Looking for Dylan Redwine

Of late, I haven't been watching too much Dr. Phil, although I used to enjoy the show very much.  It's to the point that I've seen much of the reactions and scenarios and thus am not much interested in watching this particular drug addict, or this divorcing couple or this defiant teen go through the predictable steps of the drama.

However, Tuesday and Wednesday's show this week caught my attention.  It was the story of a missing boy, Dylan Redwine.  He disappeared 3 months ago while visiting his father.

It's a long shot but I'm attaching his picture here, just in case someone knows something.

Dr. Phil was very cautious to be fair but by the end of two hours of TV, I was fairly certain the father knew more than he was telling.  My heart went out to his mother, who was clearly at the end of her rope and desperate to find her son.  She was begging with her ex-husband to tell her what had happened.

Dylan's phone stopped texting at 9:30 pm.  At 7:30 the next morning, the father went to work.  He said he saw Dylan and got a sleepy acknowledgement.  At 11:30, the father comes home and Dylan isn't there.  He's not worried, he assumes the boy is hiking or has gone to visit a friend.  The father takes a nap and wakes up an hour later.  Dylan still isn't home and now he notices that his son's things are gone.  At 1:30, he begins to grow alarmed and starts to search.

There are a lot of red flags in what happened.  The father kept slipping into the past tense when talking about his son: he was a good boy, he was careful, etc.  He refused to talk to Dylan's mother, insisting on exchanging text messages instead.  On the show, he refused to take a polygraph test.

None of this is evidence but I can't help but try and put together a scenario which fits.  The dad was described as tempermental and stubborn by many people who knew him.  Could he and Dylan have gotten into a teen-parent scrap and Dylan took off?  The father's home is very rural and isolated and a 13 year old could have gotten into trouble quickly if he took off in the November night.  Could the dad have destroyed Dylan's phone in a fit of irritation, thus cutting off his son's avenue of communication?

It strikes me as a plausible scenario.  Typical fight, kid storms off and Dad hunkers down, assuming the kid will be back shortly.  Come morning, kid isn't back and Dad starts to panic, realizing he's made a critical parenting failure.  Choosing to cover it up instead of fixing the problem isn't unheard of (sad to say but true). 

I wish I knew.  I wish I had the power to be able to tell that terrified mother what exactly happened to her son.  Knowing the worst isn't as bad as having to be aware of all the possibilities.  I wish I had some sort of remote viewing device which let me watch the past, discover what happened to all the missing children out there.

I hope the family finds answers soon.  I hope Dylan is okay and hiding out somewhere, waiting until it's safe to come home.  My thoughts are with them.