Boy Found In Shallow Grave Walla Walla Youth Visiting Mom Vanished From Park 9 Days Ago

With flashlights running low and pants caked with mud, two rookie deputies attracted to a strong smell lifted a piece of wood Tuesday and found a body believed to be a missing 10-year-old Walla Walla boy.

Christopher Meyer vanished Aug. 7 while playing near a boat launch in Aroma Park, a small community 20 miles from the park where the body was found.

The discovery less than a mile from the Kankakee County line ended an eight-day search for the boy.

As the sun set in Aroma Park on Tuesday evening, hundreds of people turned out for a candlelight vigil outside a Methodist church. Christopher’s mother, Mika Moulton, brought the crowd to tears with a eulogy of her son.

“God loaned me 10-1/2 years of twinkling blue eyes, dimples and joy. It is time now to lift up Chris and ask God to use this child as our special angel,” she said.

A convicted killer, Timothy Buss, is charged with kidnapping in the boy’s disappearance. Now the investigation turns to positively identifying the body and building a murder case.

“We’re relatively certain” that Christopher is the victim, Sheriff Brendan Ward said.

Scott Swearengen and Michael Guilfoyle found the body early Tuesday in a shallow grave covered by plywood.

Hours later, on the lawn of the Kankakee County Courthouse, Christopher’s father, James Meyer, fought back tears.

“Hold your children,” he said, voice rising. “If you let them out of your sight, people like this will take them. … I’m not getting through this. I’ll never get through this.”

Christopher lived with his father in Walla Walla but spent summer months with his mother.

In Walla Walla, Teri Campbell, who lives with Meyer and helped raise Christopher for the past five years, planned a fishing memorial for Christopher’s friends, classmates and other children at a nearby park where he frequently had gone fishing.

“The kids in the neighborhood are all having a hard time,” Campbell said. “Chris would want them to go fishing.”

Back in Aroma Park, blue ribbons and bows are tied to mailboxes, trees and lampposts in honor of Christopher.

“I can’t even come through town without crying,” Kris Varboncouer, a mother of three, said outside a coin laundry. “Things like this don’t happen here.”

Buss, 27, was paroled from prison in August 1993 after serving 12 years of a 25-year sentence for killing a 5-year-old Bradley, Ill., girl.