Account
Jul 14, 2014
Oct 06, 2022
John
Baham
55
22
68 inches
190 lbs
White / Caucasian
Male
In the final days before Christmas in 1990, John Michael Baham, a 21-year-old known to friends and family as Michael, returned to his hometown of Oakdale, Louisiana. He had been working in Texas but came home to celebrate the holidays with his parents and younger siblings. The evening of December 23rd was cold, with temperatures dropping to 17 degrees. Michael made plans to meet a friend at a local car wash. On his way, around 7:30 p.m., he stopped at the Bayou Store before driving off. He never arrived at the car wash, which was only a short distance away. Later that night, at about 9:30 p.m., a witness saw Michael's pickup truck near the Calcasieu River Bridge on Highway 10; the witness saw the truck's lights go out, plunging the area into darkness. It was the last time anything connected to Michael was reported that night. The following morning, Michael's father, worried for his son, began to search. He discovered Michael's pickup truck parked on a dirt road underneath the Calcasieu River Bridge. The scene was quiet and perplexing; the keys were still in the ignition, but the truck's battery was dead. Inside the cab lay Michael's coat and his shotgun, yet there was no sign of Michael himself or any indication of a struggle. The fact that he had left his coat behind on such a bitterly cold night was deeply concerning to his family, who insisted he was not the type of person to leave without a word, especially during the holidays. The investigation also revealed that Michael had about $1,500 in cash on him after recently cashing a paycheck, and he left behind nearly $4,000 in his bank account. In the years that followed, the search for answers in Michael Baham's disappearance has been met with frustrating dead ends. Shortly after the truck was found, police questioned two men who were sleeping in a car nearby, but they claimed to have seen nothing. The case grew cold until 1998, when a jail inmate implicated one of those men, Paul Kilgore, in Michael's murder. The inmate led authorities to a site known as Dead Man's Lake, claiming Michael's body was buried there, but an excavation of the area yielded nothing. Based on the inmate's testimony, Kilgore was arrested for murder and robbery, but a jury ultimately found there was insufficient evidence to indict him, and he was released. Decades have now passed, and the case of John Michael Baham remains unsolved. His family is left without closure, holding onto the memory of the young man who came home for Christmas and vanished into the cold Louisiana night, leaving behind only his truck and a profound, unanswered mystery.
Dec 23, 1991
Calcasieu River
Louisiana
Allen Parish
15502
Allen Parish Sheriff's Office
Oberlin
Louisiana
Allen Parish
70655
Greg Quirk
Chief of Investigations
7340 LA-26, Oberlin, LA 70655, Louisiana
3376394353
County
Law Enforcement
910018
Allen Parish Sheriff's Office
Black
Blue
Blue
05/29/2026
