UPDATE: Missing Lakeville Man Lost Home to Foreclosure in January

The Lakeville home in which Steven Alexander Cross lived with his 11-year-old son—and on which he owed almost $350,000—was sold at a foreclosure auction last January for $100,000.

Cross, 60, was charged this month with child neglect in Dakota County after authorities say he abandoned his son and fled Lakeville without telling anyone where he was going.

, whose whereabouts are unknown. He left a note for his son July 18, telling him to collect his PlayStation from the home on Jasmine Avenue and go to a neighbor’s house.

In the note, Cross told his son that he “loves you more than anything,” but blamed the economy for his abandonment, writing that “there are no jobs for architects” and he had to go because the sheriff was going to “take the house” July 27.

Cross’s home, on which he owed almost $337,000, was sold at a foreclosure auction last Jan. 25, according to county records. The bank that held the mortgage, Bank of America, bought the home for $100,000, and a six-month redemption period ended July 27 – apparently what Cross referred to in the note to his son.

Once the redemption period ended, Cross was given 30 days to remove his personal belongings from the home, which appeared to have been in the midst of a renovation when Cross fled. The rooms are in disarray, filled with with dusty furniture and flattened packing boxes; the floors have been stripped and the walls are down to the drywall.

Lounge chairs are still set up on the deck behind the house, but spiderwebs have formed over back door handles.

A typed note from real estate agent Michael Olsen is posted on the front door, alerting Cross that some of his property has been removed and put in storage, and giving him information on how to retrieve that property.

Olsen wouldn’t comment Wednesday on what items were removed from the home, but said the letter was a “standard posting whenever any personal property is left” in a foreclosed home.

“We’ve never seen a person there,” he said. “It was a vacant house when we got there.”

Olsen said he is waiting for the owner – the bank – to give him further instructions, and wouldn’t comment further.

Lawyers at Peterson, Fram and Bergman, a St. Paul-based firm, handled the foreclosure for Bank of America, and said Wednesday that they haven’t had anything to do with the house since it was sold in January.

Cross’s home phone in Lakeville, which was still connected Tuesday, had been disconnected Wednesday. The neighbors to whose home Cross sent his son have not returned phone messages seeking comment; the child has reportedly been sent to Minneapolis to stay with his mother’s sister, whom he had never before met.

Cross was adjudicated the boy’s father in 2001, and his mother was given visitation privileges, which she apparently never exercised, according to court documents. Those privileges were suspended in 2002, and her whereabouts are also unknown.