in chicago, thousands upon thousands of young men and women go missing. woman: james byron haakenson disappeared shortly after moving to chicago. man: john butkovich, an 18-year-old north side youth, who disappeared on july 31st, 1975. [ telephone rings ] missing persons. polito. can i help you? sullivan: the police departments were understaffed when it came to the juvenile divisions. and it was very difficult to try to track runaways. sneed: typical in this case, and in many cases, families go to the police department, or they call and they say, my son s missing, and they say, well, wait 12 hours. well, you know, he may come home. just let us know. my mother kept saying, there s something wrong. there s something wrong. there s no way that my brother would have left. my brother at that time thought he was on cloud nine