By Pauline Repard
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER February 20, 2002 Danielle van Dam isn't the first girl in the county to vanish under strange or tragic circumstances. In eight cases dating to 1960, five girls were found dead and two turned up alive. One was never found.  Mary Lou Olson, 10, headed for a drugstore in National City on Jan. 3, 1960. She was found dead nine days later, 13 miles south of Tijuana.
When she didn't return to her home on E Avenue, her father called police. Intense searching ended when a farmer found her body in a gully. She had been raped and suffocated. Her killer was never found. Patricia Lee Kuzara, 7, of Putney Road in Poway, was walking home from her baby-sitter's house the evening of Sept. 28, 1974. Her body was found in a field off Midland Road the next day. The day after that, the 40-inch-long piece of iron used to bludgeon her was found near Community Road. Her killer was never found. Leticia Hernandez, 7, disappeared while playing in front of her home on Bush Street in Oceanside on Dec. 16, 1989. A search expanded to dozens of officers and 200 volunteers. The FBI checked hundreds of reported sightings of Leticia all the way to Florida. It ended March 9, 1991, when a ranch caretaker found Leticia's skull off county Highway S16, two miles south of the Riverside County line. She had been dead about a year. Suspicion centered on a man who lived near the Hernandez family, but no arrest was made after a grand jury investigation. Crystal Anzaldi, 14 months old, vanished from her parents' bedroom at their 30th Street apartment in Golden Hill the morning of Dec. 8, 1990. An extensive search yielded no clues. Seven years later, Crystal turned up alive in Puerto Rico, being raised by Nilza Gierbolini. She claimed that a man who had shared the Anzaldi apartment gave her the toddler, but he was never charged with kidnapping. Crystal was returned to her then-divorced father. In June 1991, a man lured a 4-year-old girl by offering her a dollar bill in the front yard of her Escondido home. She was found later, alone and crying, by a couple who gave police a description of a car nearby. Police arrested Garry Burr, then 35, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexually molesting the girl. Laura Arroyo, 9, of Monterey Pine Drive in Chula Vista ran to answer the door on the night of June 19, 1991. Her parents later saw the open door. They checked with neighbors, then called police. The next day, two women found Laura's body three miles from her home at a Bay Boulevard industrial park. She had been beaten and stabbed. Her killer has never been found. Rasheeyda Wilson, 9, told her mother she was going to play outside their downtown San Diego residence at the Yale Hotel on July 15, 1991. Six hours later, her mother called police to report the child missing. Officers scoured the area, passed out fliers and broadcast her name from a helicopter. Rasheeyda has never been found. Amanda Gaeke, 9, never came home after riding her bike near her home on Landis Street in North Park on Oct. 3, 1991. Police searching door to door were not suspicious when David Allan Webb, 16, said he knew Amanda. Her body was found 11 days later in a canyon five blocks from her home. In May 1996, police acting on a tip arrested Webb, then 21. He had lured Amanda into his home, drugged her, raped her and hid her under his bed while he went to school. After 36 hours he strangled her, then dumped her body. He was sentenced to life in prison. |
