Christopher H. Bridgeman, Jr. was 33 and a country singer with local airplay when he vanished from Thurston County, Washington in the winter of 1963, often recorded as January 1. He was last seen at a Martin Way motel in Olympia during a custody visit with his six-year-old son. Bridgeman told the child he was going to visit his father and left the boy alone in the room; he never returned. Two days later the motel owner found the child and took him to a relative’s home.

For many years the family believed he had left to pursue music, but in 2004 a cousin told the family a different story: that Bridgeman’s father, Christopher Bridgeman, Sr., had killed him and buried him in the elder man’s basement. The son’s driver’s license was later found among the father’s possessions after the father died in 1993. A Thurston County Sheriff’s Office search of the Frederick Street South house turned up only animal bones, and the house’s condition prevented a more thorough search. The case is unsolved and now classified as a cold case.

Key questions remain about what happened after he left that motel room: did he leave voluntarily, assume a new identity, or meet with foul play involving his father or someone else? Anyone with memories of Christopher, the motel, or the Frederick Street South address is asked to come forward.