David John Klein

• Missing Since 11/10/1951
• Missing From Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Classification Lost/Injured Missing
• Sex Male
• Race White
• Age 6 years old
• Height and Weight 3'6, 55 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A brown sheepskin coat, blue jeans, black overshoes, black mittens and a red and gray corduroy cap.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair, gray eyes. Daniel had warts on both hands at the time of his disappearance. His front teeth are large and crooked, and he has a scar on his thumb and a scar on the right side of his lower lip.

Details of Disappearance

David and his brothers, Daniel and Kenneth, disappeared together from Minneapolis, Minnesota on November 10, 1951. The boys left their home in the 2900 block of Colfax Avenue north at 1:30 p.m. to go to Fairview Park at Lyndale and 29th Street, four blocks away. Their older brother was supposed to join them, but he felt sick that day and stayed home. At 4:30 p.m., the boys' brother went to Fairview Park to come take them home, but they weren't there.

The family notified police shortly after 8:00 p.m., and the police promised to search for them. At 3:00 a.m. the next day, the police called the Klein family to see if the boys had come home. They didn't send any detectives to the Klein home until 6:30 p.m., almost 24 hours after the boys were reported missing. The children were never heard from again.

Investigators believe it's possible the Klein brothers drowned in the Mississippi River. The river runs near Fairview Park, and a tracking dog traced their scent to the riverbank, where it lost the trail. Searchers found two of the children's caps in the river near the dam, and two Roman Catholic catechisms belonging to the boys were found on a brush pile near the riverbank. However, an extensive search of the river turned up no other sign of them or their remains.

The search was called off on November 16, and none of the brothers were ever found. The Klein children's parents continued to hope they were alive, and up until the 1990s they advertised in the newspaper asking for any information leading to their whereabouts.

In 1996, a man responded to one of the newspaper ads and claimed he was David. The Klein parents and one of their sons traveled to Arizona to meet him, and he seemed to remember specific details from David's childhood, such as playing in his grandparents' back yard. This man has since died, and DNA testing proved he was not David, but some of the Klein relatives still think he was.

In 1998, a Minneapolis police officer re-examined all the evidence in the case and identified a potential suspect, a next door neighbor of the family. He had been accused of molesting his five-year-old daughter, although this accusation was never proven. The day after the Klein boys went missing, this neighbor replaced his wooden truck bed and had concrete poured in his basement. He also stated, "The boys weren't worth looking for." This neighbor died in the 1970s. He has not been publicly identified.

The Klein brothers' parents had four more sons in the years after the boys disappeared. Their cases remain unsolved.