Tyler was last seen in his family's second-floor apartment in the 1300 block of east Madison Street in Aberdeen, Washington on the evening of December 21, 1982. His mother's boyfriend was babysitting Tyler and his five-year-old sister, and the boyfriend left the apartment for about twenty minutes to pull a boat out of the nearby Wishkah River. During this time period, Tyler apparently ran out of the apartment and never returned. He has extra skin on his right ear and his left ear has an acquired deformity known as "cauliflower ear."