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A 4-year-old Washington state girl who has been missing since 2021 has been declared legally deceased.
Records filed in the Pacific County Superior Court indicated that Oakley was legally declared dead in August 2025.
KOMO News reports that no additional information has been provided and no “official press release was made.”
Court records, however, indicated that a lawyer for Oakley’s siblings made the filing. The records didn’t indicate the reason behind the filing.
“Oakley was declared deceased in Pacific County, and that came as a complete shock to us,” Oakley’s former foster mother, Jamie Jo Hiles, told K5 News. “Just because, why Pacific County? And also like, on what basis?”
Hiles, who had Oakley from the time she was an infant to age three, reportedly said she had no idea that Oakley had been declared deceased.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Oakley was reported missing after deputies arrived at her family’s Oakville home on December 6, 2021, to perform a welfare check, at the request of Oakville Elementary School Principal, Jessica Swift.
Swift said she noticed something odd when she brought supplies to Oakley’s parents, Jordan Bowers and Andrew Carlson, in December 2021, following a house fire that destroyed a lot of their belongings.
Two weeks later, Swift returned to the home and, again, didn’t see Oakley. Later, Oakley’s sister went to Swift’s home for a play date with Swift’s daughter, and that’s when Swift learned that Oakley had not been seen in a while.
“On a play date with my daughter and Oakley’s sister, I asked questions about Oakley,” Swift told News Nation. “And it came out over the course of those questions that Oakley wasn’t living with them anymore. I can’t describe the feeling I had at that moment, sitting on that couch with that little girl, when she said that.”
Swift said she immediately contacted Grays Harbor police and made a report. When police searched the home, they saw no sign of Oakley having ever been there. Oakley’s parents have both denied knowing what happened to her.
Although both parents are considered suspects in Oakley’s disappearance, neither Bowers nor Carlson have been charged for her disappearance or death.
In 2022, they were convicted of unrelated child endangerment charges involving controlled substances.
In 2023, Bowers was sentenced Monday to a 43-month prison sentence after a “last minute” plea deal for identity theft, Fox 13 reports.
Meanwhile, Hiles added that attorneys for Oakley’s siblings contacted her over the summer, requesting her help in declaring Oakley dead, in an attempt to help them inherit her estate.
“No, I’m not interested in that, because we are working on the criminal case,” Hiles said, adding that the way the declaration had been handled was insensitive.
“Doing something like this behind closed doors, without involving those who truly loved Oakley, is not advocacy. It feels like opportunism.”
A lawyer for the guardian ad litem for Oakley Carlson’s siblings issued the following statement Monday:
“As counsel for Oakley and her surviving siblings, we made the difficult decision to have Oakley declared deceased, given the evidence we have reviewed thus far and the passage of time since she was reported missing.
“We made this decision in consultation and with the support of Oakley’s biological family. ”
Anyone with information on Oakley’s case should contact the Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office at 360-533-8765, or send a tip to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
[Feature Photo: Oakley Carlson/Handout]
