With all due respect to your opinion, I honestly think it was a 'much closer to home' situation and this baby boy never made it out of that house alive. MOO, of course.
You may be entirely correct.
That is the flaw in my theory, I don't know who the last person was to see Malik, not living in the household, prior to this being called in to the cops.
If he was seen by a neighbor or a relative just an hour or two prior to disappearing, then it seems almost impossible that someone could do such a flawless job of hiding him in the middle of a city environment, dead or alive. Nobody in this forum knows if he was outside playing that day, if neighbors saw him, or if they didn't. Nobody here knows if a relative dropped by that day, or if his mother talked to him on the phone. That isn't information anybody here is privy to.
On the other hand, if no one saw him for a whole day or two prior to this being called in, then it is very easy to imagine that there was plenty of time for him to have been transported way out into the surrounding countryside and disposed of. If that is the case though, then it means that two people are responsible for this, not just one. The story told about the events that unfolded that day are either completely accurate and corroborated, or the entire story was fabricated and maintained by the two adults that were present that day.
On the surface, and way back in the beginning, I took this to be exactly what it appeared to be. A little boy walked out the front door while his guardians were busy doing other things, got turned around in the dark, and wandered off. I had no indication then, or now, that it was anything more than that. Any reasonable person would agree that two year old kids can get themselves in a bad situation pretty quickly, regardless of the level of parental supervision.......thus the term "terrible two's".
My theory is based solely on the assumption that both the guardians as well as the little sister's account of events was verified by police. I have no way of knowing that, nor does anybody else. If their accounts are true, then there has to be a logical explanation why this little boy disappeared so quickly and so thoroughly. If a neighbor saw him outside playing earlier in the day, then that completely destroys the premise that his guardians are part of some elaborate plan to harm him and cover it up. Once again, nobody here is privy to that information other than LE.
F.B.I. agents, Game and Fish agents, Sheriffs deputies, local police, and a thousand local volunteers have found no evidence of a crime, and no trace of this little boy since the day he vanished. Apparently, they haven't found any indication that a crime took place inside, or outside, the residence either. So what does that leave ?
There are a lot of people out there, both single and married, that long to have a child of their own but can't, for various reasons. There are also sicko's out there that have intentions that are too disgusting to discuss here. I don't see why it is such a stretch to assume that someone drove by and saw this little kid playing outside by himself, unsupervised, in the dark, and seized the opportunity to nab him while nobody was paying attention.
How long was he outside by himself ? 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour ? It would take less than a minute for somebody to pull over to the curb, pick him up, and hustle him off. If they were to get caught, they could always claim that they picked him up because they were worried about his welfare. But they weren't caught, and Malik vanished without a trace.