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There's a lot of little clues and little things that like, I mean, hopefully we just keep hoping that eventually something will come up that we can connect all these things together and figure out what happened.

Well, it's really a strange case to be quite frank with. Usually there's some kind of lead or evidence that suggests either that he's alive or he's deceased. In this case, there's nothing to indicate either.

15-year-old Michael Dillard disappeared from his home in Calvin West, Virginia on the evening of January 12, 2018.

He was helping his mom carry bags of wood pellets in from the car. He ran behind the house and his mom didn't think too much of it at first, but when she finished carrying the rest of the bags in and couldn't find Michael, she became concerned.

First, she called family for help and then alerted the authorities. The weather quickly turned that evening as a storm rolled into the area, first bringing rain and then snow.

The storm made searching very difficult that night. Many searches have been conducted in the weeks and months that followed Michael's disappearance.

But the only trace of him that's ever been found was his jacket. Since Michael went missing during the harsh winter months, they were hopeful that the spring fall would yield some clues.

But Michael's disappearance is still just as much of a mystery as it was that stormy January night.

Amarissa and from Wondery, this is episode 130 of the vanished. Michael Dillard's story.

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I was contacted by Michael's older sister Brittany asking if I could feature his case on the show.

Brittany is many years older than Michael, but she lived just a few miles away and maintained a very close relationship with him.

In order to get a good grasp on why Michael may have just run off that night, we have to go back and explore a little bit of his history.

Michael was adopted when he was a young child. He was adopted when he was four years old. And he's always been a really friendly and sweet kid.

He's always had like a really good heart and very loving.

As Michael got a little older, his family became more concerned about some of the behaviors that he was exhibiting.

As he hit his teenage years, he got an attitude like my teenagers do about a year ago. Well, I guess it would be a little bit more than a year now.

So probably February, he had written a suicide note and my mom found it. And she started taking them to counseling, the counselor suggested that she came to the ER.

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