Child Sleeping Alone In Car Vanishes

Timothy Jacob Davison, better known as TJ, lived in Winter Haven, Florida, with his parents and two siblings. At the age of four, his parents, Dreyden Davison and Debra Deloach, divorced. Even though TJ’s mother gained custody of him and his siblings, she handed them over to their father’s sister, Delany Davison, who lived in Decatur, Illinois, with her boyfriend and child.

According to Delany, Dreyden and Debra were not interested in raising children. It was obvious that TJ was not being taught or exposed to much, once he moved in with his aunt he began to open up.

TJ was a slow learner and had a speech impediment. He did not know his last name or home address. At the time, he was also missing his two upper front teeth.

On October 15, 1985, Delany drove all the children to the Brettwood Village Shopping Center. When they arrived around noon, TJ was asleep so Delany decided to not wake him up.

He was asleep in the backseat of the red 1981 four-door Dodge Omni. TJ was wearing a light blue windbreaker, blue jeans, white sneakers, and a black baseball cap.

Delany and the three other kids took about thirty minutes at the Kroger grocery store inside the mall. When they returned to the car, TJ was gone.

She immediately reported her nephew missing. According to Delany, the car doors were locked but authorities would later claim they weren’t.

Extensive searches of the area were done by officers, dogs, and helicopters. Fliers were sent out to various states and there were several calls from people who may have seen him but nothing was ever confirmed.

One of the first tips police received was that a man and a woman were seen putting a similar-looking boy inside their car, just a couple of minutes away from the mall. It was a black two-door 1978 or 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass. The car had Indiana license plates leading to the belief that he may have been taken to the nearby state. Authorities followed this lead to no avail.

Authorities investigated Debra and Dreyden but they were eventually ruled out. Nevertheless, Dreyden was arrested shortly after TJ’s disappearance on an unrelated warrant. He has been arrested numerous times throughout the years for a variety of reasons including, battery, aggravated assault, kidnap/false imprisonment of an adult, resisting officers, violating probation, burglary, and criminal mischief.

After police cleared TJ’s family, his disappearance was classified as a non-family abduction. Despite this, some people are not convinced that the family is not involved. Former police chief Mark Barthelemy doesn’t think Delany’s story adds up. But he did interview TJ’s parents at the time and is sure they were not involved.

In November of 1987, a lot of people thought that TJ had been found. A deaf-mute boy had been found wandering the streets of Juarez, Mexico, near the US border (El Paso, Texas). He was around TJ’s age and was similar-looking.

However, his footprints were compared to TJ’s and they were not a match. After an extensive search, he was identified as José Garcia. José, originally from Tampico, Mexico, had traveled over 1000 miles to the border.

Shortly after being reunited with his mother, he was placed in an orphanage. Due to the amount of attention José’s case had generated, the non-profit Ears International paid for the boy to get a cochlear implant.

The Decatur house where TJ had lived with his aunt burned down in 2002. In 2013, authorities dug up the yard in search of evidence. Nothing is believed to have been found.

Notably, TJ’s maternal aunt, Cindy Smith, vanished in 1987 from Winter Haven, Florida. Her boyfriend is a suspect. The cases are not believed to be connected.

Timothy Jacob Davison has been missing for 35 years. If alive, he is now 39-years-old.