PAYETTE, Idaho (Scripps News Boise) — Brandi Neal has been living with the pain and darkness of not knowing what happened to her then five-year-old son, Michael “Monkey” Vaughan, after he went missing four years ago in Fruitland.
Brandi Neal wants answers from Stacey Wondra— the man now charged with murdering her five-year-old son in 2021.
FILE – Michael Vaughan (Fruitland Police Department)
“Justice will be served for Michael. I have to hope they tell me where he is,” said Neal.
Wondra is also charged with second-degree kidnapping and destruction of evidence.
“I’ve read the probable cause, and some of it has been some of my worst nightmares. And all I can think of is— I hate this, after reading that affidavit— and if all those statements are true, how scared was he?”
One thing that stuck out to Michael’s mom was a neighbor’s comment to the police about seeing Michael riding a tricycle near the Wondra home at the time he went missing.
Brandi told Scripps News Boise that Michael had a so-called “big boy bike” and that it never went missing.
The family still has it in their garage, and as far as they know, he wandered off on foot.
Those court documents also allege Stacey Wondra wrote Michael’s parents an apology letter before attempting suicide in the Washington County Jail.
When I first spoke to Brandi on Monday, she told me her new hair color isn’t a coincidence.
A poster shows missing child Michael Vaughan. (Scripps News Boise)
“The dark blue— yeah, I did it cause I knew that Stacey was going to be coming back to Idaho to be arraigned, and Monkey loves Blue. I asked my kids, ‘ya know, should I go back to being normal with the courts and everything,’ and they said ‘nope, wear it blue for Monkey.'”
Monkey was a loving nickname for Michael that Brandi says has been in place since before he was born.
“He was full of energy. He got the nickname Monkey in my belly cause it felt like he would be swinging on my ribs, and that did not change from the time he was born— he was crawling, climbing, he was pretty much climbing before he could crawl or get onto things.”
And as far as what’s next, the grieving mother hopes to one day get her son back.
“When I get Michael home, that’ll be somewhat of closure.”
This story was originally written by Don Nelson for Scripps News Boise, an E.W. Scripps Company.
