It’s a scene that’s easy to picture. A warm Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend, with the sights, sounds, and smells of a carnival midway providing a case of sensory overload. This was what it was like on May 25, 1991, when Michelle Lodzinski, a single mother at the time, took her son to a carnival in John F. Kennedy Park in Sayreville, New Jersey. Lodzinski alleged early on that after going on a handful of rides the then 23-year-old left her son alone for a few minutes while she went to get a soda. “He doesn’t like to wait on lines,” she later told The New York Times as her reasoning for leaving Timothy alone.

Lodzinski returned to where she had left her son, but he was gone. She started searching the area and about 15 minutes later ran into her niece, who reported to police officers working the carnival that the 5-year-old had gone missing. Soon, hundreds of police and volunteers combed through the park along with helicopters and SCUBA divers who searched some of the park’s ponds, but they found nothing.

“We did a search of the whole park. We are satisfied that he’s not in the park and there is nothing further we can get there at this time,” Sayreville Police Sgt. Timothy Brennan said at the time, per NJ.