Joshua Mahaffey was 15 when he climbed out of his bedroom window in Centralia, Illinois, on the evening of October 12, 1991, after an argument with his mother and did not return. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and a scar on his left cheek from a dog bite. Joshua was reported missing by his mother on November 12, a month after he was last seen.

Witness reports place Joshua at the Fairview Shopping Center and at a local spot known as Devil’s Playground before he vanished. Some accounts say he left the shopping center in a blue Ford Maverick with Terry Martin, Martin’s girlfriend, and another teenage boy; hours later two occupants returned in the car, now splattered with mud, without Joshua.

A 1996 witness, Tonya L. Collins, later claimed to have seen Joshua tortured and killed at Devil’s Playground; she passed a 1996 polygraph, reportedly failed a 2008 polygraph, and under hypnosis in 2008 led investigators to a suspected burial site where excavation found no evidence. Authorities say they believe Joshua is likely deceased, but the circumstances after he left his home remain unsolved. Did anyone in Centralia at the time ever see Joshua with the blue Ford Maverick or remember activity around Devil’s Playground that autumn of 1991?