Linn County, Kansas, reported Sunday morning that Airen Andula, a 13-year-old boy, had gone missing near the Holiday Lake Neighborhood. He was riding a red bike.
Numerous agencies in Kansas and Missouri searched throughout the day and night.
On Monday, the Bates County Sheriff’s Office received a call for service regarding a missing 13-year-old adolescent from Linn County, Kansas.
“Upon arrival to the calling party’s residence, a male subject identified as Damon Leonard of Pleasanton, Kansas advised Deputies that he knew the whereabouts of the missing child and that the child was deceased.
Upon interviewing Leonard, he described a location in Bates County where he transported the deceased child to from Kansas.
Leonard later drove us to the location where he had placed the deceased child.
A search warrant was obtained and the deceased child was located in a remote area in rural Bates County down a large ravine in a creek bed. Leonard admitted that he transported the deceased child from Kansas to Missouri and left the body in the bottom of the creek bed before traveling back to Kansas where he resides.”
— Bates Co PC Affidavit
Leonard is currently being jailed in the Bates County Jail on a felony charge of abandoning a corpse.