The Unsolved Murder of Dalton Mesarchik

The 7-year-old was abducted & murdered in 2003, and his killer has never been found.

Dalton Mesarchik was waiting expectantly on his porch for a church van to pick him up on the evening of March 26, 2003. The 7-year-old had attended children’s Bible study groups at the First Church of Nazarene in his hometown of Streator, Illinois a few times before, and he was excited at the chance to go back. His older sister, Deana, was also going to the Wednesday night Bible study, but she had gone to a friend’s house to wait for the bus there. By 7:00 pm, Dalton was tired of waiting. He went back inside his Morrell Street home and told his mother that the van never showed up.

Dalton’s older sister called from her friend’s house a few minutes later. She told her mother that she and her friend heard the van was running late but was still coming, so she was going to wait a while longer. When Michelle Mesarchik relayed this message to Dalton, he grabbed his coat and went back out onto the porch to see if the bus would come along after all.

It turned out that the church’s van driver had a family emergency that night and had not been able to report for work. Although the First Church of Nazarene’s policy was to notify parents whenever transportation was not available, this somehow got overlooked on this particular night, and no phone calls were made.

Around 7:45 pm, Deana returned home and told her mother that she assumed the van wasn’t going to show up that night. She then asked her where Dalton was, as he was no longer on the front porch. Michelle was startled; she had assumed that Dalton had been picked up and was on his way to church. She rushed outside and took a quick look around, but saw no sign of the little boy.

Michelle had last seen Dalton at 7:15 pm; he was on the porch waiting for the church van at that point. Fighting panic, she phoned the First Church of Nazarene to see if Dalton was there. When she learned that the driver had called out that night and the van had not been running, Michelle was certain that something terrible had happened to her son. He was not the sort of boy who would wander away from home without first telling her where he was going, and she immediately called the Streator Police…

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