Posted on 02/26/2005 6:36:54 AM PST by varina davis
CRYSTAL RIVER - Too weary to walk, the father and grandparents of a missing 9-year-old girl drove the 50 yards from their home to a bank of microphones and TV cameras.
"I really ... I really need as much help as I can right now," Mark Lunsford said between sobs. "I need my daughter home."
Jessica Marie Lunsford was reported missing Thursday morning. She was still missing when Lunsford, 41, and his parents addressed the media for the first time at 9 a.m. Friday. And she was still missing long after darkness fell and well-wishers held candles and prayed.
For the second straight day, searchers scoured the woods near the Lunsford home. The clues investigators did discover Friday led nowhere.
At 6 p.m., with rain spitting at volunteers and more than 100 worn-out local, state and national law officers, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy called off the search for the night.
"Very frustrating," Dawsy said while a search helicopter buzzed overhead. "It's not because we haven't tried, as you can tell."
There were some developments Friday. The FBI found Jessica's mother, Angela Bryant, in Ohio, where she lives. Agents interviewed her and determined she was not a suspect, Dawsy said.
Law officers also said a doll was missing from Jessica's room. Dawsy didn't provide any more details.
Jessica stands 4 foot 11 and weighs 70 pounds. She is a Homosassa Elementary School third-grader.
She was last seen about 10 p.m., when her grandparents tucked her in to bed inside their mobile home in Homosassa, a small village south of Crystal River. Jessica lives there with her father and his parents, Archie and Ruth Lunsford.
Jessica wore a pink nightgown and white shorts.
"Come on, mama," Ruth Lunsford, 73, recalled Jessica telling her Wednesday night. "You got to put me to bed."
She told her grandmother, "I love you," and Ruth and Archie Lunsford retired in their room, which is near the front door.
They didn't hear any sounds all night, Ruth Lunsford said.
Mark Lunsford spent Wednesday night at a girlfriend's house. He came home sometime before 6 a.m. and heard his daughter's alarm going off. He changed his clothes to get ready for work, and checked to see why Jessica hadn't turned it off.
She was gone. The front door was unlocked and there were no signs of forced entry.
The sheriff couldn't call the case an abduction, because there have been no real clues. But he said he does not think the girl wandered off alone, and a national missing child alert has been issued.
"She wouldn't go anywhere without telling us," Ruth Lunsford said. "When God made Jessie, he made an angel. We always called her princess. I know she's out there."
Searchers with bloodhounds and riders on horseback crisscrossed the mossy oaks, pines and sugar-sand mounds Friday looking for clues the rain didn't dissolve.
Divers, meanwhile, began searching area ponds.
"We're looking for anything right now," Dawsy said when asked if he was looking for a body.
ATV riders combed the area. More than 30 members from a state Child Abduction Response Team also helped.
Convicted sex offenders living in the county were checked, sheriff's spokeswoman Gail Tierney said. The family's home computer was taken into evidence in case a predator had contacted Jessica online.
Faith Baptist Church, Jessica's small congregation, organized a candlelight vigil in the night and helped the Sheriff's Office hand out fliers in Homosassa neighborhoods in the day. The church's white vans drove members to different blocks. When volunteers stumbled on anything suspicious, like a shovel or toys in a truck, they contacted deputies, who marked the sites. One elderly volunteer walked into barbed wire and needed medical treatment.
"We just want to help any way we can," said Arnold West, who saw Jessica Wednesday, before she went missing. "This seems the only way to do it."
A crew from America's Most Wanted received special access to detectives and the family. The show plans to air a segment on Jessica tonight. More than 11 local and national television crews crowded the area, which was guarded by police tape. Residents came in a steady stream asking for fliers to hand out.
The afternoon was mostly a lull until Hillsborough County's sheriff called Dawsy, setting the media abuzz. Deputies had found a body in a lake there. Dawsy braced Mark Lunsford for the news. He did not tell the elderly Ruth.
The body was a young woman's. It turned out not to be Jessica.
"We went through a bit of an emotional roller coaster," Dawsy told reporters. "We have confirmed it is not our girl."
Varina,
Please convey to Jessica's family that there are LOTS of people throughout the country (we live in WV) and the world I'm sure, praying for little Jessica and for them.
As a mother I can't even imagine the pain and heartbreak they are going through and pray I never will. My heart just breaks for them and for all parents and families of missing children.
I was afraid the little girl they found yesterday was Jessica and although was relieved it wasn't, my heart still breaks for whoever that precious little angel was and for her family and loved ones.
Missing children is way too prevalent in this country and it angers me that in the richest, greatest, most powerful country in the world, America has such high rates of missing persons especially precious children and abuse. Seems to me that our priorities are screwed up and certainly the justice system which allows perverts and child predators and abusers to walk free preying on more innocent children.
I could not find an "official" site online to leave prayers and messages of hope for Jessica and her family so I'm hoping that you will forward the prayers and hope from our family to hers for us.
Please let them know that we are keeping them in our thoughts, prayers, and hearts and are praying for a miracle that little Jessica will be found safe and sound and returned to them soon.
Thank you for a really wonderful article - it was well written and I can tell that you wrote it from your heart.
So, here in WV, my family and friends are all thinking of precious little Jessica and her family and sending them hope, prayers and good thoughts for her safe return and wanted her grandparents, her dad, her mom and all her loved ones and friends to know that.
Miracles DO happen...look at Elizabeth Smart and we know that prayer works so let's all hope for the very best and keep praying for this precious little angel.
Kathy Stevens
Huntington, WV
What a nightmare for these people.
May God bless and watch over her.
I am worried,too..This sounds really bad..
Prayers for her safe return and may God give strength to the family..I cannot imagine the pain they are going through.
"Mark Lunsford spent Wednesday night at a girlfriend's house. He came home sometime before 6 a.m. and heard his daughter's alarm going off. He changed his clothes to get ready for work, and checked to see why Jessica hadn't turned it off. She was gone. The front door was unlocked and there were no signs of forced entry.
HUH? Why doesn't that make sense?
I don't know, something just doesn't sound right to me.
Plus the dad has a Mullet, that's always a baaaad sign. A Mullet is usually indicative of a doper, drunk, ex-con, pervert, loser - or all of the aforementioned.
I believe he has been cleared...IIRC
It would really lift Jessica's family up to know absolutely how many people are praying for them! I hit my kness yesterday after hearing the grandmother answer a reporter's question "what can the public do to help in this case?" and the grandmom said "prayer, just lots of prayer." I know prayer is much more powerful than anything here on earth. May it be God's will to have little Jessica return home safe and sound. God bless you for your help and Jessica's family.
Tania
At the risk of being embarrassed.....what is a mullet? How can you tell he has one?
Type of 80's haircut. Short in the front and sides and long in the back. look it up - whole websites devoted to it that are quite amusing.
Prayers for the little girl. Something doesn't smell right about this whole thing.
Thanks for the info. My energies will be focused on her return....her safe return.
No kidding -- what IS a mullet? and what does it mean???
For the textbook mullet, refer to David Spade in "Joe Dirt"..
This is from yourDictionary.com/library
Mullet the Mystery
John Algeo
Professor Emeritus of English
University of Georgia
The new uses of mullet are for (1) "a hairstyle with the hair cut short on the sides and in the front, but long and flowing down the back neck" and (2) "someone wearing his (usually it’s a male) hair in that style." The style is associated with trailer parks, six packs of beer, a package of unfiltered cigarettes tucked in the rolled-up sleeve of a T-shirt, country- western music, chicken-fried steak, pick-up trucks with deer rifles across the rear window, motorcycles, and NASCAR. Those who sport or have sported the mullet include Michael Bolton, Billy Ray Cyrus (singer of the memorable "Achy Breaky Heart"), Larry Fortensky (Liz Taylor’s husband number 9), Mel Gibson, Hulk Hogan, Brad Pitt, and David Spade, star of the recent movie Joe Dirt, in which the mullet "do" is a plot element.
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