PORT REPUBLIC, MD — "He was innocent, he was a very kind gentle little boy."
55 years after Bob Boyes disappeared, his sister still remembers him as a sensitive soul.
"No one deserves this, no child deserves this," Joy Lee tells WMAR-2 News.
She was just three years old when her brother, "Bobby," went missing the day after Christmas in 1968.
He vanished into thin air on his way home from playing with the neighbors, sharing the new toys they'd just gotten.
Bobby was walking home from a neighbor's on Wash Hance Road in Calvert County.
She says he didn't come home, but his pet deer, named Pete, came home without him, which is when the family started to worry.
The family has gotten few answers in the years since.
"I'm not asking for miracles," says Joy, "or looking for anything more than just, you know, closure."
Detective Sergeant Kemery Hunt with the Maryland State Police is also looking for closure on this case.
He got this cold case back in 2021.
"It took a long time to actually go through this entire case and I was just hooked on it," says Hunt. "I said, 'What can I do?'"
He reached out to an agent with the FBI who has been helping him work the case with additional resources.
Hunt broke down the case for us.
"December 26, 1968, Boyes goes missing. His family, his mom and dad, Jane Boyes and Richard Boyes, they call the police at around maybe 7:30 p.m.," he says.
Bobby had gone to a neighbor's house to play, his parents said they'd last seen him around noon.
"I think the brothers came home around 2 o'clock, they were supposed to be home at four," says Joy. "So this is the story, you know, Bobby wanted to stay longer to play with the Hance boys and it was still light outside, so the two brothers came home on their way. And apparently, I don't know exactly, maybe an hour, hour, and 15 minutes later, he left the house, the Hance boys' house, and the mother had said that she had watched him through the kitchen window walking down the street with this pet deer Pete until she couldn't see him any longer."
He knows the woods, they told police, but it's December.
"I think it's volunteer firefighters from that area and the rescue squad, they all come down there searching and they can't find him," says Hunt. "So it gets to be a little too dark and they stopped that search at that point."
For the next four to five days, over a hundred volunteers, helicopters, and planes scour the area for any sign of Bobby.
"Nothing can be found, it's like he vanished and there's no trace of him," Hunt says.
They likely searched ten square miles and the wells that peppered the area.
Detective Hunt said that he doubts Bobby could've been buried at that time of year, in the frozen ground, and that had he been dumped in the water, his body would've washed up.
He says that as police asked around, no one knew the Boyes family, they were new to a tight-knit community.
Investigators decided to take a hard look at the family.
Richard and Jane Boyes took polygraph tests.
"Jane passes with flying colors," says Hunt. "But Richard Boyes, he shows deception on that exam. And he shows deception on the point of 'Do you know where Bobby Boyes is' and 'What happened to him.'"
Polygraphs are not admissible in court.
There was no other concrete evidence ever found showing that he had anything to do with Bobby's disappearance.
"There were a few things that were suspicious," says Hunt. "For Christmas, Bobby Boyes got a watch. And it was only one day, but he wouldn't take this watch off. Come to find out like two or three days later Richard Boyes had this watch on him and he gave it to someone."
Detective Hunt added, "It was always my suspicion, reading through that case file, that Richard Boyes had something to do with Bobby's disappearance."
He's not alone.
"I think my father had something to do with it," says Joy, "I can just leave it at that."
Joy didn't know her father well.
About a year and a half after Bobby disappeared, Jane Boyes packed up Joy, a newborn, and three other kids and moved them all to San Diego.
"My father never once had anything to do with any of us for the most part," she said.
She went to visit him once when she was 17. He was living in Florida and had a new wife, two stepchildren, and two more children.
But if her father knew anything about Bobby's disappearance, he took it to the grave.
Richard Boyes died in 1996 at the age of 59.
A detective working the case at the time even asked him to put any information about the disappearance in his will, but nothing came of that.
Jane Boyes died in 2019.
And Bobby, whether he's alive or dead, is still missing.
Hear more on this case by clicking the video below.
If you have any information that might help detectives find Bobby Boyes, please call the Maryland State Police Prince Frederick Barrack in Calvert County at 410-535-1400.
