On the bright evening of May 23, 1994, four-year-old Kali Ann Poulton was playing outside her family’s townhouse in the Gleason Circle apartment complex on the eastern edge of Rochester, New York. Clad in her favorite pink shirt and denim shorts, she gleefully pedaled her pink-and-white Big Wheel along the sidewalk. At roughly 6:30 p.m., her mother glanced out the window and saw Kali riding with a neighbor’s child. Moments later, that child returned inside alone—Kali had vanished.
What began as an ordinary spring evening quickly turned into a frantic race against time. Kali’s mother alerted neighbors and ran outside, calling her daughter’s name in panicked whispers that soon gave way to shouts. Apartment windows flew open as residents joined the search, scanning lawns, playgrounds, and the nearby woods. Within minutes, someone dialed 911, triggering a full-scale emergency response. By nightfall, dozens of neighbors, Monroe County Sheriff deputies, and volunteer searchers combed every inch of the complex and surrounding streets under floodlights. Tracking dogs from regional K-9 units followed faint scents, but each lead ended in frustration. By dawn the next day, the exhaustive initial search had turned up nothing—no sign of Kali or her Big Wheel.
Investigation and Early Leads
In the days that followed, law enforcement expanded the search perimeter to include nearby parks, drainage ditches, and vacant lots. Helicopters hovered overhead, and dive teams inspected ponds and underground culverts. Flyers bearing Kali’s smiling face appeared on utility poles throughout Rochester and beyond, soliciting any information, no matter how trivial. Tip lines operated around the clock, yielding hundreds of calls—everything from reported sightings of a little girl in a red jacket to a man driving a white van near the complex.
Detectives conducted door-to-door interviews with Gleason Circle residents, seeking anyone who had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. They catalogued every vehicle that entered or exited the complex after school let out, checked surveillance film from a nearby grocery store, and subpoenaed phone records. In the absence of physical evidence, they relied on witness statements. One key interviewee was a neighboring family whose back window faced the sidewalk where Kali was last seen. They remembered hearing a sudden cry, then silence, but under questioning their recollections proved inconsistent, muddying potential leads.
Focus on the Neighbor
As suspicion rippled through the quiet apartment complex, detectives eventually turned their attention to the adjacent townhouse inhabited by 28-year-old Mark Christie, a single man who worked nights at a nearby manufacturing plant. Christie had been spotted in the courtyard earlier that afternoon, chatting with his wife on a pay phone. He appeared nervous when later questioned by police, offering contradictory accounts of his whereabouts between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Investigators also noted that Christie owned a red pickup truck similar to one several witnesses claimed they saw leaving the complex around the time of Kali’s disappearance…