Missing Adult, HELP NEEDED (crime in progress?) [SC]

This is an urgent plea for help from Prairie Lady; these are her posts: [copied]

I JUST got off the phone with my neice. It seems my sister (her mother) is missing since yesterday between 3pm and 4:40pm yesterday from the SouthCarolina area.

She headed north as far as we can track, but then nothing. This is TOTALLY uncharacteristic of her.

We need to know if she is on her own willingly making decisions, or if she has been abducted and is in need of help. Is there anybody from that area that can help?
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ok, she spoke to hubbie from home via phone about 3 pm yesterday afternoon. She left home at that time saying she was headed for her local walmart near Aynor South Carolina..I don't know the exact town...maybe conroe or something? She never made it to walmart. Survaliance tapes show she never went in there. She withdrew some money from the bank locally. She put gas in her car at the north carolina / south carolina state line (cherry creek). She withdrew a BUNCH of money in Raliegh Durham North Carolina. She spoke to her daughter at 4:30 saying she was going christmas shopping and that she would be late. But she never made it home.

If she had any inclinations to leave home, she never indicated it, and she would NOT be heading NORTH!!

She is 5'7 inches tall, LONG legs, 150 lbs, has very short medium brown hair. lots of freckels, hazel eyes. Driving a Dark Blue BMW 4 door with a mini antennea on the driver's side on the post between the door and the windshield, licence plate # 845HLG
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Go ahead and post it at freeps..thanks
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My brother in law is former military police. He made a call to the police and is tracking bank usage which is showing itself to be very abnormal such as numerous attempts to use the various cards but rejects due to wrong pin numbers. He's requested survalance tapes from the banks as well. She was supposed to go to walmart, but walmart survaliance tapes show she never made it there. So, hes compiling stuff to show that something IS very wrong.

Also, she talked to her daughter AFTER one of the cash drafts and said someting weird to her daughter...like I love you...and she NEVER says that to THAT daughter.

Unaware of crimes, 3 women aided men
FULKS
By Dave Gustafson and David Klepper
The Sun News

Less than a day after Alice Donovan was kidnapped from the Conway Wal-Mart, the two men named as suspects stayed two nights in the Huntington, W.V., home of a childhood friend.

Beth McGuffin, who went to elementary school with suspect Chadrick Fulks, said she had no idea that he and Branden Basham were wanted men when they pulled a blue BMW into her driveway at lunchtime on Nov. 15.

They never mentioned Donovan to McGuffin, and there was no sign of her in their car.

"They said they'd driven through Myrtle Beach and said they were going to Arizona for a bike rally," McGuffin said. "I had no idea what they were up to."

Details that emerged Thursday show that in the 18 days since their escape from a Kentucky jail, the two men relied on help from women who say they were unaware the men were the target of a multistate search.

Two women now stranded in a South Ocean Boulevard motel said Thursday they drove from Indiana to Myrtle Beach with the suspects, with no clue they were on a road trip with two fugitives.

Fulks' ex-girlfriend, Tina Severance, 34, and her roommate Andrea Roddy, 26, both of Portage, Ind., said Fulks and Basham - who gave the first name "Tommy" - arrived at their door a few weeks ago.

The group traveled from Indiana to Myrtle Beach and checked into their motel mid-morning on Thursday.

"Chad laid next to me like there was no care in the world," Severance said.

Fulks told Severance he loved her, then he and Basham said they were going to make a food run in her minivan "and we never saw them again," she said. The FBI has told the women to stay in Myrtle Beach and has impounded Severance's van.

Police say after Basham and Fulks took the van, they broke into a mobile home and shot at a man who interrupted them. Forty-five minutes later, they abducted Donovan before fleeing to West Viriginia, police say.

Wal-Mart security tapes show Donovan was abducted at 2:45 p.m. Nov. 14. She used her cell phone to call her daughter two hours later from Brunswick County, saying nothing about the abduction.

By 1 p.m. Nov. 15, Basham and Fulks had traveled more than 500 miles from Myrtle Beach to McGuffin's West Virginia home.

During the two days they spent there, the men appeared nervous at times, she said, and often spoke in hushed tones in corners of her house. She couldn't hear what, or whom, they were talking about.

"They never said nothing about that woman," she said Thursday.

McGuffin said Fulks and Basham, who told her his name was Tommy Blake, left her home together Sunday afternoon. Fulks returned alone.

Later that night, the lead story on the news was the arrest of a man who tried to carjack two women in nearby Ashland, Ky., before a gunfight with police. Police later identified him as Basham.

"I hit Chad's leg and I said, 'Chad, was that the guy who was just in my house?'" McGuffin said. "He pretended like he was as surprised as I was."

After Basham's arrest, Fulks stayed in Huntington for two more days, leaving Tuesday, McGuffin said. He didn't stay with her Sunday or Monday, but he visited her both days.

Fulks was arrested Wednesday in northern Indiana.

McGuffin said she has been extensively questioned by police and FBI agents. Joe Ciccarelli, supervisory agent at the bureau's Charleston, W.Va., office, would not comment, other than to say his office is participating in the investigation.

McGuffin said she spent most of two days with the fugitives, at one point even driving the BMW to the store for beer.

McGuffin said Basham was "really hyper" and nervous. Fulks, she said, was nervous on Tuesday, the day he left West Virginia.

Severance, who brought Fulks and Basham to Myrtle Beach from Indiana, calls her tale "a stupid love story that turned into a nightmare."

It started 2½ years ago when Severance was a guard at the Westville (Ind.) Correctional Facility and met Fulks, a prisoner at the time.

"Everyone says I need to see 'Raising Arizona,'" Severance said, in reference to a 1987 Coen Brothers movie about an ex-con and an ex-cop falling in love. '"That's you,' they say."

Severance said Fulks became a stand-in father to her 14-year-old daughter, who she says has been placed in protective custody while she's here.

She and Fulks broke up in May, and she heard from him from time to time before he and Basham dropped in.

"He said he loved me, and I was too happy to see him," she said. "I thought he was going to get his life back together. Just those rose-colored glasses of mine, I guess."

Severance said she, her roommate and the two men then decided to take a trip to Myrtle Beach to meet a man named J.D. Then they were going to West Virginia where she and Fulks were to wed and start a new life.

Severance theorizes there are two sides to Fulks, but that she's never seen his bad side.

"He doesn't even cuss," she said.

Severance calls Fulks a "neat freak who showers 500 times a day."

"He's very athletic, very in tune with his body," she said. "You think, 'Wow, this hunk picked me.'"

Fulks and McGuffin knew each other from their early school days in Lincoln County, W.Va. She said he was a good kid who kept in touch with her.

Five months ago, Fulks, his wife, Veronica Evans, and their baby showed up on her doorstep. They stayed a few days.

"I knew he had troubles," she said. "But I had no idea."

On Tuesday, right after Fulks left, she said she saw his picture on the television news.

"I'm still in shock," she said. "This is crazy."

Severance said she feels responsible in some way for the events that have unfolded.

"I pray every day they find that woman," she said. "I'll never forgive myself if she's not OK."

Didn't see this article here:

Posted on Fri, Nov. 22, 2002
Search comes up empty
Suspects' stories conflicting
By Natalie Burrowes Pruitt, Tonya Root and Dawn Bryant
The Sun News

Branden Basham (left) and Chadrick Fulks (center) have both been arrested in connection with the kidnapping of Horry County resident Alice Donovan (right).

WINNABOW, N.C. - A tip called in to police and information from suspects spurred the most intense searches yet for a missing Horry County woman abducted from a Conway Wal-Mart a week ago.

Investigators searched by air, water, horseback and on foot Thursday in the Winnabow community of Brunswick County, where several people told police they'd seen her about two hours after her abduction.

The search, however, yielded no sign of 44-year-old Alice Donovan. A similar search in the Savannah Bluff community near Conway also came up empty Thursday but resumed at 6 p.m. as a helicopter hovered with a spotlight above teams carrying flashlights.

Suspects in the kidnapping Branden Basham, 21, and Chadrick Fulks, 25, have given authorities different stories about when and where they last saw Donovan, according to an FBI affidavit released Thursday.

Basham has told the FBI that he and Fulks abducted Donovan, binding her with duct tape in the back seat of her car, according to the affidavit.

Late Thursday, Clyde Merryman, a senior resident FBI agent in Myrtle Beach, said information from one or both of the suspects led police to Savannah Bluff.

"We had information that they had been down here, casing this area for burglary," Merryman said. "We know they have a familiarity with this area ... After the Indiana incident, where they tied the fellow to the tree, we were concerned that anybody they might kidnap they might treat the same way."

In Brunswick County, police focused on a 1,000-acre area just northwest of the U.S. 17 and N.C. 87 intersection.

"Donovan was in this area; she was alive," said Brunswick County Sheriff Ronald Hewett.

Donovan's husband, Barry, met with Hewett on Thursday afternoon at the police command post at the N.C. 87 and U.S. 17 intersection.

Hewett said he received a tip about midnight Wednesday that a man saw Donovan and two men in the BMW between 4:15 and 5:15 p.m. Nov. 14 - the day she was kidnapped - in the Winnabow area 28 miles north of the state line. The man's account led to other witnesses, who also saw Donovan and the two men in the Winnabow area.

The sightings came less than an hour after Fulks and Basham were seen getting gas at an Amoco in Shallotte, N.C., 14 miles south of Winnabow.

"We feel we are in a very critical area," Hewett said.

Police and search-and-rescue teams centered on Beetree Farm Road, a narrow dirt road with only three houses. Residents say they tend to know who's driving by.

Searchers, some of whom rode on a 5-ton, camouflaged military truck, turned the usually quiet area where residents don't lock their doors into a hub of activity.

"You usually don't get that many visitors down here," Bobby Carney said, standing on his porch watching searchers. "There's a lot of woods back there."

At the same time Thursday, dozens of police officers in fatigues and camouflage gathered at the Best Western of Conway. They conducted brief searches around the hotel but said they did not find anything.

"Our focus remains on finding Alice Donovan. Our investigation brought us to this location," said Jim Schweitzer, FBI agent-in-charge in Columbia. "We have not yet found Alice Donovan, and we will continue to follow leads."

Officers were seen searching overgrown brush areas near Savannah Bluff landing and inspecting small trash and debris. A State Law Enforcement Division helicopter flew into the site, but did not conduct any aerial searches nearby. A Conway police boat patrolled the Waccamaw River near the hotel several times.

"We continue to hope for her safe return. The investigation brought us here, and I can't give you any more specifics," Schweitzer said.

Donovan's BMW was found Wednesday night in rural Elkhart County, Ind., a few miles from Goshen, where Fulks was captured Wednesday.

The FBI is processing the vehicle but said there is no obvious evidence to Donovan's whereabouts.

The commotion in Winnabow made Liz Stanley more protective of her 10-year-old son.

"It's a scary thing," she said. "I hope when they do find her, they find her alive and well, and she can be able to go home and spend the holidays with her family."

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