Clinton Clint Washburn was last seen on March 15, 2003, in Peoria, Illinois. He was 29 at the time, a Kewanee High School graduate and an Army veteran who had served in Afghanistan. The last in-person contact with family was a winter 2002 meeting at a Peoria truck stop, described by his mother Margi as showing him troubled and nervous; the final verbal contact was a nearly hourlong phone call in 2003.

A few months after that call, a typed letter postmarked from Indiana arrived at his parents’ home. The letter, purportedly from Clint, said he had met a wealthy woman, intended to take her name, and warned the family not to try to find him because he would never be located. His parents kept his phone number and address for years, hoping he would return. After his father died in 2018, his mother began trying to report him missing; a report was ultimately filed in 2021. Law enforcement later pursued leads including a mistaken identification in Arizona, and the case remains an active missing person investigation.