INDEPENDENCE, Ia. — Six Christmas presents rest on a table at the home of Stewart and Christine Bagley in this northeast Iowa city, nearby frames displaying pictures of their son.

Each has been bundled tightly in different wrapping paper — some colored green and blue, others showing Santa Claus and snowmen. Every gift was special for Christine to get her middle boy, one of four children: a pair of shoes, a necklace, a foam pillow.

During the holiday, the items sat under a tree as family members worried. They have been set aside until Christopher Bagley, 31, returns home.

A father of two young children, Bagley left his Walker home Dec. 13, kissing his wife and saying he would be back. But he never returned, and his disappearance has left his parents reeling as they wade through rumors and search areas he may have been.

While they don't know where their son is, they have imagined the worst.

"You don’t just vanish," Stewart Bagley, 57, said. "Something happened."

A family searches for answers

Friends were over the night Bagley left about four weeks ago. He was acting normally, cleaning and putting up shelves when his mother saw him that day, she said.

Bagley was picked up by someone between 10 and 10:30 p.m. that Friday at his home, his family said. His debit card was used hours later, at about 2 a.m., at a BP gas station near Interstate Highway 380 and County Home Road in Robins, his father said.

Standing at 5-foot-11 and weighing about 185 pounds, Bagley was last seen in the Cedar Rapids metro area, about a 30-minute drive south of his residence, the Linn County Sheriff's Office said. Authorities have released few other details.

At first, Stewart Bagley was not concerned; he wondered if his son just needed a few days to think or be alone. Relatives became concerned the next day, Saturday, when Chris Bagley's wife of three years, Courtney, filed a missing person report. The panic set in the next day, and family members started door-knocking.

Bagley’s parents, searching for answers, have heard a number of rumors since he vanished. At least six people — some of whom associate with Bagley — told them they heard their son was killed in horrific ways.

There is no evidence that is true. The family has searched through areas they heard he may have been, but there were no signs of Chris.

Stewart Bagley said he will refuse to believe rumors until he has been shown his son’s body. His family continues to pray he is found safely.

Asked if Bagley might be in danger, Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner said this week that it was too early to tell. He called the case an active investigation with detectives following up on every tip, but he could not comment on specific details.

Family members said they don’t know what may have happened to their loved one, but they remained insistent he did not run away or abandon Courtney and the children, 8-year-old Mason and Sophia, who turned 4 in late December.

"Somebody’s got him somewhere," Christine Bagley said, tears falling down her face at times during an interview Monday night. "Somebody knows out there."

Parents struggle with the unknown

A correctional officer at the Buchanan County Sheriff's Office, Christine Bagley recently heard an inmate call her Chris, for short. She responded: "What’d you say?"

"I just said, 'Hey, Chris. How’s your day?'" the inmate said, she recalled.

Though the exchange was meant to be innocent, hearing her son's name felt like a punch in the gut to Christine. It hurts her to see him on missing person posters, and the unknown has become increasingly frustrating.

Christine Bagley has wondered if her son was hit over the head and may not know who he is, so she checks VINELink, an online portal that lets the public search for inmates. Unlike hospitals, at least the jails would tell her if he was there, she said.

Stewart Bagley finds himself going to sleep each night exhausted, tossing and turning, wondering if he overlooked something that day in the search. He has asked himself a thousand questions, he said, his mind unable to shut down. When he does rest, he wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and drives to work, thinking about Chris. It never escapes him.

He lost it, bawling in his office, the first time he heard gossip that his son may not be alive. When a woman he works with asked if he was OK, he replied: "No, I don’t think so." She began crying when he told her the hearsay, he remembered.

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Stewart Bagley said he followed some of Iowa's missing person cases in 2018, including the month-long search for Mollie Tibbetts, the college student found slain in a Poweshiek County cornfield. He never thought he might be in a similar position.

Now, Stewart Bagley is trying to keep his son’s story alive with the general public. He tries to post each day on his Facebook account, where he received about 1,000 shares in two hours across the country when he announced a $25,000 reward — cash compiled by family members — for information about his son's disappearance.

But the shares have begun to slow, he said.

'Somebody always knows something'

Decembers have brought heartbreak for the Bagleys.

Stewart Bagley's mother and Christine Bagley's parents died in Decembers; another family member killed himself that month, they said. A joyous month for many, December has become a time of year Stewart Bagley wishes he could skip, he said.

"From now on, when the end of November hits, I’m burying my head in the sand and I ain’t coming out until Jan. 1," he said.

The parents almost lost one of their sons years ago. As an Iowa National Guard soldier, Spc. Timothy Bagley, then 21, was among two injured in 2011 when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations in Afghanistan.

Stewart Bagley visited Chris in jail when Tim was wounded. After years of operating as a functional alcoholic, with the ability to drink all night before pouring concrete hours later, Chris Bagley quit booze when his brother was hurt and his son was born, his family said.

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As they search for Chris, the Bagleys do not believe their son's criminal history is connected to his disappearance.

His convictions include assault causing serious injury, interference with official acts and public intoxication, court records show. In one felony case, Bagley pleaded guilty to third-degree arson in 2006 after authorities accused him and another man of lighting a floor mat on fire at a Winthrop gas station.

While incarcerated, Chris Bagley, who his father described as having a "heart of gold," made sure his family was taken care of, his parents said. He could be a mean drunk, they said, but he would call his wife from a halfway house and visit during work releases, telling his son he had to "go camping" when he went back.

Even in Chris Bagley's days of drinking and running around, as his father put it, they were always able to reach him and talk. But calls and texts have gone unanswered; this time, he said, something feels wrong.

"Somebody out there knows what happened," Stewart Bagley said. "Somebody always knows something."

Authorities have asked anyone with information about Bagley's disappearance to call the sheriff's office at 319-892-6100 or email LCSO.criminal@linncounty.org.

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