Where Is Baby Amiah? The Disappearance of Amiah Josaphine Robertson

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

March 28, 2026

There are cases that leave you shaken not because of their complexity, but because of their simplicity. Because of how young the victim was, how few people stood between her and harm, and how thoroughly those people failed her. Amiah Josaphine Leann Robertson was eight months old when she disappeared from Indianapolis, Indiana, on March 9, 2019. She had not yet taken her first steps. She had not yet said her first word. She was a baby, entirely dependent on the adults around her for her survival, and the adults around her let her down in every conceivable way. Her remains have never been found. Her case is listed as a homicide investigation. And the two people most responsible for what happened to her walked away with sentences that her grandfather described, without exaggeration, as getting away with a perfect murder.

The People Around Amiah

To understand what happened to Amiah, you first have to understand the world she had been born into. Her mother, Amber Robertson, was a teenager when Amiah came into the world. At the time of Amiah's disappearance, Amber was nineteen years old and had been living with her infant daughter, and her boyfriend Robert Lee Lyons, out of a car parked behind the home of a woman named Jeanette Browning on South Holmes Avenue in Indianapolis. Lyons, who was not Amiah's biological father, was a methamphetamine addict with a criminal history. He and Browning were old friends, and Browning had watched Amiah on a handful of occasions, perhaps two or three times, in the weeks before the disappearance.

The living circumstances alone tell a story of instability and neglect. A baby girl, just months old, housed in a car in the cold Indiana winter. What those circumstances also tell you is that Amiah had virtually no protection. She could not speak. She could not seek help. She could not do anything except exist, and hope that the people around her would keep her safe.

They did not.

The Last Day

On March 9, 2019, at approximately 1:15 in the afternoon, witnesses at the South Holmes Avenue residence saw Robert Lyons leave the house carrying Amiah. He was driving a maroon 1996 Isuzu Rodeo described as being in poor condition. The plan, according to Amber, was that Lyons would drop Amiah off with Browning to spend the night as a babysitter. That was the last time Amiah was seen alive.

A witness who later came forward told investigators she had seen Amiah, Amber, Lyons, and Browning together at the Ramada by Wyndham Hotel near Interstate 465 and Crawfordsville Road on March 8 and 9 of 2019. What she described seeing on that camera was devastating. A picture of the baby wearing the same pajamas seen in news photos with her mother, lying on a bed with her eyes closed, and the entire left side of her face covered in bruises. The witness described a second photo in which the baby appeared either gravely ill or no longer alive. The group, she said, left behind an infant car seat and a pack-n-play when they checked out of the hotel room, which had been left in a state of disarray. Cadaver dogs later hit on evidence found along the banks of Eagle Creek near McCarty Street, where several of Amiah's belongings were recovered.

Lyons spent hours that afternoon in the area of Rockville Road and South Mickley Avenue on the southwest side of Indianapolis. He did not return to Amber until around 10:00 that night, and he returned without Amiah. Amber later said that she had been told Amiah was spending the night at the babysitter's house and thought nothing of it. The next morning, she discovered that Amiah had never been brought to Browning's home at all. Lyons, rather than tell her where the baby was, began taunting her about Amiah's whereabouts. He told Amber he would take her to Amiah if she came with him alone. Amber, she later said, was afraid of him.

It would be another six days before anyone called the police.

A Week of Silence

On March 16, 2019, a full seven days after Amiah was last seen, Amber Robertson called the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. The impetus for the call, according to reports, was not solely concern for Amiah but a confrontation with Lyons: she told police that she and Lyons had argued about Amiah's whereabouts and that he had struck her with his car. He was arrested for battery. It was during this contact with police that Amber first mentioned her daughter was missing. The responding officers immediately felt that something was wrong with the story they were hearing.

Adding to the confusion, police were initially led to believe, for reasons that were never fully explained, that Amiah had last been seen on March 14 and was not in immediate danger. Within days, investigators established that she had actually last been seen on March 9. On March 19, authorities announced they believed Amiah was in what they called "extreme danger." By March 23, that characterization had shifted entirely. Police announced they were treating the disappearance as a homicide investigation, citing conflicting statements from Lyons and Amber Robertson, as well as the physical evidence recovered at Eagle Creek.

The Lies That Led Nowhere

From the moment police became aware of Amiah's disappearance, Robert Lyons proved to be a study in deliberate obstruction. When questioned, he told officers the baby was safe, and then began suggesting places where she might be found. Police checked each location. Amiah was not at any of them. Some of the locations he named, investigators discovered, did not exist at all. He was sending them on searches through geography that was either invented or meaningless, burning time and resources that might have been used to find a baby who might have still been alive.

Over the weeks and months that followed, Lyons told different people different things. He told some that he had thrown Amiah in the trash. He told others he had rubbed heroin on her gums to soothe the pain of a tooth she was cutting and that she had overdosed. He told still others he had thrown her over a bridge. Investigators searched the White River, a pond at a nearby apartment complex, the backyard of the Browning home on South Holmes Avenue, which they dug up with cadaver dogs, and every location Lyons provided or that tips suggested. In April 2019, police returned to the Holmes Avenue property after a new tip indicated something might be in the backyard. They found nothing that led them to Amiah.

None of it led to her. None of it was designed to.

Three Years of Waiting, Then a Grand Jury

For three years after Amiah disappeared, no arrests were made. The investigation remained open but went publicly quiet. Then, in September 2022, a Marion County grand jury handed down indictments. Both Amber Robertson and Robert Lyons were charged with four felony counts of neglect of a dependent. The indictment alleged that each of them had knowingly placed Amiah in a situation that endangered her life and health, and had deprived her of necessary support, resulting in serious bodily injury. Amber was arrested first; Lyons turned himself in to IMPD a few days later.

The charges, notably, were not murder charges. They were neglect charges, and that distinction mattered enormously, both legally and symbolically. Prosecutors could demonstrate that these two people had failed to protect Amiah, that they had placed her in danger and done nothing to secure her safety. What they could not prove, at least not to the standard required for a murder charge, was exactly how Amiah died or who specifically caused her death. The body had never been found. The exact cause and manner of death remained unknown. And Lyons had spent years providing deliberately useless information to investigators. The absence of a body, combined with Lyons's relentless misdirection, had created an evidentiary gap that prosecutors were unable to close with a homicide charge.

The Plea Deals and the Sentences

In April 2024, Robert Lyons entered a plea agreement, pleading guilty to neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury, a Level 3 felony. The remaining three charges against him were dropped. In May 2024, a judge sentenced him to sixteen years, with ten years to be served in the Indiana Department of Correction and six years suspended, along with three years of probation and mandatory substance abuse and mental health evaluation. The court explicitly noted that Lyons had not provided investigators with any information leading to Amiah's remains, and that even if he could not pinpoint her location exactly, he likely had information that could assist in finding her. He declined to make a statement in court.

In June 2024, Amber Robertson pleaded guilty to neglect of a dependent, a Level 5 felony, with the three more serious neglect charges against her dropped. Marion County Judge Marie Kern sentenced her to six years, with 637 days of credit for time served and 212 days of good time credit, with the remaining portion of the sentence suspended to probation. Amber declined to make a statement and wiped tears from her eyes during the proceedings. The judge ordered her to take parenting classes and undergo a mental health evaluation. As part of her plea agreement, she was required to have no contact with Robert Lyons. She walked out of jail that same day.

Charles Robertson, Amiah's grandfather and Amber's father, gave pre-sentencing testimony. He has been among the most vocal voices demanding accountability in this case, and his assessment of the outcome was unsparing. "What hurts me the most of all of this is these two people, Amber and Robbie, will go down in history as getting away with a perfect murder," Chuck said. Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears acknowledged the difficulty of the case. "It was a difficult case. It's a challenge case," he said, noting that the convictions reflected what prosecutors had been able to prove given the available evidence.

What Remains

Amiah Robertson has never been found. Her remains have not been located despite extensive searches of multiple bodies of water, a dug-up backyard, and every location provided by the man who last had her in his care. She was eight months old. She weighed, in all likelihood, somewhere in the range of fifteen to eighteen pounds. She was entirely helpless, and the people who held legal responsibility for her life either caused her death or stood by while it happened and then said nothing for a week.

The legal outcomes in this case have generated significant public frustration, and it is not difficult to understand why. Robert Lyons, who was the last known person to have Amiah in his care and who spent years sending investigators to nonexistent locations, will serve ten years and be eligible for release well before he turns forty. Amber Robertson, who waited seven days to report her infant daughter missing and who has since had five other children including twins born while she was in jail, served approximately twenty months before walking free on probation.

What happened to Amiah in those hours between 1:15 in the afternoon of March 9 and when Lyons returned to Amber without her that night is something only Lyons knows in full. The witness photographs, the cadaver dog hits at Eagle Creek, the hotel room left in disarray with an abandoned car seat and pack-n-play, the bruises covering the left side of an eight-month-old baby's face: these things together paint a picture of a child who was already dying or dead before her mother called the police. They do not tell us everything. They never will.

Amiah Josaphine Leann Robertson is still out there somewhere in Indianapolis. Her family is still waiting. Her grandfather is still angry. And the people who know what happened to her are the only ones who could bring her home.

If you have any information about the whereabouts of Amiah Robertson's remains, contact the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department at 317-327-6160.

Sources

Benjamin Hayes

Benjamin Hayes is a blogger with a passion for true crime and unresolved mysteries. In his free time, Benjamin is an avid hiker and photographer. He finds solace and inspiration in nature, often trekking through the scenic trails of the Appalachian Mountains.