On the evening of November 11, 1990, 14-year-old Mark Anthony McLaughlin left his home in Van Buren, Arkansas, to walk to a nearby convenience store and never returned. His mother reported him missing shortly after midnight. At first light the next day a fisherman found his body in Leard Pond on private land near Pocola, Oklahoma. Authorities determined he had been shot in the back; the killer later described marching the boy toward the water and firing a small-caliber pistol.

Detectives noted a striking similarity to the February 1987 death of 15-year-old William Von Eric Domer, whose body had also been recovered from Leard Pond after apparently being beaten and shot. Less than a month after McLaughlin vanished, a recent high-school graduate, Ross Allen Ferguson, survived an abduction and led police to 50-year-old George Kent Wallace. Wallace admitted stopping McLaughlin by impersonating an officer, binding him with handcuffs and leg irons, beating him with a wooden plunger handle, driving him to Leard Pond, shooting him in the back, and dumping the body in the water. Wallace later pleaded guilty in LeFlore County to the murders of McLaughlin and Domer.

Does anyone have information about Mark’s last known movements in Van Buren or about activity along the border roads that night?