UPDATE: On July 3, the possible total reward “for locating Jonathan” was increased to $100,000, according to CrimeStoppers. The money was donated by Earl Stewart, the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in Lake Park, Florida, who added to the tipster fund after reading Dateline’s coverage of the case.
Please contact Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or through the P3 Tips App if you have any information that can help bring Jonathan home. Tip reports are anonymous.
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Twenty-one-year-old Jonathan Hoang’s family hasn’t seen him in 86 days.
“It’s been really, really, really hard,” his father, Thao Hoang, told Dateline. “I don’t know if we can stand it much longer — but we have to. We need to be here when he’s found, so there’s really no choice.”
Jonathan, who lived at home with his parents and one of his two sisters, is on the autism spectrum. “He presents as a young man,” Thao told Dateline. “But developmentally, he is very young in his capability. I would say that he is somewhere between 8 to 9 years old — maybe 10 at most.”
Thao last saw his son on Sunday, March 30, at their home outside Arlington, Washington. He says that he was doing his daily run on the treadmill around 7:30 p.m. when Jonathan came into the room and asked if he could sleep in the guest room downstairs.
“I asked him why, and he said, ‘Well, the treadmill is kind of noisy,’” Thao recalled. “I said, ‘Well, it’s a short run — I’ll be done within an hour, way before your bedtime.’ And so he went back to his room.”
A short while later, Jonathan came back into the room and asked his father if he could stay home from school the next day, explaining that he didn’t feel well. Jonathan was enrolled in a transition program at Weston High School in Arlington. “I said, ‘Well, if that’s the case tomorrow, take a rest. If you don’t feel well in the morning, talk with Mom and you can stay home,’” Thao said. “And he said, ‘OK.’”
Again, Jonathan returned to his room. A few minutes later, around 8 p.m., while Thao was still on the treadmill, he saw his son walking downstairs toward the guest room. He approached him and asked him where he was going.
“He said, ‘I’m going to bed.’ And I thought it was kind of a little bit strange because we’ve talked about him sleeping in his room,” Thao said. “But I thought, ‘Well, if that’s what you want to do, that’s fine.’ So I said, ‘Good night,’ and he just nodded and then went away.”
No one has reported seeing Jonathan after that moment.
The next morning, Thao left for work around 5:30 a.m. About an hour later, he got a call from his wife. “She called and asked if I was gonna take [Jonathan] to the bus stop,” he said. “I said, ‘No, I’m already at work.’”
After a brief conversation, Thao and his wife hung up the phone. A few minutes later, it rang again. “She called me back and said, ‘Hey, he’s not in his room,’” Thao remembered. “I said, ‘Did you — I think he might be sleeping downstairs.’”
Thao hung up the phone, assuming his wife would find Jonathan downstairs in the guest room. “She called me back five — some five minutes later, and said, ‘I can’t find him.’ She and my daughter went and looked and couldn’t find him,” he said. “At that point, I asked her to call the police.”
On Monday, March 31, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office responded to the Hoang residence. On April 18, the sheriff’s office issued a press release detailing their work on the case so far. “Following the 911 call, Jonathan was entered as a missing person and Search and Rescue was paged to the scene,” it stated.
Thao says that after learning Jonathan wasn’t in the house, he left work to go home. The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office was already at the scene when he arrived around 8 a.m.
“The Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue (SAR) unit led an extensive search effort involving more than 150 searchers, drones, our helicopter, K-9 teams, man trackers, and over 4,000-man hours during the six-day search,” the sheriff’s office stated in its press release. “Despite these efforts, Jonathan was not located.”
The press release also noted that, “on Thursday, April 10, Search and Rescue with Northwest Human Remains Detection canines, responded back to the neighborhood where Jonathan lives and searched the area. There were no indications given from the canines.”
According to a May 2 press release, the agency also conducted searches on April 19, April 25, and April 26. “Dozens of tips and potential sightings have been checked by deputies, none of which have been Jonathan,” it states.
Thao Hoang told Dateline the only things missing from the home were Jonathan’s iPad, the set of wired headphones he wore when using it, and his mother’s black slip-on gardening shoes. Jonathan’s favorite shoes and jacket were still in the house, as was his cell phone.
According to Thao, it’s extremely uncharacteristic for Jonathan to leave the house without his favorite jacket. “That’s how he, you know, he regulate himself and feel safe, is with his jacket and hoodie. But he left without his jacket. You know, it was early spring — March — and it was really cold.”
Thao told Dateline that Jonathan would routinely take walks in the neighborhood, but always during the daytime. “He goes to his walk probably at least three times a day, sometimes more. It’s a mile loop from the house up to the stop sign,” he said. “He has his behavior — his pattern of life — that he pretty much sticks to very rigorously. He does the same thing every day.”
Since Jonathan strayed from his pattern by leaving the house at night, the family believes he was abducted. “In the past, people had reached out to him through his iPad and bullied him online. And we tried to tell him to stop engaging people online,” Thao explained. “We’re as certain as can be that he was lured out under some persuasion or force or threat — for him just to dash out on a cold night.”
Thao told Dateline his son is very trusting, especially of adults. “If any adults tell him to do something, he would do it,” he said. “He’s very submissive to a figure of authority.”
He also noted that Jonathan has never wanted to leave home. “Jonathan has never displayed any behavior of running away or leaving,” he said. “He has always expressed that he wants to stay home.”
In its May 2 press release, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office indicated that “at this time, there is no evidence of foul play or criminal activity related to Jonathan’s disappearance.”
Dateline reached out to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office for an interview about Jonathan’s case. Courtney O’Keefe, Director of Communications, responded and referred Dateline to the office’s May 2 press release. When asked by Dateline in a follow up email whether authorities believe Jonathan may have been kidnapped, O’Keefe reiterated that there is no evidence of foul play in the case. However, they “continue to explore all avenues, including the potential that criminal activity may have played a role in Jonathan’s disappearance,” she wrote.
In the event that Jonathan has been kidnapped, Thao feels it is important to share a message with his abductor: “We don’t have any malice, ill feelings to his abductor. We try to live by our faith — and we’re all human being and we make mistakes,” he said. “We want to let you know that everyone make mistakes and we harbor no ill feelings and we just want Jonathan back — that’s all we want.”
He describes the pain of his son being missing as “unbearable.” “We have a lot of communities supporting us — our neighbors, friends supporting us, family came out to support us, and it’s great comfort,” he told Dateline. “What’s unbearable for us is knowing that he’s somewhere alone, scared and hurt. He doesn’t have his medication. And I know that, you know, he’s asking for help and we’re not there to help him.”
Thao describes his son as a “gentle soul” — a happy, kind, polite young man with no ill feelings towards anybody. “He just doesn’t have a, you know, anything bad ever to say about anybody. I think he always think the best of people,” he said. “I wish I’m more like him; I’m not. So, I guess, in a nutshell, he’s the kind of person that you wish there’s more people — or souls — like him in the world.”
Jonathan is 5’10” and weighs 135 lbs. He is likely wearing a t-shirt, pants, and slip-on shoes. He has a mole on his right inner forearm and 2 moles on the left side of his face. A $10,000 reward “for information leading to his location” is being offered through CrimeStoppers.
Anyone with information about Jonathan’s disappearance is asked to call 911 or contact the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office at (425) 388-3393.
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