WI WI - James Yoblonski, 13, took family's car, found on USH 12, may be in Devil's Lake State Park area, Baraboo, 12 Jun 2023 *reward*

[acutename]

The no license didn’t bother him when he stole his dad’s van. Maybe he took another person’s vehicle.

easier to steal a parent's car because you have probably driven it before and you know where the keys are. Tougher to start stealing random vehicles and driving in daylight when you look like a kid and have no credentials and the cars will be reported as stolen. I do think he is probably dead but it is weird that he chose this at such an early age. A lot of kids run away but they come back. IMO. Curious what he was suspended from school for and seems he was more troubled than anyone realized.

 

[Keiri]

easier to steal a parent's car because you have probably driven it before and you know where the keys are. Tougher to start stealing random vehicles and driving in daylight when you look like a kid and have no credentials and the cars will be reported as stolen. I do think he is probably dead but it is weird that he chose this at such an early age. A lot of kids run away but they come back. IMO. Curious what he was suspended from school for and seems he was more troubled than anyone realized.

Parents sometimes read these pages, so I like to not abandon all hope, but I’ll say most kids that are found have not run away for this long. But it’s not unheard of, every street kid was someone’s child. I agree about the car but I don’t put much past him. This kid was smart.

 

[iamshadow21]

I mean, look at Carvell Jennings and Shannah Boiteau, both deceased within two miles or closer to where they went missing, both searched for by lots of people, both found years later as skeletal remains. Then you add devils lake is quite large and there are spots even the sheriffs said were too dangerous to search. A body could be in the lake, wedged between rocks, or not even in the park. So…. No.

This is what I have always believed.

The video was clearly a suicide note, IMO.

MOO

 

[swanniee11]

If this child is ever found safe, I want him to write a book! Still Praying

 

[airportwoman]

The no license didn’t bother him when he stole his dad’s van. Maybe he took another person’s vehicle.

Or hitchhiked?

 

[Keiri]

Or hitchhiked?

If it were me, I wouldn’t risk it. Too many people would turn a kid in knowing he’s a runaway.

 

[Teamir]

Maybe the staging makes more sense if James was murdered.

Yes for sure. I think he wanted to go off grid; discussed it with two slightly older boys who pretended to humor him and play along; he said he could get hands on a gun to take off grid; they headed to the edge of Wisconsin Dells and stopped to regroup. That’s when the two older kids got into an altercation with him over the gun, James got shot, and they panic staged the “camp sites”. This is all just speculation on how I think it went down.

 

[cujenn81]

This is what I have always believed.

The video was clearly a suicide note, IMO.

MOO

Same. I almost never think it’s suicide (in the cases I follow on here), but I thought it was pretty clear after watching the video.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

Two people because some had to drive James’ vehicle to that spot and then get a ride home with the second perp. Staging campsites to make it look like he went off grid to align with what his friends knew about his interests. School suspensions just speak to what type of crowd he hung with. All in my opinion.

Thanks for explaining your theory.

If he killed himself, wouldn’t his body been found by now?

There is actually an entire thread about cases where victims, including suicide and murder, are later found in or near an area searched. It's not as easy to find victims as one would think. Sometimes even in a residential area, nevermind rural.

do think he is probably dead but it is weird that he chose this at such an early age.

We do see cases here of suicide starting in elementary school. Serious emotional difficulties can start from birth, in my opinion. And they know what suicide is by the later elementary school years.
Again my opinion, it's weird how many kids have access to guns, though.

ETA: I'd like to add, I don't mean to just sound matter-of-fact, because it is all really devastating.

 

[iusedtofloat]

If he killed himself, wouldn’t his body been found by now?

No, not necessarily. Especially if (and I hate to say it) he potentially climbed a tree and had a rope. People don't tend to look up when searching

 

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[iamshadow21]

No, not necessarily. Especially if (and I hate to say it) he potentially climbed a tree and had a rope. People don't tend to look up when searching

After almost two years, IMO, he wouldn't be hanging any more. Despite what television might portray, at a certain stage, the vertebrae aren't held together by soft tissue any more and the remains end up on the ground below. Which increases the likelihood of being found by a hiker, a hunter, or a dog.

I personally don't know about hanging. I don't think we know of him taking any rope, but we do know for a fact that he took a firearm. I know he's young, but males are inclined to use a firearm if one is available to them.

Teenage boys' suicide rate is skyrocketing because of firearms access

Experts point to a mix of guns and stigma around masculinity and mental health.

19thnews.org

MOO

 

[cenazoic]

And then there's the problem of the dogs picking up any scent leading from the campsite into the woods.

Idle question: do tracking dogs know the direction of movement, or do they start at some presumed last location and track out from there?

 

[Keiri]

I started googling for the answer @cenazoic but we don’t know anything specific about how they used the dogs in this situation so I’m not sure the internet has the answer

 

[Naenaerae]

You usually know a classmate like that throughout the whole school. You can assume, that they knew more about him than his family/father. To tell something useful was probably, what the father wanted to nudge.

Sharing that he had been suspended from school twice could also be an indicator that things were not going well for him. It sounds like he was having a particularly rough school year.

To get suspended, you’ve got to be behaving in ways you shouldn’t be, breaking rules/laws. Maybe he was getting into trouble with friends, or maybe he was getting into trouble independently and not really attached to any social groups.

It’s hard to know without any further details, but there could have been a lot going on. We can only speculate, but he may have been feeling misunderstood or like an outsider. Or, maybe he was just tired of following rules?

Also, he disappeared right at the start of summer. When you’re going to school at least you get a break from your parents being on your case. But over summer break he’d be dealing with whatever punishments and limited privileges his parents were giving him every single day. If I had gotten into that sort of trouble as a kid, my parents would have basically grounded me for all of summer vacation and harped on me constantly. He might have been motivated to get away from dealing with all that.

All just my opinion and thoughts.

 

[Wilma_W]

No, not necessarily. Especially if (and I hate to say it) he potentially climbed a tree and had a rope. People don't tend to look up when searching

That appears to be what happened to Tyler Goodrich, who was found not too far from his house in an area that was previously searched, but no one found him presumably because he was up in a tree:

Found Deceased - NE - Tyler Goodrich, 35, left his house to go on a run, Lincoln, 3 Nov 2023

 

[acutename]

Sharing that he had been suspended from school twice could also be an indicator that things were not going well for him. It sounds like he was having a particularly rough school year.

To get suspended, you’ve got to be behaving in ways you shouldn’t be, breaking rules/laws. Maybe he was getting into trouble with friends, or maybe he was getting into trouble independently and not really attached to any social groups.

It’s hard to know without any further details, but there could have been a lot going on. We can only speculate, but he may have been feeling misunderstood or like an outsider. Or, maybe he was just tired of following rules?

Also, he disappeared right at the start of summer. When you’re going to school at least you get a break from your parents being on your case. But over summer break he’d be dealing with whatever punishments and limited privileges his parents were giving him every single day. If I had gotten into that sort of trouble as a kid, my parents would have basically grounded me for all of summer vacation and harped on me constantly. He might have been motivated to get away from dealing with all that.

All just my opinion and thoughts.

As per his father, they were supposed go fishing, camping and hunting, so he was not talking about punishment:

"I think he was coaxed in leaving," Bill said.

That's because Bill believes James wouldn't just take off without saying anything.

He told 27 News they had plans to go fishing and camping that month, things James loved doing.
"He loved going camping with us and fishing," Bill added. "In fact, we're supposed to go hunting this year, the two of us because he's old enough that I was gonna take him."

Bill feels someone picked James up on the side of Hwy 12

"There's just no way he could be just vanish like that without him being gone with somebody else," he said.

If that's not the case, he thinks someone was waiting for James.

Where is James Yoblonski? The night the Sauk Co. teen disappeared
(This old article goes through what LE did to search and how they ran out of leads.)

so possibly his father was really out of touch with JY, or did not spend as much time with him as he thought once he was gone.... curious what the suspensions were about because the story quotes his classmates as saying he was quiet- not disruptive and that they were surprised by his actions. The father also says he thinks he could be in CO but does not say why. Curious if he has relatives there.