Case Details

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This person was missing Missing Since 10/25/1978

Missing Since:

Missing Since 10/25/1978

Missing From:

Missing From Las Vegas, Nevada

Classification:

Classification Non-Family Abduction

Gender:

Male

Race:

Race White

Date of Birth:

Date of Birth 11/12/1971 (53)

Age:

Age 6 years old

Height and Weight:

Height and Weight 4’2, 65 pounds

Clothing/Jewelry Description:

Clothing/Jewelry Description Brown pants, brown leather shoes, and a white t-shirt with “Las Vegas Quicksilvers” imprinted on the front.

Distinguishing Characteristics:

Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair, brown eyes. Cary has a small scar on the right side of his forehead near his hairline. He was born with three extra toes on each foot and had them surgically removed at age three months, with resulting scarring. He had a gap between his upper front teeth at the time of his disappearance.

Details of Disappearance:

In October 1978, six-year-old Cary Sayegh vanished from his Las Vegas school, the Albert Einstein Hebrew Day School. Eyewitnesses saw him get into a car. Three hours later, his parents received a ransom demand for $500,000 but the caller never contacted them again.

Police suspected Jerry Burgess, a former employee of Cary’s father. Burgess had been convicted of assaulting a woman at the same school just a week before Cary disappeared, and several kids identified him as the driver of the car. Burgess claimed he was just delivering lunch, but his voice matched the ransom caller’s, and he led police to one of Cary’s shoes.

Despite this, Burgess was acquitted of kidnapping in 1982 for lack of evidence, though he later made conflicting statements about Cary being alive in Israel. He was later arrested in 2000 for illegal weapons possession. During the investigation, he oddly offered to dispose of a body, claiming he’d killed and welded Cary into a steel drum in 1978 (he’d rented welding equipment beforehand). He served time for the weapons charge but was never charged in Cary’s case.

Although there was a tip Cary might be in Boston in the 1990s, his case remains unsolved. Jerry Burgess remains the prime suspect, and police are still searching for Cary’s remains.

Agency:

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department 702-795-3111

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