Jamie Martin Thornton was a toddler at a family birthday on McKnight Street in Pittsburgh on October 4, 1986. Nearly two years old at the time, he was playing with his five-year-old cousin on a retaining wall about twelve feet above Chartier’s Creek when he fell into the swollen, fast-moving water. Witnesses tried to rescue him but he was swept away and vanished from sight.

Authorities at the time believed Jamie had drowned, and searches were conducted in the creek and the Ohio River, but his body was never recovered. Years later an unconfirmed report suggested he might be alive in New Jersey. In 2011 his mother provided a DNA sample to Pittsburgh police as part of a project seeking to match missing persons to recovered remains.

Jamie had brown hair and brown eyes, a birthmark on his right thigh, and was last seen wearing a green tank top, blue shorts, and blue tennis shoes. Does anyone have verifiable information about Jamie’s fate or that unconfirmed New Jersey lead?