We Don't Have Squat: The Disappearance of Cody Haynes
Richard Lee Haynes Jr., known to everyone as Cody, was eleven years old in September 2004, living in a second floor apartment above a storefront on Main Street in the small central Washington town of Kittitas. He stood about five feet tall, weighed around ninety pounds, and had brown hair and blue eyes, with a small round birthmark on his inner right thigh, a detail that would eventually circulate on missing child posters. He lived with his father, Rick Haynes, a forty three year old tow truck operator, his father's live-in girlfriend Marla Jaye Harding, a thirty nine year old former Child Protective Services worker, and his four sisters. The children in the household were homeschooled and, according to the town's own police chief, rarely left their own backyard, a description he summed up simply as very sheltered, very controlled, very structured.
A Punishment That Lasted Until Midnight
On the evening of Saturday, September 11, 2004, an argument broke out between Cody and Marla Harding after dinner, when Cody refused to put away leftovers and wash the dishes as he'd apparently been asked to do. As punishment, Harding ordered him to sit at the kitchen table, where he remained for roughly four hours before finally being sent up to the second floor bedroom he shared with his father, around midnight. He was told not to leave that room for any reason, and his four sisters were separately instructed to stay away from him. No adult checked on him again for approximately the next eighteen hours.
Sometime around 2:30 that morning, Rick Haynes left the apartment, later claiming he had set out on an extraordinary, roughly two hundred fifty mile round trip journey across eastern Washington in search of parts for a 1954 Kaiser automobile. His account of that trip included breaking an axle at a rest stop in Sprague before eventually making his way back home around four o'clock the following afternoon. When Kittitas Police Chief Dunnagan later questioned him about the timeline, he asked directly whether it was possible Cody had stowed away somewhere in his van and slipped out unnoticed at some point during that long drive. Haynes told him it was possible.
A Room Staged to Look Occupied
At some point during that eighteen hour window when no adult checked on him, Cody left the apartment entirely on his own, unnoticed by anyone else in the household. Before leaving, he arranged stuffed animals in his bed in a way apparently designed to simulate his own presence under the covers, a small, methodical detail suggesting a boy who wanted to buy himself time before anyone realized he was actually gone. He took a black and green camouflage bag containing clothing with him. That bag, along with his bicycle, was later discovered abandoned in a nearby shed, meaning that whatever plan Cody had for leaving, it did not appear to have gotten him very far from home at all.
Two possible sightings surfaced in the immediate aftermath of his disappearance. A neighbor reported possibly seeing him the morning he vanished, and a separate report placed a boy matching his description eating potato chips at a local business called Johnny's Serv-U that same day. Neither sighting was ever confirmed as actually being Cody.
We Don't Have Squat
The community rallied quickly once Cody's absence became public, organizing a search on September 15 and a candlelight vigil shortly afterward. Neither Rick Haynes nor Marla Harding attended either event. When a local reporter approached Haynes directly during this period, he refused to answer questions, saying flatly that he wasn't talking without his attorney present. Asked whether he thought his son might be dead, he answered with a strange, repetitive insistence: oh, no, not a chance. He's not dead. He's not dead. Chief Dunnagan, meanwhile, described the state of the investigation in blunt terms that captured just how little physical evidence police actually had to work with in those early weeks: we don't have squat, he said, noting that the department had received only eight tips, none of which had led anywhere useful.
When Dunnagan attempted to formally interview Cody's four sisters on September 17, less than a week after Cody disappeared, Marla Harding intervened and refused to allow the questioning to proceed, telling investigators directly that she wasn't going to lose her freedom for anything. That confrontation, combined with the family's broader refusal to cooperate, only deepened investigators' suspicion that something considerably darker than a runaway situation had actually taken place inside that apartment.
A Sister's Account and a Replaced Kitchen Floor
Washington's Child Protective Services removed all four of Cody's sisters from the home on September 21, 2004, just ten days after Cody vanished, citing evidence of excessive corporal punishment and possible sexual abuse uncovered during their own investigation into the household, marking the third time CPS had opened a file connected to this specific family. It was only after the girls were placed into foster care, away from the direct influence of their father and Harding, that Cody's oldest sister came forward with an account considerably more disturbing than anything investigators had previously heard, telling authorities that Cody had been beaten severely inside the home on the very day he disappeared.
Acting on that account, investigators returned to the apartment in February 2005 with a search warrant, specifically looking for traces of blood that might corroborate the sister's story, particularly in the kitchen where Cody had spent hours sitting in punishment before vanishing. What they found instead was that the kitchen's flooring had been entirely replaced sometime after Cody's disappearance, done without the knowledge or consent of the property's own landlord, an act that effectively eliminated whatever forensic evidence might once have been recoverable from that specific room. Investigators described making what they termed a significant discovery during that search, though they declined to publicly specify exactly what that discovery involved. They seized a computer from the apartment along with vehicles connected to the household, but ultimately came away without anything conclusive enough to bring formal charges against either Haynes or Harding.
A Family History Investigators Already Knew
The household had not been unfamiliar to Washington's child welfare system even before Cody disappeared. Records showed prior CPS involvement in both 2001 and 2002, stemming from reports that the Haynes children had been forced to stand outside during the winter without adequate clothing. Both of those earlier complaints were ultimately dismissed without further action, a pattern that, in hindsight, left the household under considerably less scrutiny than it might otherwise have received heading into 2004. Rick Haynes and Marla Harding married sometime after Cody's September 2004 disappearance, continuing to decline cooperation with investigators and retaining legal representation throughout. Every other adult connected to the extended family, by contrast, cooperated fully with authorities throughout the investigation.
Still Missing, Still Unsolved
Cody Haynes's case was formally transferred to the FBI in October 2005, roughly a year after he vanished, reflecting the scale of resources local Kittitas police had already exhausted without producing an arrest or a body. More than two decades later, the case remains open and officially unsolved, with Cody still classified as an endangered missing person and authorities acknowledging they believe he may ultimately be a homicide victim, even without any remains ever having been recovered to confirm it. His mother has continued searching and advocating publicly for his case in the years since, and organizations advocating for missing children continue to circulate his story, hoping that the same silence that has defined the case since a replaced kitchen floor erased whatever evidence might once have existed there will eventually break.
Sources
- The Charley Project: Richard Lee Haynes Jr.
- The Spokesman-Review: Without a trace
- CUE Center for Missing Persons: Richard "Cody" Haynes Jr.
- KING 5: Nearly 22 years after Kittitas boy vanished, questions linger about father's role in his disappearance
- Daily Record: 2 decades later, Kittitas boy still missing
- KXLY: Mom still searching for son missing since 2004
