TAZWELL COUNTY — Investigators in the case of a missing rural Pekin boy are saying now that, in all likelihood, young Robert Bee Jr. never left the woods where his tentatively identified remains were found Monday.
(Source: ISP Missing and Endangered Alert)
How and when he arrived there remains unknown, but police now have a sharper focus on the case that increasingly appears to be a homicide.
No arrests have been made since a man’s discovery of a boy’s skull inside his chain-link fenced backyard led police to find the rest of the victim’s skeleton scattered just outside the fence.
Investigators, however, have established a connection to where most of the remains were found and the Bee case.
The woods behind the man’s property are owned by another person who has a nephew whom police have identified as a person involved in the investigation.
The man who discovered the skull while mowing his lawn is not involved in the case.
Autopsy results Tuesday gave police enough to tentatively conclude the remains are those of 13-year-old Bee, who’s been missing since he ran away on Nov. 17 from his Pekin home two miles north of where the remains were found. Official identification awaits DNA testing.