Age-progressed image of Matthew Wade Crocker from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Hey Van Buren — one of Crawford County’s oldest unresolved missing-person cases is getting fresh attention again.
Matthew Wade Crocker disappeared from a Van Buren home on June 9, 1983, when he was only a few months old.
More than four decades later, Matthew’s name is still listed with the Van Buren Police Department and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Matthew would be 43 years old today.
Local coverage Monday brought the case back in front of River Valley residents, which is worth doing because this is the type of case where one old memory could still matter.
According to the current missing-person information, investigators believe Matthew was taken by an adult woman who had been staying with his family and helping take care of the children.
Authorities believe that woman had previously been working with a carnival in Fort Smith and may have used the name “Kathy Johnson.”
And investigators still have a pretty specific physical description connected to her.
She was described as a white woman with several distinctive tattoos.
One was a unicorn on her upper left arm.
Another reportedly showed the name “Kathy” with a ribbon on her upper right arm.
Investigators also described a green star with a yellow burst on the left side of her chest and a long scar on the back of her right shoulder.
Those are the kind of details somebody may remember even after everything else from 1983 has gotten fuzzy.
Matthew also had a physical characteristic that could potentially help identify him.
When he disappeared, he had pectus excavatum, commonly described as a concave or sunken chest.
Because Matthew was just an infant, his original photographs obviously aren’t going to show what a 43-year-old man looks like today.
That’s why the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has produced an age-progressed image showing what Matthew might look like as an adult.
Age progression isn’t magic and it isn’t an exact photograph.
But when somebody disappeared before they were even old enough to develop recognizable adult features, it gives people something more useful to look at than a 43-year-old baby picture.
The Fort Smith connection is also why this deserves attention on both sides of the river.
Matthew disappeared from Van Buren, but investigators believe the woman associated with his disappearance had been working around a Fort Smith carnival.
Somebody who was around Fort Smith or Van Buren that summer could still remember seeing her.
Somebody might remember the tattoos.
Somebody could remember a woman suddenly leaving town with a baby.
Or somebody may have heard something years later that didn’t mean anything to them at the time.
That’s generally how cases this old finally move.
It usually isn’t somebody discovering a perfect piece of evidence sitting untouched for four decades.
It’s a person finally recognizing that something they know might connect to the case, or newer investigative tools allowing police to do something with information they couldn’t fully use years ago.
There’s also a unique possibility here because Matthew was so young.
If Matthew survived, he may have grown up without knowing he was a missing child.
That’s one reason age-progressed images and old identifying details still matter after 43 years.
And no, this isn’t an invitation for everybody online to start accusing random people named Kathy or trying to solve the case through Facebook comments.
If something genuinely sounds familiar, give it to investigators.
They can compare it against decades of case information and decide whether it actually means anything.
Anyone with information can contact the Van Buren Police Department at 479-474-1234.
Information can also be provided to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST, or 1-800-843-5678.
Community takeaway: Matthew Wade Crocker disappeared from Van Buren in June 1983 when he was an infant and would now be 43 years old. Investigators believe the woman associated with his disappearance had worked with a carnival in Fort Smith and may have used the name “Kathy Johnson.” Authorities still list several distinctive tattoos and a shoulder scar associated with the woman, while NCMEC maintains an age-progressed image of Matthew. If any of those details trigger a real memory — even after all these years — contact Van Buren Police rather than assuming somebody else already did.
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Sources: 5NEWS — renewed coverage of the Matthew Crocker case · Van Buren Police Department — Missing Persons · National Center for Missing & Exploited Children — Matthew Crocker
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