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."
It's an incredibly dopey hair style from the 80s.
"What does it mean?"
Some folks think it means that if you have one you are a child molester.
My bad.....I had no idea what a "mullet" was. I agree that the focus should be on little Jessica.
The aunt told FOX the dog didn't bark that night which makes one wonder. Either the girl left on her own or someone the dog knew came in. The aunt laughed off the dog which, imo, adds to this already smelling mess.
A Mullet is a hair style - short on top, long in back. It was in 'vogue' in the 1980's (IIRC). Now it's usually sported by the dregs of society ... aka losers.
And I know he has one from his appearance on TV. When I saw his 'mullet', I thought "oh-oh, bad sign."
Case in point, here's three of your 'average' Mullet wearers...
Would you want this type of guy dating your daughter, niece, grand-daughter? And the gang-banger is really impressive isn't he.
(why people put there pics on the net amazes me)
Who's the aunt? Is she married or does she have a boyfriend?
'Scuse me, but I think it's ok to discuss what a mullet is. Without being slammed. Good grief.
I didn't slam you.
Is it possible this child is a sleepwalker? My Husband was as a child. He woke one morning covered in mud from down at the creek, which was a hefty walk thru some dense woods.
Sleepwalking could explain why the dog never barked.
I heard that one of her dolls is gone too. To me, that means somebody said "Come with me, and you can bring your doll too." Somebody she knows?
Very strange.
"Interesting" comments from "Mom" ...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/26/florida.girl/
Angela Bryant, the girl's estranged mother who lives in Warren County, Ohio, said, "Every night when I close my eyes, I ask God to watch over her, keep her safe."
"She's nine years old, she's innocent. Nobody should have just come in and taken her like that, but it happens every day. You don't think it's going to happen to you."
"I hope that she's not dead, that somebody hasn't taken her and did things that they wanted to do to her," she added.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/25/national/main676585.shtml
"I don't know where she is," Bryant, 31, of Morrow, Ohio, told The Associated Press in a tearful telephone interview Friday.
Bryant, who has remarried and has a 5-year-old son, added that she hadn't seen her daughter for four years. "Her dad didn't let me see her," she said.
I smell something rotten in Denmark.
It doesn't make sense. I'm curious as to why the mother didn't have custody of this child. Usually, the mother gets automatic custody.
I suspected the mother too.
However, she:
Is in Ohio, a thousand miles away
Doesn't know where her daughter lives
Doesn't have enough money to hire anyone to do the job
I agree the girl must have gone out herself. It's a mobile home with paper-thin walls, and the dog didn't bark.
"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"
You should have stopped before this really spiteful comment.
Until then,you had made some intelligent observations.
This is a more current thread for a prayer request ping.
Praying for Jessica's ultimate safe return and for her wellbeing in the meantime. May she remember and know God's love in spite of anything.
re: door -- he unlocked the back door to get in.
mullet -- nothing to do with it. :o) Though smoked mullet is mighty tasty.
But if she went out by herself, why haven't they found her yet? It's not like there is a murderer lurking under every tree.
The dog didn't bark...
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