Missing 3-year-old: Caregiver faced charges relating to human trafficking in 2016

By Kendall Keys

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    TWO RIVERS, Wisconsin (WISN) — Tuesday marked one month in the search for missing 3-year-old Elijah Vue. The little boy vanished from Jesse Vang’s Two Rivers apartment on Feb. 20.

According to court documents, Elijah’s mother, Katrina Baur, told investigators she sent her son to stay with Vang starting Feb. 12 as “punishment,” saying she wanted Vang to teach the 3-year-old “how to be a man.”

Baur and Vang were both taken into custody on child neglect charges shortly after Elijah went missing.

WISN 12 News obtained court documents from 2016 that detail a troubling history between Baur, Vang and Jimmy Vue, who family identified as Elijah’s biological father.

Investigators in Outagamie County say in November 2015, police responded to a hotel in Appleton, where Baur had hidden in a bathroom and attracted the attention of hotel staff, who called police. Baur told police she had been sexually assaulted “by two Asian males while at the AmericInn.”

Investigators identified one of the men as Jesse Vang. According to a search warrant, Baur told investigators the men told her she was their property, and detailed how she “would be transported to a house near Minneapolis that was not nice where she would perform sex acts for drugs and compensation.”

The warrant goes on to say that two months later, Baur asked police not to investigate the sexual assault, saying, “she was now with Jimmy Vue,” and that “Jimmy would take care of it.”

Investigators said Baur said Vue was the “Alpha” and that Vang was “under Jimmy in some sort of structure.”

Vue has been in prison since before Elijah disappeared, serving time for multiple charges, including child abuse.

Prosecutors charged Vang in the hotel incident with conspiracy to commit human trafficking and second-degree sexual assault. The state eventually dropped the charges.

WISN 12 News obtained the motion to dismiss from Outagamie County. It says the state dismissed the charges against Vang because he had been indicted in federal court and detained in Minnesota.

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