Sunday, Feb. 7, 1999. A rainy day in Kettering, Ohio.
Nine-year-old Erica Baker was looking forward to a special event with her dad. “We were supposed to go to the father-daughter dance at the rec center,” Greg Baker told “Dateline.”
Greg, who shared custody with Erica’s mother, said it was his day with his daughter. “I was unable to obtain tickets which — she was a little upset over that,” he recalled.
So Greg dropped his daughter back at her mother’s house earlier than usual.
Around 6 p.m., his phone rang. “I get a phone call from her mother saying they can’t find Erica,” he said.
His daughter was missing.
Erica grew up in Kettering, a southwestern Ohio town Greg describes as “suburban, laid-back” and safe. She enjoyed spending time in the neighborhood with friends, but most of all, she loved keeping up with her three older brothers. “She was a combination of a tomboy and a princess,” Greg said. “I raised her up to be able to fish and camp and do all the things that a little boy would do.”
By 1999, Greg and Erica’s mother, Misty, were no longer together. Greg said he had the kids on weekends and during the summers.
The weekend of Feb. 7 was Greg’s turn with the children. He had hoped to take Erica to the father-daughter dance, but the tickets were sold out.
Greg believes that disappointment may have been one reason Erica wanted to go home early.
So that afternoon, he dropped Erica and her three brothers back at Misty’s house. “I told her that I loved her, and I would see her next week,” Greg remembered.
He said he headed back to his home in Huber Heights, about 15 minutes away.
Around 6 p.m., Greg got a call from Misty. Erica was nowhere to be found.
“So I immediately started panicking, and I came from Huber Heights and made it there pretty fast, running a lot of red lights, unfortunately, to get there,” he said.
Greg says Kettering police were already at the scene when he arrived. “They were letting me know that she had not returned home,” he said.
Bob Green, now retired, was the first detective assigned to Erica’s case.
“I was called out that night,” Green told “Dateline.” “I had only been a detective for about four or five months.”
Green says that around 4 p.m. on Feb. 7, an older couple walking their dog near a pond by Kettering Middle School and the recreation center encountered a little girl who was also walking a dog. “Erica was walking away from the pond with her dog, and the two dogs kind of interacted, barking,” Green recalled the couple saying.
The couple continued their walk, according to Green. As they were leaving, the couple spotted Erica’s dog, Jamie, alone near the middle school. “They then retrieved the dog and took the dog to the rec center and called the police,” Green said.
At that point, Green said, police thought they were simply dealing with a lost dog. But at Erica’s home, the family was already starting to worry that Erica hadn’t come home. “Around 5 p.m., the family started searching for Erica because it was getting dark and she was afraid of the dark,” Green said. “They searched a lot.”
Eventually, the family called the police. Once officers connected the missing girl with the dog that had been found near the recreation center, a massive law enforcement search began. “We had horses, ATVs, canines, people on foot,” Green told “Dateline.” “I think we might have had the helicopter. Just a ton of searching.”
Greg Baker told “Dateline” much of the search centered around the rec center, where Erica had last been seen walking. He thinks she may have gone there because that’s where the father-daughter dance she’d hoped to attend was being held. “They called search teams in and were asking for volunteers that showed up at the rec center,” Greg said.
Divers also searched the nearby pond where the couple said they had run into Erica. Investigators feared she may have slipped and drowned, a theory Greg doubted. “Erica was always very knowledgeable because, number one, we did a lot of fishing, a lot of swimming, a lot of camping,” he said. “She knows that those are dangerous places that you shouldn’t be.”
According to Greg, investigators eventually drained the pond. “Of course, they didn’t find anything,” he said.
Early on, investigators and the family believed Erica had been abducted. “It was out of her normal behavior to run away,” retired detective Green said.
Investigators began looking closely at the people in Erica’s life, starting with her parents.
Greg says he and Misty had the spotlight on them from the start, which is to be expected. “When it comes to disappearing children and stuff, the parents are pretty much the focal point at that point in time, especially when parents are divorced,” he explained. “They kind of were looking at me and Misty pretty hot and heavy.”
According to Greg, he and Misty each took a polygraph test, which he says they passed. Green told “Dateline” he ruled out both of Erica’s parents as being involved pretty early on.
Police continued following tips and leads.
Then, four months after Erica’s disappearance, the investigation headed in a different direction. In June 1999, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children sent two retired officers to Kettering to review the investigation with fresh eyes.
“They took a day or two and just went through all this stuff,” Green recalled. “And then they gave us suggestions.”
One of those suggestions was to interview Clifford Butts, an inmate at an Ohio prison. “And he’s the one who told us about Christian Gabriel,” Green said.
According to Green, Christian Gabriel had struggled with drugs and been in and out of prison. During a previous stint in the Dayton jail, he met Clifford Butts. “They became friends somewhere in that time,” Green said.
According to Green, Butts told investigators that on Feb. 7, 1999 — the day Erica disappeared — he and his wife met up with Gabriel and his girlfriend at the time, Jan Franks. Butts told investigators that later that day, he and Gabriel sat together in Gabriel’s van. “And that’s when Christian says he hit a little girl and they had to get rid of her body,” Green said.
Green says Butts told investigators that the next day, he and Gabriel came across a missing person flyer with Erica’s picture on it. “And Christian told Clifford, ‘You see that girl? That’s the girl I hit,’” Green said.
According to Green, shortly after speaking with Butts in June 1999, investigators located Gabriel’s van at a tow yard. They obtained a warrant and sent it to a crime lab to be searched, but the examination yielded no evidence.
Green told “Dateline” that investigators then brought in Christian Gabriel and Jan Franks for questioning. Both denied having anything to do with Erica’s disappearance. According to Green, investigators administered polygraph tests to the couple, and the results for both indicated deception. However, he noted, there was not enough evidence to bring charges in connection to Erica’s case at the time.
Jan Franks died in 2001. Investigators kept their eyes on Gabriel.
In mid-2004, while Gabriel was serving time for an unrelated theft case, Green questioned him again. “He lies. Or I find something new and I want to go visit him and talk to him — and he lies,” Green said.
But in December 2004, Green got what he called “half a confession.”
According to Green, while Gabriel was still incarcerated on the theft case, Green asked to speak with him again. Green says this time, Gabriel told him that he and Jan had been stealing from stores on the afternoon of Feb. 7, 1999.
Green says Gabriel told him he and Jan were driving when they spotted a Kettering police cruiser at a local grocery store. They thought the officers might be looking for them, so they took off, eventually ending up near the Kettering Recreation Center. “And he says this little girl darted out in front of him, and he hit her,” Green recalled.
According to Green, Gabriel said he picked Erica up, put her in the van, and attempted CPR. Gabriel claimed he wanted to take Erica to a hospital, but said Jan refused because she was wanted by authorities. “So then they drove off, and they disposed of her body,” Green said.
In a witness statement filed with the Kettering Police Department at the time, Gabriel wrote that he and Jan Franks were driving in his van on Feb. 7, 1999, when they struck Erica with the vehicle. He went on to say that he wanted to take Erica to the hospital, but Jan refused because she was afraid they would get into trouble. Instead, he wrote, they “carried her into the woods dug a whole and buried her.” In the statement, dated December 2004, Gabriel apologized to the family “for what had been an accident that turned out really bad.”
Green says Gabriel later showed investigators the road near the recreation center where he said Erica had been hit. “It was the first time in five years that we had a crime scene.”
Green told “Dateline” Gabriel did not lead them to Erica’s body. He believes Gabriel may have withheld the location because finding Erica’s remains could reveal more about how she died — and potentially expose him to more serious charges. “If we were to find her and prove that she was murdered, then we’re not talking vehicular homicide anymore,” Green said. “We’re talking murder.”
On Feb. 7, 2005, the sixth anniversary of Erica’s disappearance, a grand jury indicted Gabriel on charges of gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. He was convicted and served six years in prison. He was not indicted on any murder charges.
Gabriel appealed his convictions in 2007, arguing that police had pressured him into making statements and that there hadn’t been enough evidence to support the charges. He also challenged the trial court’s handling of other issues in the case, including his sentence. The Ohio Court of Appeals upheld his convictions.
In 2023, Kettering Police Detective Amy Pedro took over Erica’s case. She says Green was released in 2011 and later left Ohio.
Pedro, a violent crimes detective, grew up in Kettering just blocks from where Erica disappeared. Her father was also a Kettering police officer and worked on Erica’s case in 1999.
When Pedro inherited the case, she says she went back through nearly three decades of reports and tips. “My job was just to read all the reports and get to know the case as well as possible,” she told “Dateline.”
Pedro says the investigation remains active. “It’s definitely open. It’s very open. It’s very active,” she said. “And we continue to do searches.”
While investigators currently have no physical evidence, they do have family DNA standards on file, which Pedro says could help identify Erica if her remains are ever recovered.
Pedro believes Gabriel remains the person most likely to tell investigators what happened to Erica — and where she may be.
“Our one suspect is the only one that will be able to tell us where Erica is in the long run,” she said. “I need Christian Gabriel to have a coming to Jesus with himself and understand that this little girl needs to be put to rest with her family, and this family needs to find some peace out of this case.”
Green also strongly believes Gabriel can lead them to where Erica’s body is buried. “Christian Gabriel killed her. And he told me he killed her,” Green said.
“Dateline” reached out to Christian Gabriel for comment but did not receive a response.
Related: “Dateline” learned about Erica’s case while working on the episode “No Ordinary Sunday” for Season 5 of the “Dateline: Missing in America” podcast series. Niqui McCown disappeared from nearby Richmond, Indiana, in July 2001.
For Greg Baker, nearly three decades of searching have not brought the answer he wants most — where his daughter is. “It takes a toll on people,” he told “Dateline.” “I’m surprised that I can get up in the morning and put my shoes on.”
He wishes he could have had that last dance with his daughter. “I’ve had nightmares over this throughout the years — and with the father-daughter dance and me not able to get tickets,” Greg said. “I mean, I have grieved over that situation for many years.”
But more than anything, Greg just wants Erica found and brought home. He’s not the only one.
“I would like for her to be recovered so they have a headstone at a cemetery in Kettering,” retired detective Bob Green told “Dateline.” “And I would hope that we would be able to recover her remains for them so they have a place to visit and they can get closure, whatever that is for them.”
At the time of her disappearance, Erica was 3 feet, 11 inches talland weighed 65 pounds. She was last seen wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh shirt, a pink raincoat and white tennis shoes. She would be 37 years old today.
Anyone with information about Erica Baker’s disappearance is asked to contact the Kettering Police Department at 937-296-2460.
