Sara Bushland disappeared in 1996 after sexual abuse at home
Thirty years ago, Sara Bushland disappeared after experiencing horror at home and her sister still has no answers.
In their early years, Sara and Lesley Bushland blossomed around the adults who doted on them, having professional portraits made every year, from botched bangs to the perm era.
Their childhood in 1980s Wisconsin was about lake life, sisterhood and the joy of being a kid — until it wasn’t.
“It was very bad. Very bad,” Lesley Small, Sara’s sister, said. “Yes, abuse went on for years and undocumented.”
Divorce meant the girls spent time with their mom, step-dad and lots of step-brothers.
“The authorities did get in contact when I was in fifth grade. So Sara would have been in fourth grade,” Small said. “There was physical exams done, all of that, but there’s just no repercussions for the offender and the offender was not supposed to be in the house anymore and continued to be there.”
The girls briefly moved in with their dad to Colorado, but before long, Sara was back in Wisconsin, living with her mom and step-family.
“We were all kind of left to our own there, just not much parenting,” Small said.
At Horace Mann High School in Spooner, Wisconsin, Sara was well liked. She often hung out with older friends and was frequently in trouble at home.
“When bad things did happen, then we’re told not to tell anyone,” Small said. “That’s what my mom told me, don’t tell anyone, otherwise you won’t ever see me again.”
Author Robert M. Dudley has taken up Sara’s case.
“Despite all the horrific things that happened at home that should never happen, outwardly, she was a bubbly personality that was just, from all accounts, just a joy to be around,” he said.
Apr. 3, 1996, was the kickoff to Easter weekend. Sara took the school bus home to her driveway.
“It was pulling up to Sara’s stop at the end of the driveway at the Lambert home and Sara turned around and saw a truck and someone inside it right behind the bus, and her eyes lit up and she knew who it was,” Dudley said.
Apr. 3, 1996, was the kickoff to Easter weekend. Sara took the school bus home to her driveway.
“It was pulling up to Sara’s stop at the end of the driveway at the Lambert home and Sara turned around and saw a truck and someone inside it right behind the bus, and her eyes lit up and she knew who it was,” Dudley said.
What happened next is important and remains a mystery.
Did Sara get in that truck? Or did she walk up the wooded driveway to her home?
“Some accounts say that the truck pulled in the driveway after the bus left,” Dudley said.
Small heard the news from her mother.
“I got a phone call from my mom,” she said. “She was very upset, in an angry way. Just stating, like, where is your sister? And I’m like, how would I know? She’s living in Spooner and I’m living in Chippewa Falls.”
Her mother said Sara never came home.
“She didn’t come home after school. And I said, Mom, I don’t understand. You’re never so worried, right? We were teenagers. We made different plans sometimes,” Small said. “It was so out of character and my mom never called me. We were not close. And so for her to call me that day, in hindsight, was very different. Then I never heard from her again for days and so I assumed that she found Sara and everything was good.”
It was not good.
Her mother, Marie, and stepfather Jim Lambert reported Sara missing two days later.
“It seems like they were kind of nonchalant, reporting her missing as a runaway,” Dudley said. “There was no official report taken. The word is the information was just put on the back of a napkin.”
The Washburn County Sheriff’s Office reports it took six months for its deputies to start checking locations and conducting interviews.
It was two years before a full-scale investigation was launched.
“Sara never ran away. Like, 100% I do not believe that,” Small said. “So what that did was just stall the investigation. I was not interviewed until the year 2000.”
John Bischoff, with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, oversees a team working on this case and tens of thousands of others each year.
“When you take a look at Sara’s case from the mid-1990s, it was more of a, you know, give it some time, they’ll be home. I’m sure it’ll be okay,” he said. “Law enforcement has done such an amazing job over the years, evolving themselves and their response to missing children.”
The non-profit has put out multiple age-progression renderings of Sara and is helping to build her DNA profile based on personal items recovered from the Lambert property.
“The way technology is evolving these days, faster than we’ve seen before, as a society, we need to make sure we’ve applied all today’s resources on older cases,” Bischoff said.
After her mother and Jim Lambert died, Small says the court gave her access to the 65-acre property.
Over a three-year period, Small organized countless searches and cadaver dogs made several hits.
“One being the basement of a home that was built after she went missing. I apologize to the new owners, because we jack-hammered up the floor and took out the septic tank,” Small said. “Then under that, we did find some burnt residue. It did go to the lab, but came back inconclusive.”
Then, in 2021, on the 25th anniversary of the disappearance, the Washburn Sheriff’s Office revealed details about Sara’s family life.
Specifically, investigators said there was a history of abuse in the Lambert home, including sexual abuse of Sara at a young age.
Before she vanished, Jim Lambert found Sara’s diary, in which she reportedly wrote that she had been sexually active with at least one of her stepbrothers.
The investigators noted that Sara had recently had an abortion.
Small said Lambert had forbidden Sara from seeing her boyfriend, Travis, in the weeks leading up to her disappearance.
“Jim had a very strong hold on people. He was very good at threatening people. So, Sarah had an abortion in February, and it was said to be Travis’s baby, her boyfriend at the time,” Small said. “Travis was then told he needed to pay Jim for the abortion by March 31. We know this from Sara’s diary.”
The decaying walls of Sara’s room stood as a stark reminder that she was a 15-year-old girl, barely out of childhood, whose disappearance would sound alarms with much more immediacy and intensity today.
“We’ve learned as an organization not to give up home. These families haven’t given up on their family member. Law enforcement hasn’t given up,” Bischoff said. “We’re not giving up. We want the answers. We want to find that child.”
Children like Sara, who deserve to be found.
“There’s still time to say something. There’s still time to come forward. It’s hard enough living in the situation we’re in, not knowing,” Small said. “But I can’t imagine knowing and holding it to myself. That has to be just such a burden. At this point, we just want to know where Sara is.”
The Washburn County Sheriff’s Office turned down NewsNation’s request for an on-camera interview. We supplied written questions and received no reply.
Today, Sara Bushland would be 45 years old.
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