13 Investigates reported the Muncie child had been missing for nearly five years before anyone brought his disappearance to the attention of police.
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What happened to Hayden? | 13 Investigates reveals new details about when Muncie boy was last seen
13News has discovered new details about the disappearance of Hayden Manis, as detectives in Delaware County desperately seek answers about the Muncie boy who has not been seen in more than four years.
“Certainly we’ve hit a wall,” said Delaware County Prosecutor Eric Hoffman. “The question is, can you go around the wall or climb over the wall? That’s what we’re trying to do now.”
Hoffman said the sheriff’s department received multiple tips after 13 Investigates
first broke news of Hayden’s disappearance in early February – years after the boy is believed to have gone missing.
But so far, investigators have no break in the case. No signs of Hayden. No arrest.
13News has also continued investigating the mysterious disappearance, collecting new information from law enforcement, the public and people who knew Hayden.
The details gathered by 13 Investigates from new interviews and never-before-seen police video help establish a new timeline of the disappearance, show revealing information about a key witness questioned by detectives, and provide disturbing insights into what happened inside the home where Hayden lived before he vanished.
“We’re working backwards four years, and it’s literally like chasing a ghost,” Hoffman said, explaining that the long delay in learning of Hayden’s disappearance has proven to be a significant challenge for detectives.
Now, as Hayden’s 10th birthday just passed with no celebration, his family says they still wrestle daily with his disappearance and wonder whether he’s even alive.
“It’s the hardest thing to say that, no, I don’t think he’s with us anymore,” Hayden’s aunt, Taylor Ferrell, told 13News.
“Please, somebody, just give us some answers,” added another aunt, Barb Phillips.
“Dustin was the last legal custodian of Hayden, so obviously that’s where we started,” said the prosecutor, adding that Dustin told detectives the same story he had told his family: Dustin had not seen Hayden in a long time because DCS had come to his house and had taken his son away to go live with the boy’s mother.
“That was disproven quite easily, quite quickly,’’ Hoffman told 13 Investigates. “So at that time and as the investigation went on, we knew that was a lie. He was not telling the truth.”
Hayden was nowhere to be found, and the prosecutor says the boy’s father lied about the last time he had seen him. But without Hayden – and with no proof whether the child is alive or dead – detectives were unable to arrest Dustin Manis for his son’s disappearance.
They did, however, arrest him just a few months later.
A Muncie Police officer stopped Hayden’s father for erratic driving on November 23, 2024 – just a few weeks before Dustin died – and his paranoid behavior quickly caught the officer’s attention.
13 Investigates obtained the officer’s bodycam video from the traffic stop, and it shows Dustin was very nervous.
“Nothing illegal on you?” the officer asked. “Dustin, is there anything illegal inside your car?”
“Nuh-uh… no, not at all,” he replied in an awkward, high-pitched tone that sounds much different than his speaking voice earlier in the police recording.
The officer then inquired about specific drugs, including methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin. Dustin denied possessing any of them. But when the officer asked if he could look inside the vehicle and Dustin said he preferred not to have the car searched, suspicion grew.
“I’m pretty sure there’s something in that car you don’t want me to find,” the officer said, pausing while Dustin again insisted he had no drugs in the vehicle. “I stopped you for a traffic infraction, and your stress level is way up here.”
That’s when Dustin told the officer
why he was so nervous.
“I just literally got questioned about my son being missing and whatnot, so I’m just upset about that,” he said, while also admitting there might be “a little bit of [methamphetamine] residue” in the vehicle.
Upon further questioning, Dustin acknowledged that he had a previous arrest for drug possession and had last smoked methamphetamine the previous day. He again told the police officer there was only residue or some drug “crumbles” inside the car.
When another officer with a drug-sniffing K-9 arrived to search the vehicle, Dustin appeared even more nervous, visibly shaking and fighting back tears.
“I’ve never had anybody break down and cry [over crumbles],” the officer said, responding to Dustin’s agitation.
“It’s my grandmother’s car. I don’t want to get in trouble for having anything in there,” Dustin replied.
The K-9 assisted search revealed methamphetamine inside the vehicle. As officers arrested Dustin and began to search his clothing, he admitted to also having heroin and a syringe in his pocket.
Dustin pleaded for leniency as the officers then read his legal rights and took him to the Delaware County jail.
A relative posted Dustin’s bail a few days later. Within a few weeks – under a cloud of suspicion for his son’s disappearance and for repeated drug use – Dustin died from an apparent drug overdose.
Turns out Dustin’s claim to police that he had no drugs was yet another example of him making up a story that was not true, just like the story he told detectives and family members about DCS taking away Hayden.
“There’s a lot of inconsistent information so … it’s a difficult, difficult investigation,” Hoffman said.
Part of the difficulty police are facing is not only finding Hayden but also determining
when he vanished. The timeline of Hayden’s disappearance is now a little clearer, thanks to new tips and interviews obtained by 13 Investigates.
Dustin’s family members told 13News the last time they saw Hayden was at a Christmas Eve gathering in 2019. At the time, he was getting presents and seemed excited, according to his aunts.
A poster asking for help in finding the missing Muncie boy states Hayden was last seen just a few days later, in January 2020, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
But 13 Investigates has discovered Hayden was actually seen months later in New Castle, Ind. That tip came to 13News from a woman who says she was at the New Castle Motorsports Park in
late August 2020, where she saw Hayden sitting in the second row of spectator stands watching a go-kart race.
13 Investigates spoke to a second person who confirmed he also saw Hayden at the same go-kart race in New Castle.
That’s important because it means Hayden’s disappearance did not happen until at least eight months later than originally thought – a detail that could help investigators as they try to solve this mystery.
“With any missing child case, the timeline turns out to be an extremely important piece of information,” said John Bischoff, a vice president at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “Who was in the area at the time of the disappearance, the external circumstances that were taking place at the time the child went missing, those are key evidentiary pieces and valuable to any investigation… and if you don’t have accurate information for your timeline, you don’t know where to look for that evidence.”
The second person who told 13News he saw Hayden at the go-kart track is Paul Hall. He is the father of Crystal Hall, who was Dustin Manis’ girlfriend at the time Hayden is believed to have gone missing.
Paul told 13News he was at the New Castle Motorsports Park in late August 2020 watching his oldest granddaughter participate in a go-kart race. He said Crystal, Dustin and Hayden were also at the track to watch the race, and he did not remember anything unusual about Hayden’s appearance or behavior.
Track records reviewed by 13 Investigates show Paul’s granddaughter raced at the New Castle Motorsports Park on August 30, 2020.
Paul also owned the Muncie home where Hayden, Dustin and Crystal lived (along with Crystal’s two daughters) around the time of the disappearance. They all lived on one side of the house, and Paul and his wife lived on the other side.
“Dustin and Hayden actually did live on my property,” Paul told 13News. “Hayden actually called me ‘Mr. Grandpa’ while he was there. I babysat him several times.”
13 Investigates talked with Paul on multiple occasions over the past six months. He does not want to meet in person to discuss Hayden’s disappearance because he said he fears an in-person interview could subject his family to harassment.
But Paul did agree to several recorded phone interviews to share what he knows.
And he knows a lot.
As a longtime guitarist in a popular Muncie rock band, Paul said Hayden took an interest in his music. Paul told 13News he bought a guitar in 2020 to give Hayden for Christmas.
“That’s something that we were going to start doing is show him how to play the guitar,” Paul recalled. But before he could start giving Hayden lessons, Paul said Hayden was no longer living at his house. When he had not seen Hayden for a noticeable period of time, Paul said he asked Dustin where the boy was.
“I had asked, ‘Hey, where's Hayden?'” because I hadn't seen him for a week or two, and I wanted to see about giving them those lessons. And that's when I was told that the mom had had a DNA test and that Hayden went with his mom,” Paul said. “We've heard the story now that, you know, Child Services was the ones that did that. That is not the story I got. I only got that a DNA test was done, and that Dustin wasn't the father and that Hayden went to live with his mother.”
Paul told 13 Investigates he did not discover that Dustin’s story was untrue until much later – in September 2024 – when one of Dustin’s grandmothers left a note on his door. That note, written on a piece of paper towel, asked Paul to call about Hayden. He said that’s when he first discovered Hayden was missing and had never gone to live with his mother.
Paul said as soon as he learned there was an investigation into Hayden’s disappearance, he quickly called the Delaware County Sheriff’s Department to tell investigators Hayden and Dustin had lived in his house.
He recalled local detectives and investigators from the state crime lab then arriving at his house last September to search the property with cadaver dogs, and Paul said he agreed to the searches without a warrant.
“I signed a waiver allowing them to have access to anything and everything that they needed,” Paul told 13News. “They went under the house. They went in the attic … I was just hoping and praying, you know, that we could find out what had actually happened.”
He said investigators questioned him about what he could remember and later returned to the house to take evidence, including a “section of the floor out of the master closet” from the side of the house where Hayden had lived. Paul said he remembers a conversation with one of the police officers about the flooring seized by detectives.
“He says, ‘What do you think this means with us asking for this?’ And, you know, I remember answering him. I says, ‘I think that means that you guys think something might have happened to him in my house,’” Paul said.
While Paul told 13 Investigates he now believes Dustin harmed Hayden, he said he never saw signs of abuse or neglect while Hayden lived on his property.
“Never once did I ever hear, you know, any abuse, cries, did I see any marks on that little boy,” he said. “The whole time he was at my house, if I would have saw a bruise or a mark or any sign on Hayden, I would have been the one in jail because I'd have handed it to Dustin … If I'd have seen anything, I would have acted on it.”
Paul also said he tried to watch out for Hayden, even confronting Dustin when a relative contacted Paul personally to express concern that Hayden was possibly being kept inside the house in a dog cage.
“We could not back up that story whatsoever,” Paul told 13News. “We looked. We never saw any cage. Never saw anything even resembling that.”
He acknowledged he did not spend much time looking through the house to verify if the allegation was true because, according to Paul, he tried to spend as little time as possible on the side of the house where Hayden lived with Dustin and Crystal. He said he wanted to give them privacy, and the residence was usually a mess.
“I was pretty disgusted by the condition of that side of the property, but I did just do a quick walk-through to see if I saw anything that looked, you know, funky to me. And other than the nastiness in there, I did not,” Paul said.
The conversation with Paul then shifted to talking about his daughter, Crystal, who detectives have also interviewed about Hayden’s disappearance.
Paul described his daughter as “caring, kind … and a pretty good and effective parent.” He also said he does not always agree with her decisions and acknowledged having a strained relationship with Crystal due to the condition in which she left Paul’s Muncie home while she lived there with Dustin and Hayden.
Paul told 13 Investigates that his daughter worked closely with the sheriff’s department to record her conversations with Dustin as detectives investigated Hayden’s disappearance last fall. He said Crystal also suspects Hayden’s disappearance is directly tied to Dustin.
“She has absolutely no desire to talk about any of this,” Crystal’s father said. “She just said, ‘I’m not answering anybody’s questions. If anyone wants to know anything, they’ll have to get the information from the police.’”
Asked about Crystal’s silence, Paul said he does not agree with his daughter’s decision.
“I’d like to tell you I understand it, but honestly, I don’t… I don’t understand why she won’t talk to anybody. That is a concern for me,” he said.
While Crystal's father expressed concern about his daughter's unwillingness to answer questions, he also shared another concern with 13News: disturbing changes he saw both in Dustin and inside the house once Hayden was gone.
Paul said Dustin was “a changed human being” after Hayden was no longer at the house, and he noticed both money and personal items were disappearing while, at the same time, Dustin and Crystal were not paying their bills.
“He wasn't like that prior to Hayden not being there, you know. I actually saw him as a dude that was trying to get his life together,” Paul said.
He told 13News, Dustin admitted to Paul that “he had some issues with drugs” but had never discussed with him the extent of those issues. As a former addict who stopped using drugs more than 20 years ago, Paul said he can spot signs of drug use, but only recognized Dustin’s drug problems after Hayden was gone.
“I feel stupid because I didn’t catch it [sooner],” he said. “I saw that something was going on with him. I wish I would have put two and two together … the signs were definitely there.”
Paul said he had a “heart-to-heart” with Dustin and his daughter at some point after Hayden was no longer at the house “about getting their sh** together” and paying their bills. When things didn’t change, Paul said he went to throw Dustin out of the house and discovered Dustin had left just a few minutes earlier. Paul told 13News he chased after Dustin in his truck, and once he caught up to him, he “smacked that a**hole around” with a stick because he felt disrespected by Dustin after repeated attempts to help him.
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