What Happened to Mark Himebaugh? A MOM'S UNENDING SEARCH

A BOY LEFT HIS NEW JERSEY HOUSE 31 YEARS AGO AND NEVER RETURNED. NOW HIS MOM HOPES NEW TOOLS LIKE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MAY FIND HIM

- K.C. BAKER

The thickets of tall marsh grass swaying silently in the breeze across the street from Maureen Himebaugh’s house near New Jersey’s Sunray Beach are a constant reminder of the day the life she knew evaporated. On Nov. 25, 1991, after a long day at school, her son Mark, 11, raced home, plopped down on the couch and turned on the TV, “like he normally did,” she recalls. As he lounged in the cozy Del Haven, N.J., home he shared with his mother and older brother Matthew, clouds of smoke began darkening the sky. A brush fire had broken out in the nearby marsh, Maureen, 71, recalls, “and he asked me if he could go see it.”

Mark was putting on the LA Gear sneakers that once belonged to Matthew when a neighbor called Maureen asking for a ride. Maureen almost asked Mark to go with her, but “I knew he wouldn’t want to because he was a Curious George” who wanted to check out the fire, she says, so she told him she’d be back soon. “He said, ‘Okay, Mom,’” she says. “They were his last words to me.”