SAN BENITO - It's been more than three decades since Michael Lee Montelongo disappeared from his home on Alamo Street.
The home where he once lived is now falling apart and abandoned. But neighbors still remember the day he disappeared.
"Everybody was looking for him around the neighborhood and everything. But no. No. We just couldn't find him. Nobody found him," says Maria Guzman.
The detective assigned to the case says it was like hitting a brick wall.
Detective Oscar Leal got the call on a Saturday night. It was his first missing child case.
The search continued through the night. People doing everything they could to find him.
The boy's mother, Enedelia Cavazos, told reporters the boy was on his way to see his aunt when he vanished.
His aunt, Maria Quintanilla, still lives in the same house.
"No one knows what happened," she says.
She says she feels like her sister and the newspapers blamed her for Michael's disappearance.
Investigators say the investigation always came back to one suspect.
"It always came back to the main suspect... to me, my opinion, the mother," says Leal.
The retired detective says Cavazos was too calm when police were searching. He suspects she either killed Michael or sold him.
The police file says Cavazos passed a lie detector test.
NEWSCHANNEL 5 contacted Enedelia Cavazos, who is now living in Grand Rapids, Michigan under a different name.
She says she changed her name to avoid "pesky journalists."
She refused to talk about her son's disappearance.
For now police don't have any leads and the case remains open.
Neighbors and family members leave their porch lights on, in hopes something or someone will guide Michael Lee Montelongo home.
