A two-year-old boy and his mentally disabled aunt disappear from home. Did they go on a walk and get lost, or did something more sinister take place?
King Walker, and his mentally disabled 21-year-old aunt, Diamond Bynum, have been missing for almost 7 years.
In 2015, the two were being looked after by a close family member when, after a quick nap, the caretaker woke up, and the pair had vanished. At the center of the investigation are multiple unconfirmed sightings of the two — and the sightings are in completely different places … with different circumstances.
The police have been baffled.
King and Diamond disappeared in Gary, Indiana, a city previously known as a steel industry back in the 1960s. But, when the local manufacturing jobs vanished, and the local economics shifted, the population decreased by 61 percent.
Within the last 10 years, several schools have closed, and it’s become “a desolate ghost town.”
According to Neighborhood Scout, a crime rate and statistics database, your chance of being a victim of violent crime in Gary are 1 in 185, which is higher than 95% of U.S. cities. And then, there are the abandoned neighborhoods. CNBC reports that in 2019, homes were being sold for $1 on behalf of the Dollar House Program to help fill the unoccupied homes.
These eerie abandoned buildings have become another focal point in investigating what happened to King and Diamond. The dilapidated structures have become a strong focus for searchers, and a lack of structural safety has left many of those stones unturned.
July 25, 2015
Within an hour of being gone, the police began investigating. They quickly concluded that the two couldn’t have walked more than a few miles, and it would have been difficult for Diamond alone to keep King, a toddler, under control. Multiple eyewitness accounts place the pair across Gary — but are any of the sightings viable?
The first sighting took place at a local McDonald’s where employees said they saw Diamond and King the same afternoon they disappeared. They said the two ate the food they ordered, but that the employees are not sure when the two left. This has peaked many’s interest considering Diamond’s favorite food was cheeseburgers, so it’s likely that she’s familiar with the restaurant. This sighting was also reported before Diamond and King were known as missing to the broader community, giving it validity because the reported sighting was unprompted or influenced by the media.
Other witnesses came forward eventually saying they saw both Diamond and King at a local bus stop, while others say they saw them at a nearby White Castle and Checkers restaurant. To that end, the restaurant witnesses claim Diamond and King were with an unidentified woman.
Crowdsourcing Together
There are multiple ways you can make an impact in helping to solve the disappearances of Diamond and King.
Citizen Detectives have taken it upon themselves to plot the possible movements of the pair the day they went missing. Can you help? There currently isn’t a public list detailing which houses have or have not been searched. This could point law enforcement or advocates in the right direction.
Consider sharing Diamond and King’s visualized case on your favorite social media platform and participating in the case discussion happening in the Uncovered community.
————————————————————————————————————————
This past summer, Uncovered partnered with our friend, John Lordan of LordanArts, to collaborate on a YouTube series called “LordanArts Uncovered.” John is the host of Brainscratch and Searchlight on YouTube, and was featured in Netflix’s Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel documentary. The Uncovered team members working on the series are Rachael Rosselet, our Head of Case Research and Data, as well as Andrea Cipriano, our Case Researcher and Content Specialist.
Episodes are released every other Wednesday on the LordanArts YouTube Channel. Be sure to subscribe (and turn on post notifications) to be alerted when new videos go live!
Have a case suggestion? Submit it here.