FBI agents, state investigators, community volunteers numbering in the hundreds. They searched landfills, rivers, storm drains, and private property. A $40,000 reward went unclaimed for months.

A hunter found Elijah’s remains in September 2024, three miles from Vang’s apartment, in a wooded area that had been searched before. Forensic analysis revealed injuries that occurred weeks before the child died. Both Vang and Baur face felony charges. Both have pleaded not guilty. Tony Brueski walks through the investigative timeline — the phone data, the surveillance footage, the suitcase, the deleted messages, and the seven-month search that ended in a forest three miles from where it started.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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