Christopher Kerze

Case background and investigation

Christopher Kerze was a 17-year-old junior at Henry Sibley High School when he disappeared from Eagan, Minnesota, on April 20, 1990. According to a 2016 Forum News Service report published by the Bemidji Pioneer, he told his parents, Jim and Loni Kerze, that he felt unwell and stayed home from school that day. When his mother returned, he and the family's blue Dodge Caravan were gone.

A note had been left on the kitchen table. As quoted by KSTP, it said that something important had come up, that he was feeling somewhat better, and that he would be back by six unless he got lost. He did not come home that evening. The Bemidji Pioneer report states that a handwritten letter postmarked Duluth arrived the following day, which the family described as a farewell. Wikipedia's summary of the case says the letter admitted he had not really been ill and indicated that he intended to take his own life.

Two days after he left, the van was found abandoned along Minnesota Highway 38, roughly 20 miles north of Grand Rapids and about 200 miles from Eagan, near the George Washington and Chippewa forests. According to the same report, his father's Mossberg 20-gauge bolt-action shotgun was missing from the home, and $200 had been withdrawn from Christopher's savings account. Ground and air searches of the area did not locate him. Search dogs followed a scent about a mile into the woods from the highway before the trail stopped.

The case received national exposure in 1993, when his photograph was included in the American version of Soul Asylum's music video for "Runaway Train", which featured missing young people. In 2004, an anonymous letter postmarked Seattle told the family to stop looking for him; investigators concluded it was not credible, according to the Bemidji Pioneer report.

Interest in the case was renewed in 2016, after the Jacob Wetterling case in Minnesota was resolved. That year the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age-progressed image showing how Christopher might look at 43, and his parents said publicly that they believed he could still be alive.

No remains have been found and no evidence of what happened to him has been made public. In a KSTP report marking 35 years since the disappearance, Eagan Police Detective Angela Casey, who is assigned to the case, said many searches had been carried out and that the department remained committed to it. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Eagan Police Department.