Six friends between 16 and 18 years old, who lived in the picturesque town of PickeringOntario, Canada, They were celebrating the day before the Saint Patrick’s Day on March 16, 1995. That morning they were last seenand even 30 years later his disappearance remains a mystery.
He caseknown as «The Lost Boys of Pickerin«, remains open and low investigation of the Durham Regional Police. Their families They are still waiting for answers, after three decades of confusing clues, theories that emerged from private investigators, and others from the community itself.
Chad Smith, 18, Jay Boyle, of 17, Robbie Rumboldt is 17, of 17, Michael Cummins, and Danny Higgins, ofthey went to a party together on the outskirts of Toronto for the St. Patrick’s Day, which is celebrated every March 17 around the world.
Boyle, Smith and Rumboldt were from Pickering, while Lefebvre, Cummins and Higgins came from the neighboring towns of Scarborough, Oshawa and Ajax, respectively. The six teenagers They drank, chatted and enjoyed the night, not knowing that their faces would soon be all over the news, under the name «The Lost Boys of Pickering«.
In red, the place where «The Pickering Boys» were last seen, in Ontario, Canada. (Photo: FB/Lost Boys of Pickering)At 12:50 a.m. on March 17, 1995, the group left the party and They headed to the nearby marina East Shore Marina in Frenchman’s Bay.
Before leaving, the boys told a friend that they were «going to have fun on a boat.» That testimony was key for the Durham Regional Police Services (DRPS), which from the beginning told the press that they believed the boys had gone with the intention of steal a ship to give a walk along Lake Ontario.
They were based on the recordings of the security cameras from the port area, but in that video only three of the boys: Cummins, Lefebvre and Rumboldt. Thus arose the first question that confused the authorities: Where were the other three at that time? a question that would later be taken up by a researcher who dedicated 12 years of his life to unraveling the enigma.
Security cameras captured three of the six friends missing upon their arrival at the East Shore Marina port. (Photo: FB/Lost Boys of Pickering)It was recorded that the three 17-year-old adolescents they entered to port at 1:48 a.m. mand between 2:30 and 3:00 am the neighbors heard the sound of a motorboat near the docks.
Two boats were later reported missing.: an imitation of a boat Boston Whaler four meters and a water tricycle.
The disappearance report and the search
Of the six families, there was one in particular that became the public face of the case and never stopped demanding that the police look for them: Jay Boyle’s mother, father and sistersthey organized the base of operations in their house to make all kinds of calls and ask for help even internationally.
In dialogue with the Canadian news Global Newsspoke countless times on the screen of the Global Television Network (GTN) television channel. They were convinced that 17-year-old Boyle would never have left of his own free will because he was a first time father very present for your baby Kierra, and lived with his girlfriend Monique.
Jay Doyle, one of the missing boys, with his daughter Kierra. (Photo: Global News Video Capture)That night, Boyle’s mother was babysitting his little granddaughter– who is currently 31 years old – and when Jay did not return they believed that he had stayed the night with one of his friends in Toronto.
They were not immediately alarmed, because it was common for him to return the next day, and not always give notice. He had a turbulent past despite his young age: he had served a sentence for assault and possession of a weapon.
His relatives assured that the boy had made a radical change after becoming a father, that he led a healthy life and focused on sports, his great passion since childhood.
«Jay, a tall and muscular boy, had a powerful fastball that made him a baseball phenomenon in his adolescence, and when he did not return for the start of the season we began to lose hope,» said Amanda Boyle, giving her testimony to Global News in March 2023, 28 years after that night.
«I was 15 at the time, and the plan was for me to go to that party with the boys, but I got sick and couldn’t go«, she revealed. Her sister Sioban, two years younger than her, defined Jay as the «typical older brother, protective and very affectionate with his family.»
«Since he disappeared for us it was like living in a fog,» they said. Search efforts officially began 36 hours laterwhen the disappearance of two boats was reported and they related those complaints to the testimonies.
It was a massive operation, with more than 1,000 volunteersin addition to the units of the Durham Regional Police, Toronto Police Marine Unit, Coast Guardand plane Hercules C-130 and a helicopter from the Canadian Forces Base Trenton naval air rescue unit.
Lake Ontario has an area of 18,500 square kilometers. (Photo: Google Maps)The search was suspended after 48 hours after no trace of the group of friends was found, nor of your belongings, nor of any of the missing ships.
Lake Ontario, one of the five great lakes of North America, has an area of 18,500 square kilometers, and Its icy waters have a depth of up to 244 meters.
Police sources reported that their main hypothesis was drowning after an incident with one of the boats, either having capsized due to a bad maneuver, or having moved too far away due to the wind until succumbing to the waves.
They claimed that without life jackets, the boys would have succumbed to the hypothermia in a few minutes, since in March the average temperature is 4° Celsius, and the minimum temperatures are around -5° Celsius.
There are records of at least 41 shipwrecks, and reports of 14 drownings in the same year. «Although it is one of the possibilities that they drowned, I don’t understand how they never found anything», claimed Jay’s mother, Patricia Boyle, who died in 2012, not knowing what happened to her son.
The gasoline can, the red pants and the DNA: the irregularities of the case
Since that negative result, information about the case became increasingly secretive. According to the Daily Mailmany data only emerged three years later, when the recovery of some red pants which could be what Boyle was wearing in the last photo taken of him at the party.
It first appeared 2,300 miles from Pickering, in Wilson, New York, a can of gasoline that could be compatible with the missing Whaler ship, but the experts could not confirm that it was from the same vessel.
The connection between the gasoline can and the missing boat could not be proven. (Photo: FB/Lost Boys of Pickering)In 1998, red Levi’s jeans were recovered near the Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric power station, next to the Niagara River, in Queenston.
Although three years had passed, They contained DNA and even remains of bones. Doyle’s family claimed in local news that they were not informed of the existence of those jeans until October 1998, and demanded that genetic analysis be done.
The authorities explained to them that the location of the discovery defied physics for it to be their son’s remains, but after collecting more than 4,000 signatures, the family managed to get the genetic test done, and It was determined that it was not Jay Boyle’s DNA..
On the left, Jay Boyle the night of the party, and on the right the pants found, with non-compatible DNA. (Photo: FB/Lost Boys of Pickering)Once again without leads, the investigation was paused and the community was asked for help to provide any information they considered relevant.
In 2010 the case returned to the headlines, after it caught the attention of Ottawa private investigator, Bruce Rickettswho compiled all the material and put it into his book, The Lost Boys – What we Know and What we Believewhere he assured that «there is no concrete evidence» to support the theory that the boys drowned in the lake.
Another photo that was spread of the red jeans, which did not belong to Jay Doyle. (Photo: FB/Lost Boys of Pickering)«What happened to Chad Smith, Danny Higgins, Jay Boyle, Jamie Lefebevre, Michael Cummins and Robbie Rumboldt? «No parent should ever have to wonder what happened to their child,» the researcher questioned.
He then created a Facebook, «The Lost Boy of Pickering», where he published each of the updates for more than a decade to keep the topic current and collect testimonies.
Ricketts had access to the complete video from the port’s security cameras, which recorded 16 hours in total that early morning.
The cover of the book written by private investigator Bruce Ricketts. (Photo: FB/Lost Boys of Pickering)«There are a lot of strange things in the surveillance video. It’s true that the only three that appear are Jamie, Mikey and Robbie, but At 02:21 on March 17, the camera near the dock, the most important one, went off«revealed the researcher.
«And that’s not all. In addition to the three missing children, the video shows two women and a man entering the marina at 2.10 am Who and «Were those people and why was it never investigated?» he expressed in another publication.
The author addressed all types of versions, from the most absurd to the most serious: that they had been victims of a trafficking network; that it was an escape planned by the teenagers to «disappear» due to their problems with the law; and even that it was a cover-up of a crime linked to drug trafficking.
Sunset at Frenchman’s Bay, the last place the teenagers were seen. (Photo: Google Maps)With no evidence for any of those versions, Ricketts died on January 2, 2024, without completing the investigation. Since his death, the «Lost Boys of Pickering» Facebook page has been inactive, but remains open to the public with all the documentation available.
The possibility of an underwater search to solve the case
Shelly McKinney is a cartographer for the volunteer organization Sunshine State Sonarbased in Florida, which offers underwater recovery of unsolved cases.
In response to a query from Daily Mail, McKinney stated that inexperienced teens could have encountered dangerous, ocean-like conditions in the lake.
«Bad weather conditions, with white-capped waves. Many ships that disappeared due to bad weather were recovered after hundreds of years with advanced underwater search methods,» he said.
Also known as «The Lost Boys of Pickering,» the case remains a mystery.«But due to enormous size of the lake, this would probably take years and be very expensive, It would be like searching for the Titanic,» he remarked.
McKinney suggested that using sidescan sonar – a system that detects and takes images of objects on the seafloor and which led to the discovery of the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1985 – would be the best option.
«Not finding anything is strange. Something could have gone wrong, but many objects float on ships, so not finding anything with six people on board is definitely strange«said the expert.
With the investigation still open, the families hold events every year, raising funds to donate to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC), and every March 17 they gather at Frenchman’s Bay to remember the boys and keep their memories alive, hoping to one day finally know what happened.
