The Skeleton Key Chronicles

15 hours ago

Two months before Antoinette Forbes went missing, she stood in a Maryland courtroom and told a judge there were times she was scared of her former partner, Russell Ashford.

We're only now learning what Antoinette told the court that day. The two had a serious incident back in 2021 that resulted in Ashford serving nine months, and this summer he went back to court asking for a change that would essentially remove that conviction from his record. Antoinette didn't want that to happen and neither did prosecutors, but on July 9th, the judge granted his request.

Then we get to September. Police say Antoinette was last seen in person around 3 p.m. on Friday, September 4th, near her home in the 3200 block of Nebraska Avenue NW. But we know she was still in contact with people after that. Her sister Aileen FaceTimed with her Saturday morning, and the two laughed, talked about the weekend and even made plans to visit their mother in Florida over Christmas. A friend also received a response from Antoinette that morning. After that, nobody could get ahold of her.

Antoinette is 53 and works as an executive for Eli Lilly. When friends eventually went to her Northwest D.C. home to check on her, they found the front door unlocked. Her car was still in the driveway, while her wallet, laptop and both of her phones were inside. Her dog, Max, was there too.

Meanwhile, there have also been developments involving Russell Ashford. He's currently being held in Pennsylvania on a separate matter, although he has not been specially connected to Antoinette's disappearance.

Investigators have also spent considerable time back at Antoinette's home this week and were seen carrying several bags from the property as they continue trying to determine where she went.

And yesterday, there was another important decision involving the couple's 10-year-old son. Both sides had gone back to court over where he would stay while Antoinette remains missing, and on Friday a Montgomery County judge granted emergency custody to Antoinette's family.

All of this is coming together a little more than two weeks after Antoinette was last seen, and we're now learning considerably more about what was happening in her life during those final months. But even with the court records, the newly released audio and all of the activity at her home this week, none of it has answered the one thing her family has been waiting for since the beginning. Where is Antoinette?

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

20 hours ago

We’re coming up on two years since Stefanie Damron went missing from New Sweden, Maine, and considering everything surrounding this case, it has received surprisingly little attention outside of Maine.

Stefanie was 13 years old on September 23rd, 2024, when her family says she got into an argument with her older sister at their home on West Road. Her parents weren’t home at the time. Some of Stefanie’s siblings and an elderly man the children considered a grandfather were there, and according to the family, Stefanie walked out of the house and headed toward the woods.

Her parents returned home and learned Stefanie was gone, but they didn’t immediately call police. They searched for her themselves first because Stefanie was comfortable in the woods and had apparently taken off walking before, only to return a few hours later. This time she didn’t. Her family reported her missing to Maine State Police the following day, September 24. There hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of her since.

And there’s quite a bit of background here. Before moving to Maine, Stefanie’s family had lived in several states, including Texas, where the family had previous involvement with child welfare authorities that resulted in the children spending about six months outside their parents’ custody. Eventually the family settled on more than 20 acres in New Sweden, a tiny community in northern Maine not far from the Canadian border. Their home was a roughly 200-square-foot yurt-like structure without running water or indoor plumbing. They used an outhouse, a generator for some electricity and Starlink for internet.

There had also been an unusual arrangement in the months before Stefanie went missing. Her parents and younger siblings were living more than a mile away in a fifth-wheel camper on a friend’s property, while Stefanie and her older sister, who were both minors, remained at the original property helping care for the elderly grandfather figure. An adult brother was away at Job Corps for at least part of that period. That arrangement lasted for nearly a year, and less than a week after Stefanie’s parents and younger siblings moved back to the original property, Stefanie went missing.

Once police became involved, this wasn’t just a quick search of the woods around the house. Maine State Police, the Maine Warden Service and the FBI became involved, including an FBI team that specializes in these types of cases. Investigators canvassed the neighborhood, looked for available video, used K9 teams and eventually searched thousands of acres. Leads have been followed in Maine, elsewhere in the country and even into Canada. Another large search was conducted in May 2025 with dozens of people searching on foot, by vehicle and with drones.

There have been other possibilities discussed along the way, too. Stefanie’s father later said she may have had access to an old cellphone and raised the possibility that she could have connected with someone through social media. As far as authorities have publicly said, though, there is still no confirmed sighting of Stefanie after she left the property.

About a month after she went missing, her family released a statement addressing some of the questions surrounding their living arrangements and why they weren’t immediately alarmed. They said their children were very comfortable in the woods, defended their decision to homeschool them and said child welfare authorities had been inside their home. They ended that statement by saying, “We had nothing to do with this, we just want our baby home.”

Now nearly two years have passed. People in the area have formed Friends of Stefanie to keep attention on her case, with one organizer saying, “As a community, we haven’t forgotten Stefanie.”

And there’s another date coming that really puts all of this time into perspective. Stefanie was 13 when she went missing. She turns 16 on October 6th. Stefanie was approximately five feet tall and 130 pounds, with green eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. She was wearing blue jeans, a long-sleeved blue shirt and black Harley Davidson hiking boots.

Anyone with information about Stefanie Damron is asked to contact Maine State Police.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

For 33 years, the family of 10-year-old George “Junior” Burdynski had no idea what happened after their little boy left his Maryland home on his red bike. Now, all these years later, investigators say they finally know, and the person who gave them the answer was just 13 years old himself when Junior disappeared.

Junior lived with his family in Brentwood, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., and on May 24th, 1993, he headed out on his bike and never made it home. The search was enormous. Police went through the neighborhood on foot, brought in dogs and helicopters, and his picture went everywhere. A local Domino’s even started attaching Junior’s missing flyer to pizza boxes.

And while everyone was looking for Junior, investigators uncovered something else happening in that same neighborhood. Several boys had apparently been harmed by a group of men, three of whom were eventually convicted, including Joseph Lynch, who lived nearby. Investigators looked at whether any of them could have been connected to Junior, but at the time they couldn’t prove it.

Oddly enough, Junior’s case also ended up changing the way the FBI investigated these kinds of cases. Investigators discovered that some of the men were using computers to communicate with kids and with one another, which was pretty uncharted territory in 1993. That led the FBI’s Hyattsville office to begin the Bureau’s first undercover investigations into child predators online, eventually becoming the nationwide Innocent Images program. The FBI has since said what was uncovered while looking for Junior helped revolutionize the way these cases were investigated. But there still wasn’t an answer about Junior himself.

Then earlier this year, Lynch came under investigation again over separate allegations involving two teenage boys, and cold-case detectives started digging back into 1993. Eventually they reached someone who had lived in Junior’s neighborhood back then. He is 47 years old today, but he was only 13 when Junior disappeared.
According to Prince George’s County Police, the witness told detectives that he had been inside a neighborhood home with Lynch and Junior on May 24, 1993.

Police say Lynch directed the 13-year-old to participate in what happened to Junior that day, and Junior did not survive. The witness also told investigators that Lynch had been mistreating him for years himself.

That last part is important because some of the headlines make this sound like police simply found a grown man who confessed to what happened to Junior. Police have not publicly identified the witness, and he is not facing charges. Lynch, now 61, has been charged in connection with Junior’s case. And after 33 years, Junior still hasn’t been found.

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