Kriti Mehrotra
When 6-year-old Jason Wilkman of Roseville, Minnesota, suddenly disappeared without a trace left behind in 1980, it left not only his community but also the nation baffled to the core. That’s because, as explored in ID’s ‘Your Worst Nightmare: High School Revenge’ and Lifetime’s ‘Abducted: The Mary Stauffer Story,’ a mother-daughter duo also went missing around the same time. However, it eventually came to light that while Mary and Elizabeth “Beth” Stauffer had been abducted, the young boy had sadly been brutally murdered.
Jason Wilkman’s Remains Were Found in Late 1980
At the age of 6, Jason Wilkman was a typical child by all accounts – he was the apple of his family’s eyes, loved to play outside, and was just generally curious about everything he witnessed. In fact, the small-town youngster reportedly had quite a big personality since he was always extremely energetic and didn’t shy away from any sort of social situation, making him endearing, too. But alas, everything turned upside down for him and his loved ones on the late afternoon of May 16, 1980, while he was playing with a friend named Mark Branes in an underdeveloped area.
According to reports, the curious kids were drawn to a vehicle when it suddenly came to a stop near them, driving them to abandon whatever they were playing to go check it out. While Mark remained at the front of the car, Jason walked up to the trunk, only to see a man hovering over a kidnapped Mary and Beth Stauffer, her daughter, both of whom were strangers to him. The assailant was caught off guard by the 6-year-old, so he grabbed him, threw him in the trunk, and then fled the scene as quickly as possible. Mark thankfully managed to escape, but by the time he raised the alarm about his friend’s abduction within minutes, it was already too late – the car, the strange man, and all his targets had vanished.
Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of law enforcement, loved ones, and volunteers alike, Jason’s skeletal remains were recovered over five months later. The perpetrator himself had led officers to the Carlos Avery Wildlife Reserve in late October, where the remains were found under a stand of birch trees in a dense brushy area on the edge of the cornfield. The young child’s subsequent autopsy revealed his cause of death to be severe cerebral trauma caused by at least two significant blows to the head with a hard, heavy instrument. His back and right side of the skull were fractured in several places, consistent with having been forcefully hit with a metal object, likely with a curve in it, such as a thick aluminium jack handle.
Jason Wilkman’s Killer Was Brought to Justice Within a Year
The investigation into Jason’s case was initially slow-moving because it was perceived to be a stranger kidnapping, so there were no direct leads and no witnesses except young Mark. Therefore, it wasn’t until Mary and Beth escaped 53 days later, on July 7, 1980, that the truth came to light – that’s the same day their captor, Ming Sen Shiue, was arrested from his electronics shop too. As per court records, the 29-year-old had abducted his former 9th-grade math teacher as well as her 8-year-old daughter from outside a local Roseville salon after years of obsessing over the former. Yet, when he was driving away with them tied up in his vehicle’s trunk, they kept on making noises and trying to escape to such an extent that he had to stop twice to keep them in check.
It was during the second stop that Jason came up and innocently said “Hi,” leading to Ming grabbing him too – the 6-year-old could not stop crying as they all drove off, even with Mary trying to calm him. He was able to tell the mother-daughter duo his name upon being asked, after which he asserted he was also upset because he now wouldn’t be able to go to his grandma’s house the next day. According to reports, Ming drove for an hour before stopping, dragged the kid outside, grabbed a “long, bent bar” made of metal, and then closed the trunk so that his intended abductees couldn’t see him. What followed was 10-15 minutes of silence, his return, as well as another period of driving, stoppage, and driving until he moved Mary and Beth to another vehicle, with Jason nowhere to be found.
As per Mary’s statements to the police, Ming mentioned the 6-year-old 4 times during the 53 days she and her daughter were held by him before managing to escape, each time indicating the child was alive. She said he told her that “I just scared him… I fired a shot over his head, and then let him go,” yet she never once heard a shot going off, and she did once see blood stains on their clothes on May 22. Furthermore, when the 36-year-old mother did get the courage to ask her assailant why Jason hadn’t been found despite weeks having gone by, he simply replied people are “looking in the wrong direction.” In the end, although Ming told a psychologist he knew the location of Jason’s remains but would not reveal it, days after his arrest, it was only after his kidnapping conviction that officials focused on this.
In late October 1980, a month after Ming was found guilty of two federal counts of kidnapping after a trial, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office made a deal with him. They promised that if he led them to Jason’s remains, they would not charge him with first-degree murder, and that’s precisely what happened as the 6-year-old was found soon after. Ming was instead charged with lesser counts, for which he stood trial in early 1981 before being found guilty of kidnapping and second-degree murder on February 21. He was later sentenced accordingly.
Read More: Mary and Beth Stauffer: What Happened to the Kidnapping Survivors?
