See pictures at link. The kidnapper has a white beard. Looks like a Santa. Little blond girl.

Kidnapped three-year-old found wet, smelling of urine
Reported by Mike O'Mara
June 23, 2002
WINDSOR TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- A mother is reunited with her three-year-old daughter after the girl was kidnapped Friday night in Astabula County.

Police say the suspect, 56-year-old Billy Brown, lured three-year-old Maretta Lewis into his pickup truck while she was playing in front of her apartment by claiming to be her grandfather.

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A couple driving in their minivan in Geneva, Ohio called 911 from their cell phone when they saw Brown's truck swirving on the road.

Lieutenant Tom McCaffery of the Geauga County Sheriff's Department says the officers who caught Brown said he had his pants below knees, exposing himself, and that the child was next to him, wet and smelling of urine. He was also intoxicated.

Lewis is back safely with her mother. Results from the sexual assault exam aren't in yet.

Police think Brown may have picked up Lewis because he had been drinking at a bar located right below her apartment which her mother works at. He's currently in jail, charged with kidnapping. The charges may change when the results from the sexual assault examination come back.

It will be interesting to find out if this particular predator had a history of molesting children, or if this was the first time he was "caught" in the act. Bless the angels that saved this child.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-11-02 AT 07:09 PM (EST)

Probably he doesn't start at 50. There is some famous kidnap case of a small girl in Ohio that was never solved. I don't think she was even found.

She lived near Dayton--Kettering. Here is a 1999 article from the Cincinatti Enquirer:

Friday, March 05, 1999
Con man solicits money in name of missing girl

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Police pursuing 3 'premium' leads in Erica's case

BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Butler County authorities warn that someone is fraudulently soliciting money in the name of Erica Baker, a missing 9-year-old from the Dayton suburb of Kettering.

“It's bad enough when you're dealing with the tragedy of a missing child, but it's worse when you have some low-life that's trying to benefit from that tragedy,” Butler County Sheriff's Detective Sgt. Mike Craft said Thursday.

Erica's case has attracted national attention because she is thought to have been kidnapped by a stranger. About 99 percent of missing-child cases are abductions by non-custodial parents or other family members.

Erica disappeared while walking her dog Feb. 7, a rainy Sunday afternoon, at a park near her home. A massive ground search by professionals was abandoned after a week, but volunteers continue to look for her while they hand out thousands of fliers bearing Erica's photo and description.

In Kettering, police confirmed Thursday that they are looking at three leads, including a middle-aged Columbus man with a criminal record and ties to the Kettering area.

“He is not cooperating totally, on advice of his lawyer,” said Officer Larry Warren, spokesman for police in Kettering, a Dayton suburb about 50 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

Officer Warren said he was told the man was awaiting sentencing on sex crimes, at least some of them involving juveniles, in the Columbus area.

However, Officer Warren said the Columbus man “is no more of a prime suspect than anyone else.”

The man is among three remaining “premium leads” that police have been tracking for weeks, Officer Warren said.

Since then, they have narrowed the field to three, including the Columbus man.

In another development, two potential witnesses came forward. Within days of Erica's disappearance, police said they were looking for a female jogger and an elderly man who was walking a dog. Both talked with Kettering police last week — but the “female” jogger turned out to be a male, Officer Warren said.

P While under hypnosis, “(the jogger) gave us additional information that we already had, but it did help us to confirm that information is true,” Officer Warren said.

Kettering Police Sgt. Joe Niehaus, a professional hypnotist, also hypnotized a couple who were walking their dog around the time of Erica's disappearance and reported finding Erica's dog alone, trailing its leash. Again, the information elicited while the couple were under hypnosis merely confirmed what police already knew, Officer Warren said.

In Butler County, the bogus fund-raisingcame to light Tuesday, when a Hamilton senior citizen called the sheriff's Triad program, which supports seniors.

The woman said a man had come to her apartment complex and knocked on doors, representing himself as raising funds to aid Erica's family, Sgt. Craft said.

The suspect is described as white, about 6 feet tall, with a scruffy beard and wearing a ballcap.

Barbara Schmidt, a volunteer who is coordinating fund-raisers for the Erica N. Baker Recovery Center, the Kettering headquarters for the continuing search for the little girl, said anyone legitimately connected with her organization will be wearing a name tag.

he sure looks like a santa...don´t know if anyone is interested in psychic´s point of view but i always thought there where a link between erica baker and jonbenét...and a santa connection to jonbenét...

i think jonbenét, erica and this litle girl have some kind of look in common...so i´m interested what will come out of this...

However, had a 3 yr old child, who is TOO YOUNG TO PLAY OUTSIDE BY HERSELF, had not been "available" he wouldn't have taken her.

Mothers need to watch their children. These predators will ALWAYS be around, unfortunately.

As for the Santa, a lot of old men grow beards. He happened to have one. Jonbenet's santa neighbor bothers me because of that play his wife had written about the little girl in the basement.

This is a much bigger country with many more people from different backgrounds.

Still, the facts are that these kidnappings are statistically very rare.

However, sometimes childless women steal babies. How they explain these babies to their friends or relatives is a mystery to me.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-12-02 AT 10:56 PM (EST)

LAST EDITED ON Aug-12-02 AT 10:56 PM (EST)

Yes, I'm sorry, but the parent is partially to blame, here.

Everyone (even when my kids were little 10-12 years ago) knows that you don't let little toddlers play alone outside. Even older girls are getting kidnapped and they can run and fight. To let a 3-5 yr old play outside (edit to add: with no supervision)is incredibly irresponsible.

No one deserves to have this happen to them -- no one. But we ALL know predators are out there, so act accordingly.

edit typo (twice)

Probably it is very rare, but it is actually very rare in the US, too, considering the population.

Also, it happens less than it used to because children are better educated about the dangers.

I used to let my small kids outside and keep an eye on them while I worked in the house.

Usually they were playing with other children, but a fast kidnapper could have gotten them.

I worried more about cars than kidnappers.

I think it depends where we live.

I don't think we can guard our kids every second because there are dangers.

Gate the stairs. Hide the poisons. Use the car seat and teach them about the street.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/18/child.abductions.ap/index.html

EXTRACT:
Statistics indicate abductions of children by strangers are declining.

Bell said the FBI opened investigations in 93 such cases last year, compared with 134 in 1999. Some abductions by strangers do not result in FBI involvement, but the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates the total number of cases annually at 100 now, down from 200 to 300 in the 1980s.

"It's still a terrible problem," said Ernest Allen, the center's president. "But the good news is, these cases have been coming down. Cases like Samantha Runnion's, as outrageous as they are, are pretty rare."

Experts in the field say precise statistics on child abductions are elusive, in part because different jurisdictions define the crime differently.

"For a crime that gets as much public attention as it does, its pretty appalling that there are not better statistics," said David Finkelhor, a sociology professor who heads the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Center and has worked with the Justice Department to discern patterns in child abductions.

However, he agreed that the number of worst-case abductions, like the Samantha Runnion case, is probably declining.

Kind of makes you wonder if the perp knew everyone, doesn't it?

Kind of like someone who was always around, knew this and that, and so could put it all together so a finger possiably pointed at everybody; except him/her of course.

Now I wouldn't do that - - and - - damn it - - it isn't right.

We need to identify the people who pose a danger to our kids and we need to remove them from the streets.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,321889,00.html

Cold Comfort:

Each year, between 200 and 300 kids are taken in "stereotypical" kidnappings (i.e. grabbed from their homes or playgrounds and then murdered or held for ransom), and 50 to 150 are murdered. Officials expect this year's total number to dip to near 100, hopefully dragging down the murder rate accordingly. And despite what you might reasonably think after hearing the terrible stories of Elizabeth Smart and Samantha Runnion, the specter of kidnapping by strangers should not be parents' primary concern; parents themselves perpetrate more than 98 percent of all kidnappings, according to the DOJ. While about 700,000 missing children reports were filed in 2001, only a tiny percentage of those cases were non-family abductions. And here's one piece of positive news: 94 percent of kidnapped children are returned to their parents.

i can´t tell for all the scandinavian countries..when i lived in denmark one 10 year old girl got missing and was killed...in iceland no...we don´t have this problem with kidnappers but yes children are molested but usually it´s inside families....

i´ll leave this discussion now as i belive i´m upseting people....

i had to edit this as i wanted to make myself undestood...

You just come from a smaller community where people know each other better. Must be very nice.

As Pogo (a philosophical comic strip character--Birgitta) says, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Most children are not hurt, abused or killed by strangers. They are the victims of their loved ones.

I think we also need more help for families with a history of violence. It gets passed down thru the generations.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/press4172002.html

The United States accounts for 32% of the female population among 25 high income countries, but 70% of all female homicides, and 84% of all female firearm homicides. Some 4,000 American females are murdered each year.

A female in the United States is 3 times more likely to be murdered than a female in Canada, 5 times more likely to be murdered than a female in Germany, and 8 times more likely to be murdered than a female in England and Wales. The US female homicide victimization rate is 5 times that of all the other high income countries combined. The firearm homicide rate for US females is 11 times higher than that in the other high income countries. (see table at end of release)

Big Picture: Their menfolk have guns.
Evey woman should refuse to live in a house with a gun.

Alot of these statistics are like lightening strikes: you take the total number of people killed by lightening each year and divide by the total population and you get a totally meaningless but statistically correct result.

People who live in rural areas or who engage in outdoor recreational activities are at risk of lightening strikes. The rancher riding atop a horse on a hill during a storm is at risk, the golfer holding a metal club is at risk, the urban dweller is not. So saying 'x out of every 100 people in America die from lightning' is meaningless.

There are some places in the USA where gun sales to women far outstrip gun sales to men. There are some communities wherein a woman would never consider not having a gun in the house. They have guns and they know how to use them. And would not hesitate to do so.