Police in Milwaukee say they have no evidence that a local man was involved in any missing-children cases, including the disappearance of four-year-old Michael Dunahee from a Victoria sports field in March of 1991.
There have been media reports that police found a poster of Michael, along with articles related to other missing-child cases, at the home of Vernon Seitz after he died of natural causes in December.
But Milwaukee police spokeswoman Anne Schwartz said yesterday that investigators have no evidence Mr. Seitz was involved in the disappearance of any child.
"We have no information to substantiate any allegation that the deceased was involved in any missing children cases or homicides of children," she said in a statement.
Police obtained a search warrant for Mr. Seitz's home after he confessed to his psychiatrist that he had killed two children in the late 1950s.
Ms. Schwartz said the search warrant, executed at the beginning of December, yielded drawings by Mr. Seitz of children in sadomasochistic situations, but no evidence linking the 62-year-old to any child homicide or child crime.
Sergeant Grant Hamilton of the Victoria Police Department said the force will contact police in Milwaukee. But, he said, police do not consider the discovery of a poster to be a solid lead in the unsolved case.
"As the Dunahee family have said themselves, they sent out thousands of these posters over the years," he said. "The fact that he had a poster isn't that unusual, and also the fact that when we do search warrants sometimes at residences of pedophiles we will find volumes of child pornography, clippings of missing children, posters of missing children, because there's some morbid fantasy they have of kidnapping kids."
Sgt. Hamilton said police had contacted the Dunahee family about the discovery of the poster.
Michael's disappearance led to one of the largest missing-child investigations in Canadian history. A Victoria police officer is still assigned to the case.
Michael's mother was playing flag football at a soccer field and his father was watching the game when the boy disappeared. He would be 21 now.
There have been numerous reported sightings of Michael in the United States, but each lead has proved false.