Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade

Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade
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Sheriff says no trace of Adam Herrman found after 1999

Parents did not report him missing until recently

Police say they don't know if he is dead or alive

Adam was 11 or 12 in 1999

(CNN) -- Authorities in Kansas are looking for a boy who disappeared about a decade ago, but was not reported missing until a few weeks ago.

"We don't know what happened to Adam Herrman past '99, when he was last seen," Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy said at a news conference in El Dorado.

"Is he alive, is he dead? That one I can't answer because we don't know," he added.

Adam was 11 or 12 when he was last seen, Murphy said. At the time, he was living in a mobile home park in Towanda, a small town in southern Kansas, with his adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman. The couple did not report him missing, Murphy said.

A few weeks ago, a person notified Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Children's Unit of a "concern" regarding Adam, Murphy said.

The agency did not immediately return CNN's phone call seeking additional information.

Wichita attorney Warner Eisenbise, who is representing Adam's adoptive parents, said the couple "really rue the fact that they didn't" report the boy missing.

"They feel very guilty" about not doing that, he said in a telephone interview. The couple told him the boy had run away frequently, he said, and they believed him to be either with his biological parents or homeless.

Although the Herrmans did not report him missing, "they were very worried about him," he said.

Authorities have searched the Pine Ridge Mobile Home Park, where the family had lived, and discovered an "answer" to one of their questions, Murphy said, without explaining.

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Speechless,,,,simply speechless!