A photo of Clint Washburn when he served in the US Army. Washburn has not been seen or heard from by his family since 2003. [Submitted photo]
Over twenty years have passed since Margi Washburn last saw her son. What happened to him since that day still remains a mystery, but her hope is to one day bring him home.
At a Peoria truck stop on Dec. 21, 2002, Margi Washburn, her husband Gary, and their son Brock met up with Clint Washburn for what would turn out to be the last time.
“It was an overcast day,” Washburn recalled, although the name of the truck stop escapes her.
Her son had been having issues with a former girlfriend and child support payments and she remembered that he was nervous that day about law enforcement charging through the door. They sat at a booth with Clint’s girlfriend and her youngest son seated across from them.
“Clint had a haunted look,” Washburn said, and he seemed almost broken and didn’t look quite like himself. “The meeting was awkward.”
But her son loved getting presents and so when his dad, Gary, handed him a Christmas card containing $50, he smiled and for a split second, Washburn saw some life enter into his eyes. After a short visit, they hugged and parted ways, with Washburn not understanding at the time the significance of that moment.
The very next year, Washburn received a phone call from her son, and the family talked for almost an hour. And while she couldn’t know it then, that conversation would be their last.
“That was the last time we ever heard his voice,” Washburn said.
In the autumn of that year, around Washburn’s birthday, a strange letter found its way to her. There was no return address. Her name and address were written in cursive across the front of the envelope. The letter was postmarked from Indiana and the text inside the envelope was typed.
The letter was purportedly from her son, and in the letter Clint wrote that he was leaving and asked his family not to look for him. He was never coming home, it stated.
“We were stunned, had no way to contact him, and believed he would someday change his mind,” Washburn said.
The circumstances surrounding the letter still haunt Washburn. She was heartbroken that her son would want to break off his relationship with his family so thoroughly, but she also questioned why Clint, characteristically blunt and straightforward, would choose to type a letter at all. If he had anything to tell you, he preferred a more direct method, she said. Still, Washburn tried to remain hopeful that one day she would see her son again.
Clint Washburn was born on Oct. 19, 1973. His birth had been a difficult one, Washburn said.
“I almost died giving birth. I was in labor for over 30 hours.”
As a child, Clint was a “cool kid.” Inquisitive and helpful, Clint loved his grandpa and enjoyed the time he spent riding on the tractor and tagging along, often helping out in the garage.
“He was stubborn, too, and at first he didn’t take kindly to having a baby brother,” said Washburn.
But after Brock, her second child, was born, the two brothers became close, and when the Washburns’ youngest son, Luke, was born, both Clint and Brock visited him at the hospital.
“Luke was born prematurely in 1977 and spent the whole six months of his life in the hospital. We thought he would be coming home someday, so we took the boys to meet him. Clint pushed Luke’s stroller through the halls of the neonatal unit,” she said, but her youngest son never did come home.
Clint graduated from Kewanee High School in 1991, and joined the Army. He served in Afghanistan from 1993 to 1995. After his military service, he moved back home and began a relationship with a woman he had known previously. The couple had two sons.
When that relationship ended, Clint, while working at Great Dane, became involved with a woman who had three sons from previous relationships. The couple settled in Kewanee but the child support issue caused them to move away to Wyoming, Ill., said Washburn.
From there, the couple moved away and Washburn completely lost track of where they were living. Clint, at one time, informed his parents that he had married his girlfriend, but Washburn said she’s been unable to find any proof of a marriage license between Clint and his girlfriend.
“The last time we knew where he lived was in a lovely house in rural Wyoming, Illinois. After that, we were told by this woman that he and she lived in Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky,” she said.
After Washburn received the unusual letter in 2003, her 29-year-old son completely vanished from her life.
“Every holiday, special day, birthday, anniversary, funeral – we looked for him,” she said.
Washburn expected that one day, Clint would just show up at her door and they would all catch up.
“I stayed in the same house and had the same phone for years. I have an open Facebook page,” she said. “Clint was one of those who could take a computer apart and put it back together, and he was just as intelligent with the internet. I knew he could find us.”
But with each passing year, her hopes for an unexpected visit from Clint began to dim.
“Eventually, every time there was a body found, or an unidentified man was murdered or committed suicide we waited to hear if it was Clint,” Washburn said. “It was a horrible way to live.”
In 2012, Washburn started a Facebook page, “Missing Clint Washburn,” dedicated to finding her son. She hoped that he or one of his friends would see the page and that would spur Clint to contact his family.
On March 8, 2022, Washburn said she decided to check the Facebook page for messages, and that’s when she found a message dated October of 2021 from Clint’s stepson. The message was sent six months earlier.
“I prayed he still wanted to talk,” Washburn said. “He did.”
During the conversation, Clint’s stepson would relay to Washburn everything he knew about what happened to her son so many years before. Clint’s stepson told her that he had received a phone call from a person claiming that someone had confessed to them of murdering Clint.
“As I listened to him describe Clint’s murder in Somerset, Kentucky, I started shaking all over and couldn’t stop,” she said.
The news made it almost impossible to speak, and she couldn’t stop crying.
“I thought the tears would never stop, and that wave of grief comes over me more often than I expected and it makes it hard to exist.”
For years, Washburn tried to convince her husband that they should turn the matter over to the authorities, but he had thought it premature. He held out hope of their son’s return and worried that Clint would be angry if law enforcement became involved, she said.
But after her husband passed away in 2018, Washburn reached out to the police.
“In 2020, I called the FBI. They literally hung up on me. I tried to report him as a missing person, but the officer on duty said Clint wasn’t technically missing since he was an adult and could do what he wanted.”
In 2021, she tried again and that time, a report was taken. Within two days, Washburn was told that Clint had been located, and that an order of protection had been served on him in 2019 in Arizona.
“I was so relieved,” she said. “But then I had a question. How could they be sure?”
Washburn said she had spent a lot of time searching for Clint’s presence on the internet and there were numerous men with the same name. She phoned back the officer and asked if there was a social security number on file. After Washburn read off her son’s social security number, the officer confirmed it matched.
But after speaking to Clint’s stepson and learning about the alleged murder confession, Washburn again contacted the local police, and an investigation was started. Within 48 hours, she was informed he was found. Washburn said police texted her a photo of a man in a stocking cap, but the man in the photograph looked nothing like her son.
“I sent that photo to family, friends, and Clint’s Army buddies. It was not Clint. That put me through a special kind of hell,” she said.
At the end of July, she was informed that local authorities could no longer investigate Clint’s disappearance due to lack of resources, pressing new cases and a lack of jurisdiction.
“It was suggested that I hire a private investigator and since I can’t afford that, I use my blog to try and communicate with anyone who might know something,” she said.
Washburn has carried on with the mission to find Clint and bring him home, but she believes the impact of their son’s disappearance and the stress and uncertainty contributed to her husband’s death.
“I feel certain that not knowing where Clint was aged him,” she said. “It did me.”
Following her husband’s death, Washburn found out that Gary often confided his feelings about Clint to a neighbor and close friend.
“I know we talked about Clint a lot, but I will always be grateful he had someone else to confide in, too,” said Washburn.
Washburn has only recently turned the letter she received in 2003 over to authorities. She hopes that police will be able to extract fingerprints or DNA from the envelope and prove that it wasn’t her son who sent the letter. She continues to write on her blog and post on her social media page. Recently, she was a guest on The Vanished Podcast, episode #376. She has received a few tips over the years, but nothing solid, and so she waits and hopes for news that will finally give her the closure she needs.
Not long after her husband died, Washburn had a vivid dream about both Clint and Gary, and the dream, while not giving her any answers, still gave her comfort.
“My prayer is that Clint’s remains will be found so I can put him and his dad to rest and have a celebration of life for them,” she said.
