Aaroné Thompson was named after her daddy. She was born in Detroit to Lynette and Aaron Thompson on Nov. 30, 1998. Old pictures show Lynette smiling proudly.
The story of little Aaroné is both bizarre and utterly ordinary.
She was reported as a runaway Monday. Aurora police apparently assumed she was a typical teenage runaway who would turn up at a friend’s house. They didn’t realize the missing child was a 6-year-old until her father, seeking more urgent attention, went to the police station to speak to them personally.
A frantic search ensued.
And then Thursday, mysterious new clues changed the department’s focus.
Suddenly, the search for a lost child became a murder investigation. Thompson and his girlfriend, Shelley Lowe, were dubbed “persons of interest” by police, who said there’s evidence the child may have been missing for more than a year.
It’s a long time to misplace a child.
In that time, her mother, living in a homeless shelter in Detroit, never alerted officials that her little girl might have disappeared. Her grandfather, Jessie Cloman, didn’t raise concerns with authorities about Aaroné even though he said the last time he spoke to her on the phone was 11 months ago.
She was spectral.
Since she wasn’t registered for school, no school officials inquired about her. No friends or neighbors said they missed her. Nobody.
To people who should have cared about her, she seemed forgotten, insignificant.
Then Monday, her father reported her missing, which is not exactly logical behavior for a murder suspect when nobody else seems to have noticed the victim’s disappearance.
That’s what makes the case so bizarre. A motive is hard to fathom and the police so far are circumspect.
“At this point, there’s not going to be much more information,” Terry Jones, Aurora’s interim police chief, said Friday.
Unless a body turns up or an arrest warrant is issued, Jones said he won’t have much to say.
As he spoke, cadaver dogs emerged from the suburban house, sniffed past the rose bushes near the front door, wagged their tails and bounded toward the cul-de-sac.
The quiet, ordinary suburban neighborhood seemed an unlikely setting for a murder. The sketchy details of the case defy logic.
As the detectives swarmed the scene, news helicopters hovered overhead. Reporters and photographers were everywhere.
Everybody wanted to know what happened to Aaroné.
The child who was so unimportant she wasn’t even registered for school suddenly was a top priority.
Her family life never got much attention. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The neighbors, busy with their own lives, never paid much notice.
The seven children who were removed from Thompson’s house and placed in protective custody Thursday were “extremely relaxed,” Jones said. They’re in a variety of foster homes. They’re safe now and appear “comfortable.”
He emphasized this as if to say, “How bizarre. What kind of family is it where the kids are mellow about being hauled off to foster care?”
Police want to reconstruct the little girl’s life. They’re interviewing the children, scratching for evidence, poring over every detail.
Experts have produced sketches of what Aaroné might look like now. They’re searching for someone who remembers seeing her, trying everything.
The family’s beige, faux-Tudor house is “the center of the universe” for the investigation, Jones said.
“We have a tremendous obligation in front of us,” Jones said, “and that is to bring justice for this little girl.”
In a picture released by police, the little girl is squinting in the sun.
It’s blurry, out of focus. Her face is shimmery, almost as if she’s fading away, disappearing right before our eyes.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
