State police in North Central Pennsylvania said Sunday they are confident they are getting closer to solving the cold case of a toddler missing since the 1980s, according to newspaper reports from across the region.
Corey James Edkin was 2 years old when he vanished from a home in White Deer in Union County on Oct. 13, 1986. He’d last been seen in his mother’s bed shortly after midnight, and he was gone a half hour later.
Trooper Brian Watkins cited “significant advances” in the case, according to the Daily Item, and said “the individuals who caused this tragedy will be brought to justice.”
According to his page on the Charley Project, a clearinghouse for missing persons information, Edkin’s mother, Debbie Mowery, left the home shortly after midnight to pick up a pizza. In the home at the time was a roommate, Alberta Sones, her two children, and Mowery’s daughter.
Police said investigators don’t think Edkin walked away from the home, nor do they think he was abducted by a stranger, according to the Daily Item. Watkins said tips from the public and advances in forensic technology have helped investigators stitch together what might have happened that night.
James Edkin, the child’s father, told PennLive that investigators told him an arrest could be coming.
“I think of him every day,” he told PennLive. “Thank goodness for forensic advances.”
He told the outlet in 2015 that he thinks his son is alive but noted “the worst is not knowing.”
Mowery, in the same article, said she hopes her son is safe.
“I’d love to find him,” she said, “but I don’t want to destroy his life.”
