A disabled mother vanished after her baby was found dead in a bathtub during a deliberate house fire in Pennsylvania in 2007. Investigators believe the fire was set intentionally, and the mother has not been seen since. Her family has offered a reward for information.
Fire and Discovery
In the early hours of a summer morning in 2007, emergency services rushed to a blazing property on Dr. Fugate Drive, a quiet residential street in Pennsylvania. By the time officers reached the scene, the fire had already consumed much of the house, and firefighters made the heartbreaking discovery of a baby boy's remains in a bathtub, according to Morbidology. His mother was nowhere to be found.
Investigators quickly established the fire was deliberate, with evidence of accelerant uncovered at the scene. A post-mortem examination was unable to confirm the infant's cause of death, though it concluded he had been killed before the blaze was started.
The Mother: Joey Lynn Offutt
It emerged the property was rented by 33-year-old Joey Lynn Offutt, who had given birth to a baby boy, Alexis Alfred Brolin III, just six weeks earlier, reports the Daily Star.
Joey was mildly intellectually disabled, with an estimated mental capacity of a 14-year-old, and spoke with a speech impediment. Her disabilities could leave her feeling overwhelmed, and she was known to withdraw from the world entirely — refusing to answer her phone or door for days at a time, according to WTAJ News.
Joey had always longed for a family of her own, having grown up as a child of divorce after her parents separated when she was just three years old. By all accounts, Joey was a painfully shy and deeply insecure child, with her mother, Sherry Hallett, recalling that she maintained a childlike naivety throughout her life.
Investigation and Disappearance
Joey had spent a year studying journalism at Shepherd University in West Virginia, but left after failing her first year. Drifting between various jobs, she had two children aged nine and two in 2007, though her relationship with the eldest child's father had broken down. Joey eventually moved to Sykesville, where she gave birth to her third child with her on-and-off boyfriend, Alexis Brolin, who was also the father of her middle child. Joey's mother recalled: "She was happy there and loved her children."
Fortunately, Joey's eldest children were staying with relatives at the time of the fire, as were her other two children. Investigators launched a missing persons appeal for Joey, maintaining that she had vanished under suspicious circumstances.
Officers believed she may have been abducted or killed, as her red 1994 Saturn coupe bearing Virginia licence plates had disappeared from her property. Just two days after the fire on July 16, investigators discovered Joey's vehicle parked outside an apartment in State College, approximately 70 miles east of the rented home she occupied in Sykesville. Strikingly, the car had been left outside the very apartment where Joey had previously lived with Alexis, the father of her son.
Investigators revealed they were searching for Joey "out of concern for her welfare." Her family immediately insisted Joey could not have been the one driving the vehicle. It had been parked with precision, and as her relatives pointed out, Joey was neither a competent driver nor capable of parking so neatly. Alexis said he had absolutely no idea how the car came to be parked outside the apartment.
Family's Search and Reward
The initial theory suggested Joey had killed her son, set the blaze and fled the scene. State Police Trooper Bruce A. Morris said: "It's almost like she's fallen off the face of the planet. I'm confident this case is going to be resolved. She's the key to this whole thing."
Her family believed Joey may have been missing since the day prior to the fire, following the discovery of a bag of putrefying hamburger meat inside her refrigerator. The last confirmed sighting of Joey was on July 5.
Two days after Christmas in 2007, skeletal remains were unearthed in Somerset, Pennsylvania. The remains were those of a petite, brown-haired woman aged between 30 and 40-years-old who had died during the summer months. The body bore a resemblance to Joey, prompting investigators working on her disappearance to contact Somerset authorities immediately, though it was subsequently ruled out as being Joey.
In July of 2008, Joey's family offered a reward of $15,000 for any information that might help locate her. Her nephew, Jason Hungerford, said he did not believe Joey simply vanished, as she would never have abandoned her children. He said: "Each of us is bracing for the news that she is dead. If anyone knows anything, or saw anything - even if they didn't think at the time that it meant anything - please call the Pennsylvania State Police."
Her mother, Sherry, said: "I believe that someone in that little town knows what happened. It's taken me more than a year to run it through my mind, but I believe it's somebody that she knew."
When the case featured on America's Most Wanted, a tip was received from Decatur in Alabama from a man claiming he had spoken to Joey there in November. On the second anniversary of her disappearance, the reward fund for information was raised to $20,000. Jason said: "I think that we're at this point working on the assumption that she was the victim of a crime and most likely that she's dead. So we're looking for a body. That's very difficult for us to say, but we can't fathom any other possibility. She certainly would not have run off on her own, leaving her other children behind."
Joey's family confirmed that Alexis Breslin had assisted and cooperated fully throughout the investigation. Joey was described on missing person flyers as a 5 foot 3 white woman with a slim build and had brown hair and brown eyes. She may have been wearing glasses when she disappeared.
