Charlie Bothuell IV narrowly escaped a police investigation into the disappearance of his son, that is of course until, until his 12-year-old son who had been missing for nearly two weeks was found hiding out in the basement of their own Detroit townhouse.
“I didn’t know that he was in the basement. I searched. My wife searched. We’ve had dozens of police officers, FBI agents were here, dogs. We’ve all been searching for my son,” he says.
Detroit police officers searched the family town home five times and used dogs in the search. Detroit police chief James Craig said this morning on “CBS Morning News” that the boy may not have been in the home at the time of the searches, adding, “If he was I want to know how we could have missed him.”
But the discovery of the missing child raises questions which will likely lead police to look deeper into family involvement again.On the fifth and final search of the family’s home on Nicolet Place, investigators noticed something different in the basement outside a door that is connected to an underground tunnel – a barricade, and behind that, some food, a place to sleep and 12-year-old Charlie crouched down behind a barrel.
“There’s no way he could have erected this make-shift area of concealment, I’ll call it. He certainly was excited to see us. I had a chance to actually talk and embrace Charlie,” says Detroit Police Chief James Craig.
In the basement where Charlie was found, a tunnel leads from apartment to apartment and to the outside. The boy likely could have come and gone whenever he needed to.
According to sources, Charlie told investigators it was his stepmother, Monique, who was helping him hide out and giving him food.
Charlie V was last seen June 14. His stepmother told police the boy didn’t complete his daily exercise routine and she informed his father. Worried how his father would react, Charlie took off and never came back.
The boy, who was homeschooled and on a strict exercise routine, was often beat with a PVC pipe that has now been taken in as evidence.
In fact, sources say blood was found in the boy’s room and on some of his clothes. That’s why police widened the scope of the investigation and, at first, wouldn’t rule homicide out.
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