‘Don’t want to find my grandson like that’: Jodi Baur speaks out on Elijah Vue’s birthday, six-month anniversary of disappearance
WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis. (WFRV) – Elijah Vue has now been missing for six months, and in addition to the anniversary, Tuesday was also his birthday.
The toddler is now four years old, and Pam Knoop and Dan Pagel, neighbors in the Wisconsin Dells apartment complex where he lived, had never spent one of his birthdays without him.
“From the day he moved here to the day he went missing, we saw him almost every day,” Knoop said. ”We had his birthdays with him for the last three years, and Christmas, Easter, all the holidays.”
They sat on the grass with their friendly chihuahua, seemingly enjoying the August weather, but for the grandparent-like figures to Elijah, life could not be harder.
”He got to be like he was our grandson, you know. I want him back so bad. I miss my buddy and his hugs,” Pagel said. “Can’t help but think of him every day. When you go by this tree or up at the apartment, you see something that reminds you of him, and every day, we think about him.”
For Elijah’s biological grandmother, Jodi Baur, the pain of still not knowing where her grandson is has been pent up for too long. She is ready for answers and hopes that there could be a happy ending after all.
“Today’s a really hard day,” she said. “But wherever he is, we want him to know we’re never going to give up, we’re never going to stop looking. I hope he has a happy birthday. I hope he’s out there.”
Elijah, then three years old, was reported missing on his half-birthday, February 20, by his mother’s boyfriend, Jesse Vang. Vang told investigators that he took a three-hour long nap from 8-11 a.m. that morning and that Elijah went missing from his Two Rivers apartment during that time.
Currently, Vang and Elijah’s mother, Katrina Baur, are being held at the Manitowoc County Jail after being charged with child neglect and are awaiting trial dates. Both have had numerous status conferences, allowing their attorneys to check in with the Manitowoc County district attorney’s office as new evidence and re-schedulings take place in front of a judge.
“I don’t know what went wrong, but she loved her kids. Even packing up her apartment, you could see she loved her kids. They didn’t go without anything,” Jodi said. “I dislike what she did, but at the same time, I still love her. She’s still my daughter. She made a bad choice, a very, very bad choice.”
Jodi had not had contact with Katrina and Elijah since October 2022, which she said was a result of Katrina cutting her out of her life. Jodi says the pair had a tumultuous relationship as Katrina faced challenges in life as a result of the drug use and domestic abuse she faced.
“Her normal is very different from our normal. So what she anticipates or sees out of life is not the same thing we see,” Jodi said. “I don’t know Jesse, I can’t trust Jesse, I don’t know him. I don’t believe he walked out the door because law enforcement has confirmed he did not walk out the door. Do I think it was foolish [to leave Elijah with Jesse]? 100%, absolutely. You don’t get to make those kinds of mistakes when you have kids.”
Jodi wants people from across the country to be on the lookout for Elijah. She and law enforcement have received tips of possible sightings from coast to coast.
“There’s so many people looking for him. And I am so grateful for that,” she said. “We want more people looking for him, as many people as possible. It only takes that one person.”
Jodi has been doing her own searching locally, on her own, with her dog by her side. What she found one day in April at Shoto Conservation Club, after she says law enforcement told her they had already searched there, still has her mind reeling about the possibilities.
“I went to an area they had already searched. They told me there was snow on the ground when they searched there,” she said. “It was very unusual to find a bunch of buried towels, a child’s sweatshirt, a glove, the glove with bleach stains, and the fact that they missed it is a little bit devastating. It just [began with] a little cloth sticking out of the hole, and [what followed] was obviously stuff that was intentionally buried.”
Other discoveries have brought gruesomely tragic thoughts to Jodi’s conscience, all within the local Manitowoc County area.
“The next time I went there, my dog found a carcass of an animal in the water, and I went, ‘I’m done. I don’t want to find my grandson like that.’”
With the discoveries of clothes and towels in the mud, which Two Rivers Police declined to comment on, Jodi is calling on law enforcement to be more diligent and to search areas over again.
“They’re still human beings; they’re not robots out searching; they’re human beings. So we have to assume it’s a possibility they did miss something along the way,” she said. “At this point in time, six months into this, let’s go back, let’s get fresh eyes, let’s get somebody to go to square one and say what happened, where are we.”
Two Rivers Police has confirmed with Local 5 that it is double-checking certain areas with more advanced resources and technology, especially in waterways.
“Six months has definitely gone by quick, I think, in the minds of a lot of people here at the department, but I feel like it just started,” Capt. Andrew Raatz said. “While it might not have the large-scale searches we had in the beginning, there is still a lot going on here with the investigation, and we continue to make that a priority.”
Raatz also considers what happens when Elijah is found, and he is confident that his department, which serves a town of more than 11,000, will accomplish this along with assisting agencies.
“We’re still confident our investigation will find out what happened to Elijah, and we will eventually locate him,” Raatz said. The chances of him being alive, I don’t know. Statistically, the chances aren’t likely.”
Another complaint Jodi has had is the lack of communication from law enforcement since May. She said that the communication was very responsive in the first three months, but now she usually does not know much more than the public.
“Law enforcement doesn’t update the family any more than they update the public,” Jodi said. Today they said ‘we’re going to do a press release.’ Well, you know the same thing I do. They don’t tell us. So it’s hard.”
Against the odds, Jodi is holding onto hope. Amid her worry, she knows just how widespread people’s love for him is and hopes that the notoriety of the sad situation helps Elijah be found.
“Elijah, we love you, the state loves you, the nation loves you, and we are never going to give up. We are never going to give up looking for him.”
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