Now You See Her (19 page)

said she was overwhelmed with gratitude at “how much people cared.”

“We are a community here,” said Dean Lobelier. “When one of us is hurt, all of us are hurt. We couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome to this fright- ening situation.”

By TRACY CLARK

DETROIT, Mich. (AP)
—

Police in the small town of Black Sparrow Lake, Michigan, have given up the search for a suspect in the kidnapping of Hope Shay, 15, after evidence and an indirect admission from the young student indi- cated that the girl herself staged her alleged kidnapping. Kelly Worwitz, spokesman for the Black Sparrow Lake Department of Public Safety,

said, “We don’t think there ever was a suspect, and we don’t think there was a kid- napping.”

Black Sparrow Lake Public Safety Director William Flaxen and other investigators deter- mined—after interviews with Hope, her parents, fellow students at the Starwood Academy of the Performing Arts, and merchants at the Lakewood Shopping Nook—

that Hope probably had care- fully planned what first appeared to be an abduction by a stalker.

It is furthermore believed that Hope acted alone. Police learned that she purchased long underwear and the duct tape used to bind her hands and feet.

The story of Hope’s disap- pearance spread as far as Australia and England, and a massive outpouring of sympa- thy, including cards and prayer vigils, poured in from around the world.

She was found unharmed early Monday morning, four days after she had disap- peared.

“We don’t know what possi- ble motive she could have,” said Flaxen in an exclusive interview. “This girl did go through at least one or two ter- rible nights of exposure. While we have sympathy for her fam- ily, we have to be outraged at the amount of money and manpower that was expended searching for her.”

Flaxen said that the cost of

the four-day search for Hope was in excess of $100,000. FBI and Michigan investigators, National Guard personnel, and volunteer searchers in the hundreds from as far away as Detroit and Chicago joined in the hunt.

The major break in the puz- zling case came when a mer- chant at Lakewood Shopping Nook’s Snowy Owl Dry Goods produced a videotape that showed Hope making a pur- chase including lightweight long underwear, a knife, waterproof duct tape, a water- proof flashlight, and other items that she said were used to subdue and tie her up in the abduction.

The tape and knife were found discarded at the site in the woods where Hope was discovered.

She also purchased power bars, concentrated water pack- ets, and bottled mineral water, the remnants of which were found in a hunting cabin 200 yards from the wooded area.

Flaxen said those items, as well as a mobile phone and

a sleeping bag, originally believed to belong to the kid- napper, now are believed to have been used by Hope as she waited for the right time to bind her own hands and lie down in the gully.

“She couldn’t have been comfortable, because that cabin has no heat except a rot- ted old potbellied stove,” Flaxen said. “But she appar- ently used that and the sleep- ing bag, as well as some hand-warming packs, to keep warm. She would definitely have suffered frostbite other- wise.”

It is not known whether Hope actually spent one night or two nights in the ditch after she tied herself up, convinc- ingly enough that investiga- tors were sure that the kidnapping was genuine.

Hope had told her mother and later told investigators from the Black Sparrow Lake Police and the Federal and Michigan Bureaus of Investigation that a short, dark-haired man of Latino or Indian descent had hit her

with a “soft-coated” club of some sort, knocking her unconscious, and that she awoke alone, bound and gagged.

She said that the same man had called to her from an old truck twice on earlier occa- sions, frightening her because he allegedly knew her name. Police began circulating a composite sketch of her alleged captor created from Hope’s description. The draw- ing also was published in newspapers all around the Midwest.

Based on the sketch, police questioned Alberto Mendez, an assistant manager at Chatters, a café in the Lakewood Shopping Nook. But it turned out that Hope had simply seen Mendez during her weekly shopping trips to the mall with other students.

Mendez says he holds no ill feelings. “Anyone who looks the slightest bit different around here stands out,” he said. Mendez’s family has lived in Black Sparrow Lake since the early 1900s.

Questions arose after the police interviewed Mendez and Carl Schwartzberg, the owner of Snowy Owl, and reviewed the tapes.

Interviews with Hope also were riddled with inconsistent statements, and her account of the alleged abduction changed constantly, according to Worwitz. The official end of the search was announced in a press release issued just before 9 a.m. today.

It is now apparent that Hope may have been aware that she was the subject of a search the entire time, and in fact was seen jogging during the period when she was supposed to have been tied up in a gully.

One of the first hints that something was amiss with her story was evidence police dis- covered that someone had logged onto the Internet using Hope’s password, checking weather reports and news sto- ries about the “abduction.” Hope’s cell phone was on her when she was found. It was dusted for fingerprint evi- dence, but the only finger-