Five years after she was last seen, Oakley Carlson, the missing 5-year-old girl from Washington state, has been declared legally dead — but investigators say the case is far from closed.
Oakley was reported missing in December 2021, months after she was last seen alive in February of that year. According to The Olympian, a judge in Pacific County Superior Court officially declared her legally deceased following a petition filed this summer by legal representatives for Oakley’s surviving siblings.
The heartbreaking case has haunted the small community of Grays Harbor County for years. Oakley’s parents, Andrew Carlson and Jordan Bowers, were quickly named persons of interest and taken into custody after investigators discovered they couldn’t explain where their daughter was or when they had last seen her.
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Authorities say the last person outside of the family to see Oakley alive was a witness in early 2021. After that, she seemingly vanished.
Oakley had been in foster care before being reunited with her biological parents in 2019, according to KING 5. It was her school principal who first reported her missing after overhearing a disturbing conversation between her own child and Oakley’s sister.
The sister allegedly said, “Oakley is no more” and “there is no Oakley,” according to court documents. When investigators interviewed her, she told them their mother had warned her not to talk about Oakley and claimed the little girl “had gone out into the woods and had been eaten by wolves.”
In 2023, court filings revealed even more troubling details. Investigators alleged that one of Oakley’s siblings said the girl had been kept in a locked “cell” under the stairs of their home. Another sibling accused their mother, Jordan Bowers, of physically abusing Oakley.
Despite these disturbing claims, the child’s remains have never been found.
Bowers and Carlson were first charged with obstruction and second-degree abandonment in an unrelated case, though those charges were later dropped. In 2022, both were convicted of child endangerment involving a controlled substance and served time in prison.
Bowers was released in January 2023 but was soon arrested again on identity theft charges and sentenced to 43 months behind bars. She was released last month. Carlson has also since been released from custody.
In a new statement, the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that both parents remain persons of interest and that investigators are still treating Oakley’s disappearance as a possible homicide.
“The investigation continues,” the statement said. “We remain committed to finding out what happened to Oakley.”
The declaration of legal death is largely symbolic — it helps the state close out certain administrative matters, but for investigators and the community, it doesn’t bring closure.
Oakley’s story has shaken Washington and drawn national attention, especially because she was returned to her biological parents just two years before vanishing.
For now, what happened to Oakley Carlson remains a mystery — one that law enforcement says they’re still determined to solve.