He Was 12-Years-Old When He Vanished From His House While Baking Cookies, And An Anonymous Caller Said He Was In A Ditch

On January 25, 1973, 12-year-old Marvin "Beau" Lee King was seen alive for the last time at around 8 p.m. At the time, his mother, Monica King, was working her evening shift at a local bar. Beau called his mother at work, but she was very busy and said she would call back as soon as she was free.

But when she tried calling back, Beau did not pick up the phone. She sent one of her friends to check on Beau at 9:30 p.m. The friend reported that the front door of their home in Springfield, Ohio, was left open, and there was no sign of Beau anywhere. He had been baking cookies.

A search for the boy began. At 11:30 p.m., Monica contacted the police to report him missing. However, the police would not investigate his disappearance for at least 24 hours, even though she insisted that something was wrong. She enlisted the help of her friends and neighbors to search for her son.

One neighbor stated that they saw Beau getting into a dark-colored car, "possibly a 1965 Chevy or Pontiac." Monica had no idea who the vehicle could belong to.

The following day, anonymous phone calls started coming into local establishments, including a school and a church. The final call was to the sheriff's department at around 9:30 p.m.

The caller claimed that a man's body would be found in a ditch, about 20 minutes away from where Beau lived at the Rose Garden Mobile Home Park.

The caller identified himself by race, which was believed to be a strategy to throw off investigators.

Police located the body just after 10 p.m. It turned out to be Beau King. He was fully clothed, except for his coat, and had been strangled with a nylon clothesline. He had been dead for at least 12 to 16 hours.

Detectives quickly honed in on a suspect. They took a 35-year-old Springfield man named Robert Lee Cullip in for questioning. He was not publicly named, but there was quite a bit of evidence surrounding him. Ultimately, forensic testing returned negative results.

Ohio Attorney General - pictured above is Beau

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In 1964, Cullip was arrested for making inappropriate phone calls to over 60 women. He randomly selected their names out of the phone book. After being released from jail, he moved into the same trailer park that Beau and his mother lived in.

Weeks before Beau's death, he was charged with assault on a child. Later, the charge was amended to torturing and inflicting cruel punishment on a child, which required him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

In August 1973, he was ruled insane at Lima State Hospital. In July 1974, he was released and returned to jail. Six months later, he was sentenced to one to 10 years of prison.

In 1977, Monica described Beau as a friendly, outgoing kid in an interview. On the day he disappeared, his pet hamster just died, and he was grieving the loss.

She also expressed her frustration with the police for focusing too intently on Robert Cullip and not checking out other potential leads. In the end, no one was ever charged in connection with Beau's death.

If anyone has any information regarding Beau's case, they are urged to contact Clark County Sheriff's dispatch at 937-328-2560.