Renewed Search for Missing Girl
New tip in '91 Case of Nikki Campbell

Charlie Goodyear, Bernadette Tansey, Erin Hallissy, Chronicle Staff Writers Thursday, January 11,
2001

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Police searched a crawl space under a Fairfield house yesterday, a block away from where 4-year-old
Amanda "Nikki" Campbell lived when she disappeared nine years ago.

Acting on a tip that they may find the kidnapped girl's body underneath the tri-level white stucco
house on Salisbury Drive, police conducted the search with the consent of the current occupants,
who did not live there in December 1991, when Nikki was last seen alive.

Four detectives who left the house in an unmarked blue sedan yesterday afternoon would not
comment. A short while later, a woman inside the house told reporters: "We'd like you to respect our
privacy. It's a difficult situation."

Fairfield Police Lt. Brent Baird confirmed that police got a tip in November that Nikki may have been
lured to the house on Dec. 27, 1991, the last day she was seen. The tipster said Nikki's body may be
buried under the house, which Baird characterized as information that police had never heard before.
In their "initial" search, police found no evidence to link the house to the girl.

"It may turn out to be the break we were looking for, or it may be a complete waste of time," said
Baird, who indicated that police would conduct further searches of the house.

Yesterday, Elizabeth Young, who owned the house in 1991, said Nikki had come to her house the day
before she disappeared wanting to play with her young nephews, who had been living there with their
father but had moved away. That was the last time Young saw Nikki.

Young denied that the house could be connected in any way to Nikki's disappearance, saying she and
her family had actually helped search for the girl after she was reported missing. She said there would
never have been any opportunity for anyone in the household to commit such a crime.

"I was home there all the time," said Young, who now lives in Suisun City.

Baird did not characterize anyone in Young's family as a suspect, and Young said she had not been
contacted by police either in 1991 or now.

Nikki's mother, who has remarried and now goes by the name Ann Campbell- Javier, is holding little
hope that the tip would solve the crime and give her closure to almost a decade of agony.

"I'm sure they investigated all that when Nikki was taken," she said in an interview at her Vallejo
home. "I'm sure they were all checked out then."

The tip came in as Fairfield Police Det. Harold Sagan, who had dogged the case for years, was
retiring. Sagan had long believed that an Oakland man, Timothy Bindner, had kidnapped Nikki, and in
1992 police searched his home and named him as a suspect. Bindner, who maintained his innocence in
Nikki's case and the disappearances of several other East Bay girls, sued Fairfield for defamation and
received a $90,000 settlement in 1997.

Campbell-Javier said she believes that Sagan did a thorough job investigating the case and does not
believe any searches of the house will turn up evidence of her daughter.

"I don't believe this is going to be anything more than 'get your hopes up and see you later,' " she
said.

Nikki was last seen after leaving with her brother, Matthew, to ride bikes to different friends's houses.
Matthew, a year older than Nikki, returned, but Nikki's bike was later found a half-block from their
home on Salisbury Drive.

Campbell-Javier said she believes deep down that her daughter is dead.

"I'm always going to have hope that she's out there. But it's been nine years," Campbell-Javier said.
"And even if she does come home, she's not going to be the little girl I raised. She'll be a different
person, depending on what they've done to her and what kind of life they've had her live."

E-mail Charlie Goodyear at cgoodyear@sfchronicle.com, Bernadette Tansey at
btansey@sfchronicle.com and Erin Hallissy at ehallissy@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/11/MNC115650.DTL

Table of Contents

Searchers leave empty-handed, Ishtar93, 11:40 PM, Jan-13-01

Messages in this discussion

1 . "Searchers leave empty-handed"
Posted by Ishtar93 on Jan-13-01 at 11:40 PM (EST)
Searchers leave empty-handed

By Rowena Lugtu-Shaddox

FAIRFIELD - Police and FBI agents Thursday evening concluded their search at a Salisbury Drive home
for the body of 4-year-old Amanda Nikki Campbell.

"Just because the search proved fruitless doesn't mean the rest of the information is of no value,"
Fairfield police Lt. Brent Baird said Friday.

"One of the positive things about this is it brings a lot of memories back to people who share those
with us, or suspicions they had at the time," Baird said. "Anytime someone can share that, it
increases our chance for the lead that cracks the case. All we need is one."

Investigators began searching the crawl space of the home on Wednesday, almost two months after
receiving information that a resident there at the time of Nikki's disappearance allegedly killed and
buried her there.

The culprit reportedly admitted the act to others and eventually the lead made its way to cops.

But while police have no evidence of a crime at the Salisbury Drive home, they continue following the
information that led them there. On Thursday, a team of officers scoured the area for a Fairfield man
possibly connected to Nikki's disappearance, sources said. Baird on Friday wouldn't comment if
they've found him or if they were questioning additional people.

Thursday evening, detectives questioned an associate of the Fairfield man. He was reportedly in
Vacaville this week but has since "dropped out of sight."

Rowena Lugtu-Shaddox can be reached at rshaddox@dailyrepublic.net.

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/display/inn_news/NEWS3.TXT