A mother sent her three-year-old boy away to ‘learn to be a man.’ Now he’s missing

An Amber Alert went out in the Wisconsin town of Two Rivers warning that a little boy had gone missing and police needed the community’s help.

Over a month on from the 20 February alert, the town is still searching for Elijah Vue, while his mother and her boyfriend are in jail, facing child neglect charges.

Here’s everything we know so far about the case:

Three-year-old Elijah Vue was last seen at around 8am on 20 February on the 3900 block of Michicot Road in Two Rivers, a town on the shore of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.

Two Rivers Police Department said they received a call at 10.59am from “the adult caregiver”, who later turned out to be his mother’s partner Jesse Vang, reporting the boy as missing.

Elijah, from Wisconsin Dells around 150 miles away, had been sent by his mother Katrina Baur to stay with Mr Vang “for disciplinary reasons”, Two Rivers authorities said.

In court documents seen by NBC 26, police said that Ms Baur told them she had sent her son to Mr Vang so he could teach the boy how to be a man.

Mr Vang allegedly used “tactics” including time-outs where Elijah had to stand up for one to three hours, or was forced to take cold showers.

On 20 March, new details emerged of messages between Mr Vang and Ms Baur in the days leading up to Elijah’s disappearance.

“I told you to trust me… I’m a make sure he hates me and being here,” Mr Vang told the mother on 18 February. She responded: “Don’t want him to *hate* YOU. Just fear you.”

However, Mr Vang told Ms Baur not to worry and that sometimes someone has to be “the bad person”.

“I know but either way he can fear you and respect you,” Ms Baur replied, with Mr Vang responding that Elijah did fear him, “but he didn’t respect me..now I’m making him respect me.”

The complaint also shows that a few days before, on 13 and 14 February, Ms Baur had visited the Two Rivers apartment and took a photo of Elijah with a blindfold over his eyes and bruising on his face as he lay on a bed.

At this point, she had left a six-year-old girl, believed to be her daughter, outside in a cold car.