Hailey Buzbee

Hailey Buzbee was a 17 year old high school student and part time restaurant server from Fishers, Indiana, whose disappearance in January 2026 and subsequent death became a nationally followed case. She was described by her family as a dependable student and a sweet girl who had a piece of everyone's heart, and her story spread widely on social media before it became one of the most closely watched child exploitation and homicide cases of the year.

On the night of January 5, 2026, Buzbee said goodnight to her father, Beau Buzbee, and her stepmother, Ronya Buzbee, and went to bed in the family's Fishers home. When her parents woke the next morning, her room was empty and she was gone. They reported her missing to the Fishers Police Department that same day, January 6, and also contacted the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Investigators later determined she had left the house willingly overnight, but concluded she had not acted alone and had been assisted by someone else.

That someone was Tyler Thomas, a 39 year old man from Columbus, Ohio, whom Buzbee had met while playing online video games. Federal investigators say Thomas began trying to lure her into sexual activity as early as May 2024, when she was 15, and that the two continued to communicate for more than a year through gaming platforms, Discord, Snapchat and an encrypted messaging app called Session. According to court records, Thomas drove overnight from Columbus to Buzbee's home between January 5 and January 6, 2026, and brought her back to Ohio.

Buzbee's case drew national attention, in part because Indiana authorities initially classified her as a runaway rather than issuing an Amber Alert, a decision that later prompted her family and state lawmakers to push for changes to Indiana law governing how missing teenagers are classified and how minors can be verified on social media. Her family spoke publicly and appeared on NBC's Dateline appealing for information during the weeks she was missing.

On February 1 and 2, 2026, authorities recovered human remains in the Wayne National Forest in Perry County, Ohio, which were confirmed to be Buzbee's. Thomas, who was already in custody, is reported by his attorney to have led investigators to the location. Federal prosecutors have since alleged that Thomas killed Buzbee and then attempted to obstruct the investigation by decapitating and dismembering her body before burying it. A federal grand jury indicted Thomas on nine counts, including kidnapping resulting in death, in a case for which prosecutors have said he could face the death penalty. Buzbee's death, and the questions it raised about how children are protected from online predators, led to the introduction of legislation in the Indiana Statehouse known informally as Hailey's Law.