Chloie Leverette and Gage Daniel

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2:16Today, I'm discussing the case of Chloe Leverett and Gage Daniel. This is a case that has the public torn. A fire breaks out in a farmhouse in rural Tennessee that levels it to the ground. Two sets of remains are found, and two sets of remains are missing. Law enforcement says that everyone died in the fire, but the fire marshal disagrees. This is the case of Chloe Leverett and Gage Daniel. In 2012, at a rural farmhouse in Bedford County near Unionville, Tennessee, siblings Chloe Leverett and Christopher Gage Daniel lived a happy life with their grandparents. At this time, Gage was 7 and Chloe was 9.

2:58And while their grandparents didn't exactly plan to raise them, they were more than happy to. Child Services investigated the kids' mom, Cheryl Daniel, and Gage's father, Christopher Daniel, between 2006 and 2010. Chloe's father had unfortunately passed away. And while DCS never took custody of the kids at any point, it was decided that the best place for them was with their maternal grandma, 70-year-old Molly McLaren, and her husband, technically their stepfather, 72-year-old Leon McLaren, also known as Bubba. Cheryl says that she was battling addiction at this time, but remained in her kids' lives, even taking them occasionally on weekends.

3:40While it wasn't the most traditional arrangement, the kids were happy and doing well in their classes at community elementary school. Chloe's been described as a very sweet child with a big heart and piercing blue eyes the color of the sky, and she really seemed to enjoy life on the farm. They had goats, chickens, dogs, and even a white pony, and her cousin was right down the street. They often played together and would do things like going for a swim through the cattle trough. Now, before Chloe was born, Cheryl was told that she could never have kids. So Chloe was a very happy surprise, as was her brother Gage.

4:17Gage has also been described as very sweet with a good heart. He was diagnosed with Daniel Walker syndrome, which impacts motor skills and speech. But by all accounts, he was thriving and also enjoyed life on the farm. They often called him Buster, and he enjoyed sticking close to his grandfather Bubba, especially when he rode the gator on the farm. Bubba and Gage have been described as inseparable. And this really was a true family farm. Bubba and his five siblings grew up there. He was the second oldest and often acted as a caretaker for all his siblings. In my research, I found a ton of heartwarming stories about Bubba.

4:56He was always giving money to his siblings when they needed it, or just going by to check on them every day when they were going through hard times. And they really were staples in this community. Bubba and Molly were both born in Bedford County, had 16 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, and were married for 35 years. Honestly, I can't think of a better, more stable environment for a child than on that farm with Bubba and Molly. And I can't think of many things more devastating than losing all of that in a single night. On Sunday, September 23, 2012, Chloe and Gage were seen playing in their yard at about 6.30 p.m., a few hours before bedtime, which was 9 p.m., and by about 9.30 or 10, a fire broke out in the home.

5:44A neighbor driving by saw it and reported it to authorities. You can see the fire from the road, and it looks like there's the house that's going on fire. This is small-town America, and the news of the fire traveled nearly as quickly as the flames. 45-year-old Cheryl Daniel is in a neighboring town when her sister and brother in law knock on her door to tell them their parents' home is on fire. They rush to the scene and it's nothing short of horrific. In her interview with the Unsolved Mysteries podcast, Cheryl described this moment. Because it was so rural in this area, the local fire department was having trouble accessing water to put out the fire.

6:24There were no fire hydrants, so they kept having to go back and forth just to bring in water to extinguish the flames. And this is all while Cheryl and many other family members are just watching the home, presumably with their parents and children inside, burned to the ground in just a few hours. Cheryl says she just kept walking by the fire, looking for any way to get in and to get to them, to save them. But it was too late. By daybreak, officials at the scene tell her that no one made it out of the fire alive.

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8:54Good help. Get out! Is hard to find. No! You need me do this. A Hulu original. The hand that rocks the cradle. Reddit R. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. For bundled subscribers, terms apply. Smoke rises over the home on Kingdom Road, where fire has caused a horrible loss. That's just unbelievable. Yeah. State of shock. Still in shock. Not sure what to think. Family members can't understand why four loved ones died. Grandparents, Leon and Molly McLaren, and their two grandchildren. Gage was seven and Chloe was nine. They was good people. They was really good. The fire started Sunday night around 10.

9:40A neighbor called 911. The sheriff believes the four victims were asleep when it started. Anytime you've got two kids like that, it's rough. It sure is. By the time the fire department arrived, the home was covered in flames. This house fell in. All the outside of the walls and everything fell in, which made it extremely hot. Leon McLaren's son watched the house burn and knew it wasn't good. It wasn't a pretty sight for anybody to have to watch their parents. I'd never want to wish that on anyone. Mary Lamb is Leon McLaren's sister. He loved those children. They were inseparable, the little boy.

10:18He and the little boy were. As investigators search for remains, family members stand together, trying to understand why this happened. They're strengthening each other, having each other, and we all have faith. Fire officials don't know what started this fire, but at this point, there's no indication that it is suspicious. The investigation will continue in the days ahead. In Bedford County, John Dunn, Fox 17 News. It took 63 ,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire. In the end, not a single wall was left standing. The focus was now on recovering the remains of Molly, Bubba, Chloe, and Gage.

11:00Now, since the fire started after their regular bedtime, authorities asked their loved ones to sketch out a map of the house, and they really began to focus on looking where the bedrooms were. By the end of Monday, authorities say that they have tentatively identified the remains of Bubba and Molly, and that they found a third set of remains that were unidentified. They add that they were all found near where their beds should have been. Now, just so you get a better idea of this scene, it was a single-story ranch-style house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a basement. About 2 ,000 square feet, according to most sources.

11:36Bubba and Molly were found side by side in the basement. Authorities initially assumed that they were lying in bed together when the ground level collapsed into that lower level. They were found with that third set of remains, and these were all placed into a body bag for Dr. Hugh Berryman and his students to examine. He's a professor and director of the Forensic Institute for Research and Education at Middle Tennessee State University. He's also a forensic anthropologist. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or TBI, enlisted their help in analyzing the scene, identifying the remains, and really just gathering any information they could.

12:16Now, their first theory was that Molly and Bubba may have been holding their grandchildren while the home burned, and that all of their remains would kind of be mixed together in the rubble. But when Dr. Berryman and his students look at the remains in that body bag, they see what they believe are two sets of adult remains, Bubba and Molly, but they also quickly realize that that third set of remains isn't human. They eventually determine that it belonged to the family's miniature poodle. There's even some fur along with the remains. So they go back to the debris to keep looking for Chloe and Gage or any other remains they could find.

12:50And they do find yet another set of remains. But again, they aren't human. They belong to the family's pet cockatoo. Gage and Chloe's remains are still nowhere to be found. By Wednesday, they still don't know what caused the fire or where Chloe and Gage are. So at this point, the TBI issued an endangered child alert for them out of what they say is just an abundance of caution, and they bring in search teams for them as well. They have cadaver dogs and helicopters with infrared technology, but there's no trace of the kids in the debris, in the wooded area surrounding the farm, or anywhere else.

13:29Really, it's just confusing for everyone. Here's a short clip from Fox Nashville in 2012. Family members are confused. Many firmly believe the children were in the fire. I believe they was in the house. I believe they were just cremated by the fire. It's very difficult if we just had ashes. You know, they're little bodies. But we don't have anything. While they've issued this alert for the kids, investigators are still adamant that they haven't found any signs of foul play, and that they have no reason to believe that the kids didn't die in the fire. But most of the experts disagree. They say if those kids were in that fire, there would be bones or teeth to prove it.

14:13I mean, surely if they can find the remains of the family bird, they could find the remains of the kids, right? Well, forensics expert and founder of the Body Farm Research Center in Knoxville, Dr. William Bass, weighed in. He says that even in an intense fire like this one, some bones and teeth should be found. He says, quote,

14:43Now, it is important to note here that children actually have more bones than adults. And while bones and teeth do shrink when they're exposed to fire, again, if they can find the remains of a small bird, surely if Chloe and Gage were in that fire, they'd be able to find some kind of evidence of it. But they just don't. A lot happens over the next week or so. Even this early on, authorities tell their family they may never know what happened to the kids. Bubba's sister, Mary Lamb, tells Kristen Hall with AP News, quote, We want to know. We want to know where those children are, if they were in the fire or if they were taken, end quote.

15:22They start to bring in heavy equipment and a ton of manpower to continue to sift through the debris. They're looking for the remains of the children as well as the cause of the fire. But by Thursday, the fire marshal's office says outright that there are no remains of any children in that structure, while the TBI insists they have no evidence of foul play or that the kids didn't die in the fire. And here's a twist that I didn't see coming in this case. Despite these conflicting statements, by Friday, an Amber Alert is issued for Chloe and Gage. And Gage's father, Christopher Daniel, tells the media that he doesn't know what to think, but now he is being told that they don't think the kids died in the fire.

16:04Honestly, it's just awful. I can't even imagine how this family felt with all these conflicting statements and actions. And really, as this family begins to learn more details about what they're finding and possible theories, things just aren't adding up. Molly and Bubba were identified using x-rays and DNA analysis. Toxicology was also performed, but nothing outside of their normal prescriptions were found. So this doesn't seem to be the case of someone drugging the grandparents before setting the house on fire and stealing the kids. Soot was found in their airways, but ultimately their remains were so damaged that they have never been able to determine their cause or manner of death.

16:46so that remains a huge question mark in this case. But Bubba's sister said that if someone did come into the house and tried to take those kids, she has no doubt that her brother lost his life while fighting for them. Of course, another theory is that after the fire broke out, the kids escaped. Maybe they got lost or were met with foul play after that but again, there's no evidence to support that theory either. Really, at this point, all authorities know is that Bubba and Molly's bodies were found lying next to each other in the remains of the home. But when their family hears this, they immediately know that something is very wrong, because they say that Bubba and Molly didn't sleep in the same room.

17:30Again, they were married for 35 years, and their loved ones tell authorities that they slept in separate rooms and in separate beds that were at least 20 to 30 feet apart. There's also some debate about whether they were on the main floor at all due to the amount of debris found on the remains after the fire. Basically, some people say that it didn't look like the roof had just collapsed on them, but maybe the entire main floor while they were in the basement. After all the experts weigh in, this case shifts from just a fire investigation to a potential murder and kidnapping scenario. It's Hulaween on Disney+.

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19:49Once the direction of this case shifts, the obvious question is, who would have wanted to take or harm the kids? Of course, as usual, authorities begin looking at their inner circle. They begin looking at friends and family. Their mother, Cheryl, is questioned and given a polygraph test, and she's eliminated as a potential suspect. The same happens to Gage's father, Christopher Daniel. He's looked into and he's cleared. Now, the TBI was very forward-facing in the media about allegations against the family. Here's spokesperson Kristen Helm speaking with Fox News in Nashville. Their mother has been spoken to.

20:29She does not have the children. There's other family members that we are looking to speak with today, and we're going to be speaking with her again as well. The list of potential persons of interest in this case is short. Molly and Bubba were by all accounts very loved by their friends, family, and community as a whole. No one could think of any reason why someone would want to hurt them or take Chloe and Gage. So while part of their investigation is stalled, investigators dig deeper into the cause of the fire, thinking maybe if they can find some type of foul play here, if they can find arson, it'll help them find the kids.

21:05Bedford County Sheriff Randall Boyce has made several statements about what he believes may have caused the fire and contributed to it as a whole. He says that the McLarens were hoarding quite a bit of stuff in their house. He says it was so full, it was often difficult to navigate some of the rooms. In an interview with the Columbia Daily Herald, he added, quote, Molly was on oxygen, was taking morphine for cancer, and smoked in bed constantly. Plus that, it was a cool night, and they had several space heaters through there, end quote. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, about 1 ,200 fires each year are caused by portable electric space heaters.

21:45So Boyce might have been onto something, but there's definitely more to dig into here. Michael Knight and his team with the ATF were also brought in to investigate. Knight has worked with the agency for over 30 years, and he also worked on the Oklahoma City bombing case in 1995. So he's a seasoned professional. They analyze everything. The thickness, color, and smell of the smoke, smoke residue, burn patterns, the overall damage, like I said, just everything they can think of. And Knight determines that there may have been some type of explosion in the fire. They find dozens of propane tanks in the debris, some still containing fuel.

22:28It's believed that these were kept in the basement. Now, it seems that Bubba had worked for a propane company at one point and would often take the tanks home, but his family says that they'd been there for at least 30 years. And while the ATF does say that they can't rule out that the propane tanks caused the fire, there's also no evidence that they did, only evidence that some of the tanks had ruptured. It feels like everything in this case is we can't prove it, we think so, but we can't prove otherwise either. But what they did conclude was that the fire grew so large in part due to ventilation from the basement door being left open, which was unfortunately right below Chloe and Gage's room.

23:11Essentially, this draft fed the fires allowing them to grow and spread faster. Many people say that this presents a good argument that Chloe and Gage did die in that fire. But like Bubba and Molly being found side by side, this was another detail that confused their family and makes them suspicious that this may be a case of arson. They say that Bubba never left the basement door open. In fact, they say that every single night he would check that the basement door was locked before going to bed. They say that in addition to all those propane tanks, it's just also where he kept his tools. So they believe that whoever left that door open was not a family member.

23:52One theory is that Bubba, Molly, and their dog were killed and placed in the basement. Whoever did this left the basement door open before setting fire to the home and escaping with the kids. Now this would explain the three sets of remains being found together and the basement door being left open. Cheryl has also proposed an interesting but all too common motive for murder, money. She says Molly and Bubba had recently changed their will about two months before the fire. In this new version, Chloe and Gage got everything. Cheryl adds that this was kept in their safe that just so happened to be missing after the fire.

24:32Though it does seem unclear ultimately who inherited any money from the McLarens that they may have had. Honestly, the theories in this case are seemingly endless. They range from a murder-suicide to a random burglary gone wrong and really everything in between. But I think what I find interesting and compelling about all this is that despite the uncertainty surrounding the fate of Chloe and Gage, the Amber Alert remained and remains active to this day. And I do think that there are some important things to consider surrounding the investigation into finding the kids. After the fire, flyers were put up all around the area looking for them, and someone kept ripping them down.

25:16There were also many reported sightings of the kids in Tennessee and across the U.S. California, Colorado, Montana, New York, and even abroad in Costa Rica. But here's what gets me. In one instance, a woman says that she was so certain that she'd seen Chloe in a diner in Tennessee that she took out her camera and started taking pictures. And when Cheryl saw those photos, she says she knew it was her daughter. It was Chloe. But the people with the girl were reportedly travelers, paid in cash, and authorities were never able to track them down. Cheryl remains adamant that it was Chloe. Since her kids went missing, Cheryl says that she's turned her life around.