The Missing -- A Weekly Exposé of Lost Souls -- Issue #14

May 16, 2008

In this week's edition of "The Missing," we revisit the mysterious disappearance of Ahren Benjamin Barnard, a 35-year-old resident of Boise, Idaho, who went missing in December 2004.

Ahren_2"I live with this every single day," Ahren's mother, Vicki Barnard, said in a telephone interview with Investigation Discovery. "It's like this lead coat that you wear, this heavy thing that you can't put aside, unless you are a person willing to walk away from your loved one. Life goes on for everyone else and you can't fault them for that. It's good that people want to lead their life, but it is so hard to live in this gray area. Your life moves on but you still have one foot stuck in the gray."

Ahren was last seen around 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 4, 2004. According to Vicki, she spoke with her son on the telephone the night before he disappeared, and he was in a good mood. He was looking forward to the New Year and told her he was thinking about buying a limousine and obtaining a chauffeur license.

"We had a good conversation," Vicki remembered. "We started to make plans for Christmas and he said he was going to call me the next day."

When Ahren failed to call his mother the following day, she was concerned but told herself he probably got busy and forgot to call. However, with each passing day her concern turned to worry, and her stomach was soon in knots.

"It was highly unusual for him not to call me or to return my calls," Vicki said. "Ahren always carried his cell phone wherever he went. He could not live without it. He had even purchased a second identical phone, which he always kept plugged in and charging so that whenever he needed to he could swap the batteries. You have to understand-we have a very close bond. He's my only child; I raised him myself since he was a toddler, so when I didn't hear from him I knew something was wrong."

Vicki contacted all of Ahren's friends, but none of them had heard from him since the previous week. She then contacted his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his young child, but she had not heard from him, either. Vicki lived several hours away in another state, so she called the Boise Police Department and asked them to check on her son. Officers later gained entry into Ahren's house but saw nothing out of the ordinary to suggest foul play.  With few options left, Vicki decided to travel to Boise to investigate the situation herself...

Continue Reading About The Disappearance of Ahren Benjamin Barnard

Ahren's Photo Courtesy Vicki Barnard


David Lohr has been writing about crime and criminals for over 15 years. Readers and critics alike regard Mr. Lohr as one of the most prominent crime writers of the 21st century.
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