Arnprior, Ontario — On June 12, 1972, while on a family fishing trip at Holmes Lake near Calabogie, Ontario, Adrien McNaughton (5) was fishing for about an hour with his father, Murray McNaughton.
Adrien became tired and stopped fishing because his line was tangled. He sat down on a nearby rock, then left the lakeshore to play a short distance away.
He then wandered away from his father, his two older brothers, and a friend of his father into a wooded area. The father after noticing that Adrien was missing, sent Adrien's eldest brother Lee McNaughton to the car to search for him.
When Lee didn't find Adrien a search was sent out to find him. Hours later when Adrien was not found, the police were contacted.
At the time of his disappearance he was wearing a blue nylon parka jacket, an orange striped shirt, brown shorts, and boots with rubber soles.
A massive search was conducted to find McNaughton as thousands of volunteers led by the armed forces searched the area where Adrien had gone missing.
While extensive searching was conducted, no clue to his whereabouts was found.
In 2009 with the use of new digital technology, his parents hoped to find him as an adult. Also in 2009 when Adrien's parents were contacted by the Toronto Sun, his mother declined to be interviewed and referred questions to the police.
A CBC original podcast called Someone Knows Something investigated Adrien McNaughton's disappearance, beginning in 2015. The show is hosted, written and produced by award-winning Canadian filmmaker David Ridgen, and its first episodes were released in March 2016.
On April 23, 2016, as part of the investigation for SKS, five highly trained volunteers conducted a search dive of Holmes Lake, looking for the remains of McNaughton, after four separate cadaver dogs indicated that they were detecting human remains in the area.
A tooth-like object and small piece of rubber that may have belonged to a shoe were uncovered under eight feet of water. The tooth-like object when examined by the police was found not to be human.
