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Case cold 10 years after boy vanished

Sunday, March 11, 2007
Theodore Decker
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Jim McCoskey rarely takes out the box anymore.

A phone call or tip sometimes prompts the Columbus homicide detective to lift the lid and leaf through the binders of information, much of it a decade old.

And each year around this time, he says, the reporters come calling. He takes out the box then, too, even though he’s added little new information to it in recent years.

Written in marker on the side of the box is the name Cody Stepp.

His full name is Aaron Cody Stepp, and he was 3 years old when he went missing from the South Side 10 years ago today.

In the years since the boy vanished, there have been interviews and polygraphs, accusations and excavations, even a court hearing when his mother unsuccessfully sought to have him declared dead.

Yet there remains no sign of Cody. No one has been charged in his disappearance.

"Cody could have been given away. He could have literally been sold," McCoskey said. "Do I know definitely, is he dead? No, I don’t."

Cody was reported missing on March 11, 1997, by his aunt Mickey Stepp.

His disappearance outside the family home at 214 Hosack St. came the day before his mother, Robyn Stepp, was to be released after 17 months in jail.

Mickey Stepp, who died in 2004 at age 31, had legal custody of the boy from when he was 4 months old because of Robyn Stepp’s long history of drug use and prostitution.

Police soon began doubting the scenario outlined by Mickey Stepp and Cody’s grandmother Janice Stiles, who lived with Mickey Stepp and Cody .

McCoskey said the investigation revealed that no neighbors or relatives could recall seeing Cody for nearly a year before he was reported missing. A search of the home shared by Stiles and Mickey Stepp turned up little evidence that a child his age lived there. Authorities also dug in several sites for Cody’s body but found nothing.

Detectives also learned that Stiles had a daughter named Tennie Stepp, who died in 1964 at age 2. Her death certificate says Tennie died of chronic bronchitis, but an autopsy showed burns all over her body. Her death was never investigated further, McCoskey said.

Mickey Stepp flunked two polygraph tests, police said. Stiles refused to take one, and McCoskey said both women rapidly became uncooperative, never checking on the status of the investigation as the years passed.

A message left for Stiles, 67, at her home at 258 E. Barthman Ave., where a "We Believe in Angels" sign hangs in the front door, was not returned last week.

It is unclear whether a rift that developed between Stiles and Robyn Stepp after Cody’s disappearance still exists. Robyn Stepp could not be found for comment, but court records and police reports from the past year show her living at Stiles’ home.

Soon after the boy vanished, Robyn Stepp accused relatives of taking her son and hiding him from her.

McCoskey still gets an occasional call on the case, usually prompted by an age-progressed picture of what Cody might look like now. All have been dead ends.

"You could almost term it a cold case at this point," he said. "There’s nothing new."

His own theory: "He’s dead, or he was sold into a culture like a pornography culture."

A reward of up to $2,000 is still available through Central Ohio Crime Stoppers for information that cracks the case, president Kevin Miles said.

"It’s hard to believe it’s 10 years," Miles said.

It’s rare for children to turn up alive after a long time, but it can happen. On Jan. 12 near St. Louis, police found in the apartment of a 41-year-old pizzeria manager not only a 13-year-old boy abducted four days earlier but a 15-year-old boy who had disappeared in 2002.

"We never close a case until it’s resolved," said Joann Donnellan, spokeswoman for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The center to date has received 80 tips on Cody and still features his picture in mailings and online, focusing on Columbus and an area of West Virginia where he has relatives.

"We can’t give up on (Cody) until we have some sort of resolution," she said.

Anyone with information on Cody should call the homicide squad at 614-645-4730, the national center at 1-800-THELOST (843-5678) or Crime Stoppers at 1-877-645-TIPS (8477). A picture of what he might look like today can be found at www.missingkids.com.