Junior Burdynski Vanished in 1993 — a Child Knows What Happened

Tony Brueski (0:00)

Brentwood, Maryland is one of those neighborhoods tucked right up against the DC line. Small houses, tight streets, kids riding bikes after school. In May of 1993, a 10-year-old named George Burdynski Jr. was one of those kids. Everybody called him Junior. He was small, four feet tall, 60 pounds, brown eyes, a scar on the right side of his face above his mouth. On the afternoon of May 24th, he pulled on a blue shirt and green shorts, climbed onto a red and white Schwinn with wide handlebars and a missing rear fender, and peddled out of his family's driveway on 40th Place. He was heading a few blocks over to see a friend. Witnesses saw him outside the friend's house around 4 that afternoon. Saw him riding through the neighborhood at 8.3 that evening. Then, Junior was gone.

His father found the bicycle rim the next morning. Just the rim, near a tennis court, three blocks from home. The rest of his bike was never recovered. Neither was Junior.

That was 33 years ago. And for most of those years, the answer to what happened to him was locked inside someone who was 13 years old at the time. Another child in another kind of trouble entirely. On September 17th of 2026, Prince George County Police announced they'd charged a 61-year-old man named Joseph Lynch with second-degree murder and multiple offenses involving a minor. Lynch's name has been in the Burdynski file almost from the beginning. He was convicted in 1994 of crimes against other children in the same neighborhood, then released. And according to police, he allegedly went on harming minors for years after that.

But the connection to Junior, that took a separate investigation, a different set of charges, and a witness detectives didn't know existed. The FBI later described Brentwood as tight-knit but struggling, many families dealing with addiction and financial strain. It was a kind of place where adults who paid attention to neighborhood children didn't always raise suspicion. Lynch lived on the 3200 block of Varnum Street, a few blocks from Burdynski and his family. He was 28 Junior's mother would later testify that her son visited Lynch's home with his friends. When Junior disappeared, law enforcement flooded the area. Police on foot, canine units, helicopters, FBI agents knocking on every door. Families and neighbors. Printed flyers. A local Domino's Pizza glued Junior's face onto every delivery box. For weeks, every pizza that left the store carried a missing child's picture. None of it found him.

But something else happened during those searches. As agents talked to children in the neighborhood, a name kept coming up. Not Lynch. Not yet.

James Kowalski, 53 years old. According to the FBI's own account, Kowalski had been taking boys on trips, buying them clothes, giving them money, gifting them computers. He moved to Winchester, Virginia, six weeks before Junior disappeared. Three days after Junior vanished, Kowalski was arrested for offenses against two Bretwood boys. More came forward. Some were Junior's friends. Some of what had been done to them happened the week before Junior vanished. Then Stephen Leake was arrested. Then Lynch, a friend of Kowalski's, was arrested for lying to investigators about the last time she saw Junior. Her own son was one of Kowalski's victims.

What investigators uncovered was a ring of offenders that had allegedly operated in the neighborhood across the Mid-Atlantic for roughly 25 years.

All three men were convicted. None was charged in Junior's disappearance. Inside one of the homes tied to the ring, investigators found videotapes, recordings of local news coverage about the search for Junior. The only proof Junior had ever set foot in Kowalski's home was that he'd logged on to a computer there once to play a video game. Several of the boys told investigators they'd been communicating with Kowalski and the others by computer. Most of the agents on the case had never investigated anything involving a machine. An FBI agent named Doris Gardner barely six months out of the academy with a background in computer science pushed the team to include those computers in their search warrants. What they found launched the FBI's first undercover operation targeting online crimes against children. It eventually became the Innocent Images Program, a nationwide initiative that has since produced thousands of convictions. Junior's disappearance is the origin case. It never brought Junior home.

Lynch was sentenced in 1994 to 23 years for offenses involving minors. Different victims, not Junior. He was released in 2006

In 2002, investigators publicly announced they were focusing on a different, unnamed individual they believe may have been responsible for Junior's death. They told the family they believe Junior had been killed shortly after he disappeared. That lead went nowhere. In 2004, there were reported sightings of Junior in Massachusetts. A man with a scar on his face, apparently homeless, traveling with a group selling coupon books door to door. He was never identified. The case was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries in 1996, and on America's Most Wanted. Police released age-progressed images. Junior would be 44 years old today. Barbara Burdynski, his mother, stood on the walkway outside the same house on 40th Place in 2002, and told a reporter she believed it was finally coming to an end.