Michael Wayne Dunahee (born May 12, 1986)[1] is a missing child from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, who disappeared when he was four years old and has never been found.
He disappeared from the playground at Blanshard Park Elementary School, also known as the Blanshard Street Playground, in Victoria, British Columbia on March 24, 1991. Michael was last seen around 12:30 p.m. playing at the school playground as his mother, Crystal Dunahee, was participating in a female football practice to which his father was a spectator. Michael disappeared meters from his parents, but no witnesses to Michael’s disappearance have ever been identified.
Michael’s disappearance spawned one of the largest police investigations in Canadian history and to date, over 11,000 tips have been received by police. The case was a major story for many years and was reported across Canada and the United States. Despite a large number of tips and a $100,000 reward, police still do not have any solid leads in the case.[2]
At that time, we lived at the corner of Quadra and Hillside, less than 1,000 feet away from that playground. It was a Sunday and I remember hearing the news from a neighbor on the street that afternoon. There was certainly a lot of police in the area that day. One thing I have always thought it was odd that no one knocked on our apartment door to ask us if we had seen or heard anything. The sports field was kind of in the opposite direction we would typically walk on the weekend. There was a small commercial area just east of our apartment building that we would walk to in order to get stuff. The sports field was in the opposite direction.
Victoria was and I’m pretty sure still is a sleepy little town. In those days it was called the town of the newlyweds and the nearly deads. At the time of his disappearance, we were newly expecting and the city by-law was adult-only buildings. So, we needed to move that fall into a newly constructed townhouse unit on the west side of town that welcomed children. In all it was a good move but talk about living in the stone ages. Smokers, dogs and cats are OK but babies be gone. I understand that by-law was changed. Good thing.
One weekend the Michael Dunahee case came to my hotel. At the time I was the assistant controller of a beautiful hotel built on reclaimed land on the inner harbor. The hotel was opened in 1908 and named after Queen Victoria who was the Empress of India.
The hotel has a definite Indian flair, and great curry lounge called the Bengal Lounge. The story goes that the hotel is built on wooden piles were driven into what was once the bay. These piles are made of Indian gumwood which is water resistant, so the story goes. At very high tide or when there is a storm, the “basement” under the hotel is said to flood with seawater.
Now, I had been in the basement as is the case with all of the hotels I have worked in. I took a keen sense of adventure and loved exploring the basements and attics and almost everything in between. The rumor at the hotel was a scary scene from the film The Changeling was filmed in the basement.
Well, the basement was just supporting piles of Indian gumwood, dirt floor and piles of dirt. Lighting was extremely limited. Literally, was is a maze of piles of dirt, dirt paths and the Indian gumwood supports. No cement floor, no utilities, just dirt piles.
That weekend it was my turn to be the duty manager and I got a page at about 11 a.m. from the hotel operator. The local police had called and they wanted to know if they could search the hotel basement. The missing boy’s parents had a psychic working on his disappearance and she had a vision that the boy had been buried in the basement of the hotel! Holy Toledo!
A weekend shift as the duty manager was usually a pretty quiet event. Check a few guest rooms, eat in a couple of restaurants, make a list of maintenance issues and pray that you don’t get a call about an upset guest.
I now had the police department coming to search for the body of a missing boy. The case was huge and the media was all over it every day so I expected a few officers, lights, dogs, shovels and some excitement for my Saturday. I was disappointed. Two officers arrived about 1 hour later. I took them to the basement and showed them the gumwood, and the piles of dirt, which could easily contain 50 bodies! Seriously, this place looked like a graveyard. The officers took maybe 30 steps a little this way and back and they were done. No dogs, no lights, no search really.
Again, like the fact that we lived so close to where he disappeared and weren’t interviewed, the police didn’t seem to have much intensity for finding the missing boy. So sad and tragic. I wish they could have found him that day. His parents must long for closure and to help them get it would have been a good thing to do.
- https://hotelfinancialcoach.com//hotelfinancialcoach.com//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Michael_Dunahee
- https://hotelfinancialcoach.com//hotelfinancialcoach.com//www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/9g2cel/where_is_4yearold_michael_dunahee_he_disappeared/
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