On the evening of Thursday, February 15, 2001, 12-year-old Steven “Stevie” Kraft Jr. went outside to play with his two dogs near his home in Benton Heights, Michigan. He left around 6:30 p.m., telling his mother — who was cooking dinner — that he’d be back soon. He never returned.

At first, Stevie’s parents weren’t alarmed. He often visited his older sister Jodi, who lived nearby with her husband and young son, sometimes eating dinner there. But by 9:00 p.m., when his mother Chyrille called Jodi and learned that Stevie hadn’t been there at all, worry began to set in.

Stevie’s father, Steven Sr., immediately began searching. A neighbor recalled seeing Stevie around 6:45 p.m. walking with his two dogs — a German Shepherd/Chow mix and a German Shepherd puppy — toward a nearby field. Nothing seemed unusual.

As temperatures dropped below freezing that night, Steven and Chyrille contacted the Benton Township Police Department. Officers joined the search, finding paw prints and what looked like Stevie’s boot tracks leading toward Harbor Haven Ministries on Irving Street, two blocks away, before the trail disappeared.

Steven feared Stevie might have fallen on the icy ground in the wooded area behind the building. But if that were true, he reasoned, one of the dogs would have likely returned home.

Searchers scoured the area through the night, but found nothing.

Although Stevie’s father was certain his son would never run away, investigators initially considered the possibility. Stevie, a sixth-grader at Hull Elementary School, had recently been suspended for fighting. But after interviewing classmates, teachers, and the school principal, detectives concluded that Stevie was a well-behaved, intelligent child who had defended himself in the altercation — and that running away was out of character.

For days, search efforts continued across an eight-mile radius — woods, barns, ditches, and fields — yet no trace of Stevie or his dogs was found.

Witnesses gave conflicting reports: one teen claimed to have seen a boy resembling Stevie get into a red Toyota near the Red Arrow Tap bar, but police confirmed it wasn’t him. Another said a boy had climbed into a storm drain, but searches of over a mile of pipe turned up nothing.

By Saturday, the Michigan State Police brought in bloodhounds, which tracked Stevie’s scent to the edge of Harbor Haven Ministries, then toward a frozen pond — but lost it soon after. The ice showed no sign of a break. Helicopters with infrared sensors found no heat signatures.

On Sunday, more than 100 volunteers joined the search, including police, firefighters, and the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force. That night, one of Stevie’s dogs — the older Shepherd mix — returned home cold, hungry, and visibly shaken but uninjured. She repeatedly returned to the area near Harbor Haven, yet nothing was found there.

By Monday, searchers had covered over six square miles. Later that day, Stevie’s puppy was found alive near Blue Creek, about a mile away. Like the other dog, he was healthy but had no clues to offer.

Weeks passed with no progress. The FBI eventually classified the case as a kidnapping.

Tips continued to pour in — including a false report of a sighting in Milwaukee, where Stevie had relatives — but each led to a dead end. In June 2001, cadaver dogs searched again but found nothing. Detectives suspected foul play, believing someone in the community knew more than they were saying.

The family offered a $1,000 reward for information, and America’s Most Wanted featured Stevie’s story that July, but no credible leads emerged.

By 2005, much of Benton Heights — including the Kraft family’s home — had been demolished during airport expansion. Construction crews later discovered what they thought was a shallow grave, but it turned out to be a pet burial.

At a 2014 press conference, Benton Township Police Chief Vince Fetke urged anyone with information to come forward, saying he believed people still knew what happened.

Even decades later, Stevie’s family continues to hold annual candlelight vigils on the anniversary of his disappearance — and celebrate his birthday each year with a chocolate cake, saving a slice for the day he comes home.

Tragically, Stevie’s father passed away in February 2021 at age 58, never knowing what happened to his son.

Steven Earl Kraft Jr. was 12 years old when he vanished in 2001. He has green eyes, light brown hair, and was 5’2″ tall, weighing about 100 pounds. He was last seen wearing tan parachute pants, a white, tan, and brown striped shirt, a purple and aqua Charlotte Hornets jacket, and black Lugz boots.

If you have any information about Stevie’s disappearance, please contact the Benton Township Police Department at (616) 926-8221.