Account
Apr 15, 2010
Oct 22, 2021
James
Howell
64
9
53 inches
79 lbs
White / Caucasian
Male
In the small city of Sterling, Illinois, a lingering sadness marks the passage of time, a story that began on a spring afternoon in 1969. Nine-year-old James "Jimmy" Howell, a third-grader known for his love of animals, found an injured pigeon and, with the simple compassion of a child, decided to care for it. On May 28th, he and his sister, Debra, were in the front yard of their home on West 13th Street, gathering wood to build a cage for the bird. Debra went inside for just a moment to get a hammer and nails. When she came back out, Jimmy was gone. The pieces of wood they had collected were scattered in the street, an unsettling sign that something was wrong. At the time of his disappearance, Jimmy was wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes. Jimmy's childhood had been marked by instability. Following his parents' divorce in the early 1960s, he and his siblings spent time in an orphanage and foster homes before reuniting with their mother and stepfather in 1968. Despite these challenges, those who knew him described a boy who was afraid of the dark and unlikely to run away. His mother was firm in her belief that he would have packed a bag and taken his beloved dog if he had planned to leave. In the immediate aftermath of his vanishing, a massive search effort was launched. Four hundred people, including police and local volunteers, scoured the surrounding areas, including wooded areas, gravel pits, and the banks of the Elkhorn Creek and Rock River, but found no trace of the young boy. Over the years, a few strange and unsettling events have been connected to the case. Shortly after Jimmy disappeared, his dog, who would faithfully follow him to and from school, also vanished. About a year later, a dark car reportedly followed his sister Debra and a friend until her mother called out to them. In 1975, a neighbor of Debra's received a mysterious phone call from someone claiming to be Jimmy, who said he would be in town, but no one ever arrived. Various unconfirmed sightings of Jimmy were reported in the days and weeks after he went missing, but none could be verified. Decades later, in 1998, Jimmy's family members all underwent and passed polygraph examinations, officially clearing them of any suspicion. The case of James Howell remains the oldest active missing child case in the state of Illinois, a haunting reminder of a young boy who disappeared from his front yard without a trace. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance remain unclear, leaving his surviving family with decades of unanswered questions.
May 28, 1969
Sterling
Illinois
Whiteside County
61081
26633
Sterling Police Department
Sterling
Illinois
,
M13B4888
1969-05-28
Sterling Police Department
Brown
Brown
Brown
05/23/2026
