Disappearance of LeeAnna Warner

On June 14, 2003, LeeAnna Warner, a five‑year‑old girl from Chisholm, Minnesota, disappeared while walking home from a friend's house. She was last seen between 5:00 and 5:15 p.m. on Southwest Second or Third Street, and has not been found. Although no definitive evidence of an abduction has been uncovered, investigators consider kidnapping the most likely explanation, arguing that she would likely have been located had she simply wandered off.

Over the years, police have received more than 1,700 leads, but none have produced a viable suspect. As of 2026, LeeAnna's case remains unsolved.

Background

The Warner family includes Tiffany Kaelin Whittaker, who preferred to go by Kaelin Whittaker, Christopher Warner, and their daughter LeeAnna Warner.

LeeAnna's parents had both previously been divorced from other partners. Christopher and Kaelin met and moved in with one another towards the end of 1996, and Kaelin gave birth to LeeAnna on January 21, 1998. The Warners had only moved to Chisholm a few months prior to LeeAnna's disappearance.

Disappearance

On June 14, 2003, LeeAnna was last seen walking barefoot home from her friend's house, which was approximately a block and a half away from her own home. Parents and children from the surrounding suburbs gathered together to search for LeeAnna.

By 9:00 p.m., despite the extensive search party, there had still been no sighting of LeeAnna. It was at this stage that Kaelin and Chris reported their daughter missing to the local police.

The last thing that LeeAnna was seen wearing was a sleeveless blue denim dress (some sources state a denim shirt) with a belt, orange underwear, a flower earring with a red garnet in her right ear, and no shoes or socks.

They checked garages, barns, sheds and abandoned iron ore mines in the hopes that LeeAnna had simply wandered off and gotten lost.

In 2025, Chisholm Police Chief James Vukad reported that Warner's case remains open, active, and a top priority for the department, saying, "Our team continues to investigate all credible leads, including those made possible through advanced DNA profiling techniques [...] While we have not had a major breakthrough to date, our efforts have never wavered and we remain hopeful that one day we will find the answers we’ve been searching for."

Suspects and theories There are a number of suspects and theories associated with what happened to LeeAnna Warner. However, to this date none of them have been proven true.

Kaelin Whittaker, Christopher Warner and Family Kaelin and Christopher were never considered suspects and they were not required to take lie detector tests. However, Christopher had been having domestic problems with his ex-wife and had even sought out a restraining order on her. He also claimed that she had made threats towards Kaelin and LeeAnna.

Despite this information, authorities felt that Christopher's previous problems with his ex-wife were not connected to his daughter's disappearance.

Years after LeeAnna's disappearance, Kaelin and Christopher moved away from Chisholm to try and start fresh, claiming the town no longer felt safe, or like home, to them.

Matthew James Curtis One of the main suspects that was identified as potentially having a role in LeeAnna's disappearance was a man by the name of Matthew James Curtis, who was aged 24 at the time. In August 2003, Curtis was arrested for possession of child pornography. He was interrogated a number of times by the police about whether or not he had anything to do with LeeAnna's case. Authorities claim that Curtis suffocated himself with a plastic bag. The investigation into Curtis's death was closed and officially ruled a suicide.

A week prior to her disappearance, LeeAnna packed a suitcase with all her favorite things and told her parents that she wanted to go live at her new family's house. They also found her sleeping in her closet one night, claiming that she was afraid that monsters outside her window were going to get her.

Investigators looked into this and determined that there was no evidence to indicate that anyone had used toys to lure LeeAnna away from her family. The information was dismissed.

Unidentified suspects At the time of LeeAnna's disappearance, numerous witnesses recall seeing a man in his mid-thirties walking around the neighborhood. He was described as being approximately tall and around . He allegedly had a dark tattoo of a star or a sun on his right arm. This man has not been identified.

Around the same time, witnesses identified a maroon and blue Cadillac that was driven by an African-American man who appeared to be in his twenties or thirties and had a bald or shaven head. There were also accounts of an unfamiliar older-model rusty brown pickup truck that was driven by a Caucasian man with black curly hair.

None of these men have been identified and it remains unclear whether any of them had anything to do with LeeAnna's disappearance.

Media attention LeeAnna's disappearance received local media attention, particularly from Chisholm and the surrounding areas. The case was aired on America's Most Wanted in July of that year. In recent years, People Magazine had attempted to investigate the disappearance of the young girl.

Podcast True Crime Garage released a two-part series on LeeAnna's disappearance in August 2021. Part one details the circumstances of LeeAnna's disappearance and part two discusses possible suspects.