Family won't aid in search for boy

KITTITAS, Kittitas County — Eleven-year-old Richard "Cody" Haynes Jr. has been missing from his home on Main Street for 11 weeks now.

The boy's father, Richard "Rick" Haynes, and the father's live-in girlfriend, Marla Jaye Harding, have retained a lawyer and refuse to talk formally with investigators, The Spokesman-Review newspaper reported Friday.

The two didn't help in a community search for Cody, nor did they attend a candlelight vigil for him.

"Their behavior is definitely curious," said Police Chief Steve Dunnagan. "It does make us ask, 'Why does he have to have an attorney to help us find his son?' "

Police have received only eight tips — all unfounded.

"We don't have squat," Dunnagan told the newspaper last week. He fears the worst but has not asked for outside law-enforcement help.

Cody was last seen on the night of Sept. 11, at his family's home in an old, two-story apartment less than a block from the two-man Kittitas Police Department in this town off Interstate 90 nine miles east of Ellensburg.

After dinner, he and Harding argued. The boy refused to put leftovers away and do the dishes. As discipline, he was ordered to sit in the kitchen until almost midnight, when he was sent to a second-floor bedroom, the chief said. His four sisters were told to stay away from their brother's room.

"About 2:30 a.m., Mr. Haynes told us he left the home to go looking for car parts," the chief said. Haynes, 43, is a tow-truck operator in Ellensburg who is restoring a 1954 Kaiser, the newspaper said.

In preliminary discussions, the chief said, Haynes told investigators that he drove 250 miles, from Kittitas to Toppenish, Yakima and Naches in Yakima County, took a wrong turn and ended up on U.S. 395, taking him to Ritzville, Adams County, and Interstate 90. He drove at least as far east as Sprague, Lincoln County, the chief said.

Haynes returned home about 4 p.m. Sunday and reported the boy missing two hours later, the chief said.

The chief visited the home Sept. 17, but Harding told him he could not question the girls, the newspaper said. He made a referral for suspected child abuse to Child Protective Services, and state workers removed the four girls from the home Sept. 21, the newspaper said.

Harding, 39, is a former state Child Protective Services employee who was fired in February 2001 and denied unemployment benefits, court records show. She was fired for misconduct, said spokeswoman Kathy Spears of the Department of Social and Health Services.

On Oct. 22, 41 days after the boy disappeared, the chief and a detective asked for a formal interview with Haynes. He and Harding went to the police station, but when the chief asked for a private interview with Haynes, Harding objected, Dunnagan said.

"At that point, they 'lawyered up' and said they weren't talking anymore," the chief said.

Haynes told The Spokesman-Review Monday that he would not discuss his son's disappearance without his attorney present.

"I'm not interested in talking about it. I'm not talking without my attorney present. No way," he said.

Asked if it was possible that his son was dead, Haynes said, "Oh, no, not a chance. He's not dead. He's not dead."

Harding could not be reached for comment yesterday because she had no phone listing. Haynes' phone number was unpublished.

The police chief said the boy's mother, who has served prison time in Florida for child abuse and can't legally have contact with Cody, has been eliminated as a suspect.

Cody's disappearance is posted on the Web site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The chief said he would welcome any help the public can provide.

"It's a small town," Dunnagan said. "We don't have this kind of thing happen here — ever."