Abducted 4-year-old girl’s safe return celebrated in small Mo. town as police hunt for suspect

Abducted girl’s safe return celebrated in Mo. town

LOUISIANA, Mo. — Celebratory messages graced church billboards and an electronic bank sign Wednesday as a small eastern Missouri town celebrated the safe return of an abducted 4-year-old girl. Authorities, meanwhile, hunted for the man who took her from her own front yard.

Alisa Maier was abducted Monday night as she played with her brother while her mother prepared dinner inside. The girl was found a little more than 24 hours later wandering around a car wash in suburban St. Louis, about 70 miles away.

Visitors to the family’s small frame home in Louisiana, a quiet Mississippi River town 70 miles north of St. Louis left balloons and teddy bears on the porch and in the yard Wednesday. People were elated.

“I turned on the news and my wife and I both started crying and fell down to our knees and thanked the Lord,” said Terry Cook, a pastor who helped organize a Tuesday night prayer vigil that drew 400 people, more than the town’s Fourth of July festival. “What else could we do?”

St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch vowed police would find their suspect.

“We have dozens and dozens of leads, and some of them are very good ones,” he said at an afternoon news conference. “We will not stop until we catch the individual that abducted Alisa.”

Alisa was taken to a Fenton hospital shortly after being found late Tuesday, then to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis for evaluation. The little girl and her parents left Cardinal Glennon about 7:30 a.m., hospital spokesman Bob Davidson said.

“They all looked really tired, like they’d been through a lot, but they also looked overwhelmingly overjoyed at being reunited,” Davidson said. “Alisa was sitting in her mother’s lap in the emergency room and her mother had her arms wrapped around Alisa like she was never going to let her go.”

Angela Reddick, Alisa’s great-aunt, said she spoke with the girl’s parents and was told Alisa was unharmed and had not been assaulted in any way.

“The only thing he did was cut her hair to change her appearance — he tried to disguise the fact she was a girl,” Reddick said of the kidnapper. “Evidently this man did not harm her and was not mean to her. She’s doing great.”

Police confirmed the girl’s hair had been cut during her ordeal, but declined to speculate about the reason.

Alisa and her 6-year-old brother, Blake, had been playing Monday night in the front yard of the family’s home while their mother was inside making dinner. Around 8 p.m., Blake went in and told his mom a stranger in a black car pulled up and ordered Alisa to get in, then drove off.

A frantic search ensued, drawing help from at least five dozen police officers, the FBI, and more than 100 volunteers. Hope had started to dim as the Tuesday night prayer vigil along the riverfront broke up and nightfall arrived.

Then, Reddick said, Alisa’s parents got a call from police that a child had been found wandering around a car wash in Fenton, a St. Louis suburb. Police faxed a photo to FBI agents stationed in Louisiana, who showed the picture to the parents. They confirmed it was their little girl.

A witness at the Fenton car wash described a sighting similar to Blake’s: a dark-colored, four-door car, possibly a Ford Escort, seen leaving the area of the car wash. A dark-skinned white man in his 30s was the driver. Police believe the car either had a hole in the muffler or no muffler at all, and it was missing the hubcaps, at least both on the driver’s side. Fitch said the witness could not see the passenger side.

For now, Alisa and her parents are staying away from Louisiana at an undisclosed location while police investigate. A specialist in interviewing children has been brought in to speak with the girl.

Reddick said it wasn’t clear when the family would return to Louisiana, but a big welcome-home party is planned for Saturday.

Alisa’s grandfather, Roy Harrison, urged the kidnapper to turn himself in.

“I want to tell that man he’s done the first step — he’s let my granddaughter go,” Harrison said on NBC’s Today Show. “He has to step up and take responsibility.”

Missouri was the site of another miraculous ending a little over three years ago.

In January 2007, 13-year-old Ben Ownby was abducted after getting off the school bus near his home in rural Franklin County. Four days later, police made a startling discovery: Ben was alive and being held captive in a St. Louis County apartment complex. Even more amazing, police found Shawn Hornbeck with him. Shawn had been missing for 4 1/2 years after being abducted while riding his bike in another rural area.

Michael Devlin was convicted of kidnapping and abusing the boys, and is serving several life sentences.

That case came to be known as the “Missouri Miracle.” As far as Cook is concerned, another one has occurred.

“There’s no way anybody can deny this was a true miracle,” the pastor said.