Cold-case tip leads to dig near Towanda mobile home park

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - The Butler County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the presence of an excavator near a mobile home park in Towanda is connected with a reported tip on a nearly three-decade-old cold case.

The dig, concentrated on an area between a street and a privacy fence line, is in the neighborhood where Adam Herrman lived and was last confirmed to have been seen in 1999.

On Wednesday, investigators at the scene concluded the apparent search within a few hours. The Butler County sheriff said nothing was turned up during Wednesday’s search.

Herrman was 11 years old when he disappeared about 27 years ago. He wasn’t reported missing until 2008, nearly a decade later.

In 2011, Herrman’s adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman, were convicted of receiving state adoption subsidies for Adam after his disappearance.

The boy last seen more than two-and-a-half decades ago would be 39 years old on his next birthday, June 8. Since the missing-person report in 2008, there haven’t been many significant developments in the search for Adam Herrman.

In February of 2020, a Wichita man took to social media, claiming to be the boy last seen in 1999. Then Butler County Sheriff Kelly Herzet, the original investigator on the case surrounding Herrman’s disappearance, spoke with 12 News about the false development that investigators almost immediately flagged as a hoax.

“Knowing as much about the case as I know about the case, I knew for sure it was not Adam Herrman,” Herzet says.

In 2018, 12 News spoke exclusively with Valerie Herrman at her home in Grove, Okla. After Doug Herrman died in 2016, investigators shared their belief that at least at that time, Valerie was the only one with the answer to the big question: “Where is Adam Herrman?”