On the morning of November 6, 2011, Sky Elijah Metalwala (born September 6, 2009) disappeared in Bellevue, Washington, United States.

His mother, Julia Biryukova, claimed that she put Sky, who was reportedly sick, and his older sister in her car to go to a nearby hospital.

Her description of the incident also shared similarities with an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that had been rebroadcast in the Seattle area the night before.

[2] Shortly before, Biryukova had decided to withdraw from a mediated custody agreement that was the last stage of an acrimonious divorce from Sky's father, Solomon Metalwala.

Solomon has remained active in assisting police with the investigation, believing Sky's disappearance was related to the custody dispute.

Although there have been allegations that she neglected Sky when he was in her custody, and state child-welfare agencies have tried to remove a child she had with a later husband with a history of abuse,[4] police have made a "strategic decision" not to charge her with child endangerment for leaving her son in the car on the day he disappeared, in order to keep their options open if they learn more about Sky's whereabouts.

Julia Biryukova is a Ukrainian born in Soviet Russia; she later claimed to have been subjected to shock therapy in mental hospitals during her childhood as punishment, in addition to regular disciplinary beatings by her parents, with serious negative effects on her self-esteem as a result.

Solomon claimed in later court papers that at this time, Biryukova began exhibiting psychological problems, causing him to begin eating outside and sleeping on the floor to comply with her obsession with keeping the condominium clean.

The board cited the couple several times for violating noise regulations; at one point they awoke their neighbors with vacuuming after 11 p.m. Biryukova, in turn, alleged that Solomon became controlling and angry.

[7] When Sky was two months old, his parents left him alone in their car in a Target parking lot for almost an hour on a day when the outdoor temperature was 27 °F (−3 °C).

The Metalwalas claimed they had been inside only for twenty minutes and did not want to wake the child, but the store's security camera video footage disproved them.

[6] On Biryukova's 29th birthday, in early 2010, she was briefly committed to a mental hospital for the first of three times, after telling Solomon she had dreamed of killing the children.

Upon her third commitment, she was found to have a Global Assessment of Functioning score of 15, suggesting she was a danger to herself and others; it had improved to 40, meaning slight impairment, by the time she was released.

Solomon claimed that the allegations were fabricated, and said Biryukova's mental problems made her unstable, incapable of keeping food in the house, or letting her children sleep in beds due to her OCD.

She has said she put him and his sister in the car she was driving at the time, a silver 1998 two-door Acura Integra,[6] and headed for the Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue.

in that city, a long section of the road that follows a tall concrete noise barrier around the curve of the Washington State Route 520 expressway, just west of its interchange with Interstate 405, her car ran out of gas.

She said she left Sky strapped into his car seat inside while she took Maile to find assistance, reaching a Chevron station a mile (1.6 km) north of where she parked an hour later.

After a lie detector test he took the night after the disappearance proved inconclusive, Solomon took another one the next day,[6] although neither he, his attorney, nor the police shared the results with the public.

[11] The theory that Sky's disappearance might have been arranged by Biryukova drew more credence when police learned of strong coincidences between her story and a recently aired episode of the popular NBC crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

[2][12] In the episode, titled "Missing Pieces", a young couple claims their baby son has been abducted when their parked car was stolen.

[2] "I know that there are several folks up in the operations center of the command post that have taken a look at that episode," Major Mike Johnson of the Bellevue police told reporters, "and have commented that it is strikingly similar in nature.

[1] During the previous months, she had also posted a profile to seekingarrangements.com, a dating website for women seeking "sugar daddies", wealthy men willing to support a younger woman financially as part of a romantic relationship.

However, they did not formally describe her as a prime suspect or person of interest, nor did they charge her with child endangerment despite the circumstances of the case and her past arrest, along with her then-husband, for leaving Sky in the car unsupervised.

[15] The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) removed Maile from Biryukova's home in the wake of her brother's disappearance and placed her into foster care.

While the previous year the department said it had exhausted all the leads that had been reported to it, at that time Mylett claimed Solomon had shared some unspecified new information with them that might prove useful.

[18] Around the time of the fourth anniversary of Sky's disappearance in 2015, it was reported that Biryukova had not only remarried the previous year but had borne her third child by her new husband, Alan Morgan, in July.

[4] DSHS was most concerned about Biryukova's mental health, given her OCD diagnosis and past hospitalizations, following a complaint from the person who delivered the child.

The month the two were married, Biryukova reported Morgan to the Redmond police for allegedly assaulting her and was granted a no-contact order; she nevertheless visited him regularly in jail in Issaquah, where he was when she gave birth, under assumed names.

In the absence of any new information or useful leads, and with Biryukova's account still considered doubtful, theories of Sky's disappearance have assumed his mother's connivance.

[8] Berry, Solomon's attorney, said she believes more definitely that Sky was never in the car that morning, nor would police have been expected to find any evidence in the apartment.