On October 11th. 1993 Stephanie Craine, age 9 was kidnapped in Challis, Idaho. My husband's best friend was the Detective that was working on that case. This case was never solved. I never thought in a million years this could ever happen to me. The reason my memory recalls this so well is because in March of 1994, my Stephanie was in the 1st grade and Little Amanda Rae was in Kindergarden at the Centennial Elementary School here in Nampa, Idaho. I will never forget this day and I know Amanda Rae will never forget it either. This is what happened.
A week before this had happened there was an attempted kidnapping on a teenage girl over in Boise, it failed. But same description of the car and the man driving it tried to get my daughter, too.
The school had an area for the buses only, no vehicle are allow in this area! All the kids that rides buses wait in the lines. And for unknown reasons there weren't any school monitors near by on this day.
A black Monte Carlo drove into the bus area, right next to the buses. A man wearing a black cap, a black t-shirt with an eagle in the back, black jeans and the thing that Amanda will remember forever are the snake skin cowboy looking boots this man was wearing. This mans hair had probably been dyed, because his beard was salt and peppered. This with what the police said, because his hair the week before was salt and peppered then.
This man got out of his car, walked over to my Little Amanda Rae, who was standing in the bus line, grabbed her, taking her to his car. He proceeded to try to put her in his car. Thank God for a young man who was sitting on his front step across from the school, saw this little girl who was not wanting to get put in this car, realizing some thing was wrong. He sent his girlfriend's sister into the house to call the police and he came running, making a commotion so someone would notice this guy trying to put this little girl in the car that she didn't want to get into. The guy let Amanda go and she ran to find her sister. Mike, the young man who came to Amanda's rescue knew that he needed to get the license plate, but there was none on the front or back!!!!!!! This car and man drove off and disappeared never to be seen again, at least not in this area!
The police shortly arrived, some went to search for that car, not to be found. We spent a lot of time with the police that day. A day that will never, ever be forgotten! I almost lost my little girl that day and she almost lost us! I never dreamed that this would happen to me or anyone else I knew. It just doesn't happen that way, right? WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! The next day, half of the front page of our local newspaper was about this attempted kidnapping of Little Amanda Rae.
A week later in Ontario, Oregon a young boy wasn't so lucky! They were pretty sure it was the same man and car. I never heard if they ever found that little boy. God I hope so. And I, have never gotten word that they have ever found this man. I hope somewhere that they have and put him 6 feet under! I pray that he isn't out there somewhere. There was an Angel there that day, his name is Mike!!!!
that same year in Boise, someone tried to kidnap Janelle and later Chelsie. He was a child molester from California, he figured Idaho was more naive. He drove up to Janelle and asked her for directions to the seven 11. Janelle told him to go F-- himself, that's my baby! Chelsie tried to go with him, but was behind a chain link fence so that saved her life.
ReplyDelete