It was 27 years ago—July 27, 1981—that a little boy, just 6 years old, disappeared from a Hollywood, Fla., shopping mall.

His mother had let him watch some older kids play video games at a store while she looked at lamps. About five minutes later she returned, but the boy was nowhere to be found.

His mother was frantic. She had him paged with no response. The police were called. A teenage security guard said she had evicted a group of young people who had been playing video games at the store for causing trouble. Maybe the 6-year-old had been among them.

For...

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