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Author Topic: 9 yo TX girl snatched on way to school by S.O., tied in closet 8 hrs- now safe  (Read 5695 times)
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MuffyBee
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« on: September 29, 2009, 08:34:24 AM »

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/09/29/0929kidnapping.html

Child's recall helped capture kidnapper, police say
Officials say girl's descriptions of man, surroundings aided arrest.

By Tony Plohetski
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, September 29, 2009



Charles Butcher has been charged in abduction.



During her eight hours of captivity, a 9-year-old girl snatched while walking to school took meticulous mental notes: She knew the color of the man's truck and could describe the outside of his apartment complex and his inside decor.

Austin police Lt. Mark Spangler said Monday that the shaken girl's vivid descriptions after last week's kidnapping helped lead them to convicted sex offender Charles Eugene Butcher. She was set free, police said, after she declared, "It's time for me to go home."

Spangler said, "The 9-year-old victim, I will tell you right now, was extremely courageous.

"If not for her keeping a calm and collected mind, this situation could have turned out much differently."

Spangler said that minutes after the girl told Butcher she should be home, he drove her to an area she didn't recognize. She then persuaded him to return her to her South Austin neighborhood, Spangler said.

Police said Butcher lifted the girl off the ground Thursday while she was walking to school along Brodie Lane, put a knife to her throat and told her he would cut her if she didn't stop screaming. He then drove her to his nearby apartment, forced her into a closet, bound her hands and held her for about eight hours, police said.

Police arrested Butcher on Friday on several traffic violations, and he is being held in the Travis County Jail on charges of aggravated kidnapping and failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements, records show. His bail has been set at $600,000.

Austin police said Monday that they had received two reports that Butcher might have been peeping through neighbors' windows in a South Austin apartment complex where he lived.

Public records show that a resident reported that a man was looking through her windows in August. Spangler said investigators looked into the report and did not think the man's actions constituted a crime.

He said that while Butcher may have been looking through windows, it was unclear whether he was doing it for sexual gratification — which is required for criminal charges under state law.

Butcher's apartment complex is less than a half-mile from Kocurek Elementary School.

Spangler described more of Butcher's criminal past, including the sexual assault of a child in Korea while he was in the military in 1991.

Butcher also was convicted in Ohio for abduction with a weapon in 1995, Spangler said. Under Texas law, the Ohio offense would have been solicitation of a minor, he said.

Butcher was required to register for life as a sex offender in any state where he lived after the 1991 offense, Spangler said.

He moved to Austin in January 2008, but police said he did not register.

Spangler said Butcher had told Ohio authorities that he was moving to North Carolina, but he never showed up at the address he had given them.

Family members told Ohio authorities that they thought Butcher had gone to Texas, Spangler said. Ohio officials then sent information about Butcher to Texas law enforcement agencies in January 2008, he said.

However, police said, that information was not specific about his location, including whether he was in Austin.

Austin investigators still reviewed his file, checked to see whether he had any involvement with Austin police and kept the records, officials said.

The girl, who attends Cowan Elementary School, provided a description of Butcher's red pickup that an investigator remembered from Butcher's file, Spangler said.

Spangler said police had no information leading them to think Butcher sexually assaulted the girl.

Spangler said Butcher has declined to talk to investigators in detail.

"We would've loved to have been able to explore (Butcher's) mind to be able to figure out what his motivation was in this," Spangler said. "Was it a question as to whether he was just unable to complete his motive or was it an issue where just the abduction of the child was enough for him at this point? Without being able to talk to him in detail we won't know the answer to that."

After she was set free, the girl walked to the condominium complex where she lives, police said, and knocked on a neighbor's door.

The girl's mother had gone to her school when she didn't return home after 4 p.m. and called police when the girl reappeared.

Cowan Principal April Glenn sent parents a letter Sunday telling them about the kidnapping. The school's counseling staff and Austin police officers were on hand Monday to answer questions.

Glenn also is talking with school staff members about ways to monitor the comings and goings of students.

The district moved a bus stop to a nearby apartment complex, a more populated and safer area, district officials said.

tplohetski@statesman.com; 445-3605

Additional material from staff writer Melissa Taboada.

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« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2009, 09:47:20 AM »

What a smart young girl!  Thank God she is safe!
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MuffyBee
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« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2015, 01:59:36 PM »

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/kidnappers-victims-affected-by-ruling-in-austin-ca/njydy/
Kidnappers, victims affected by ruling in Austin case
January 28, 2015

Charles Butcher II was properly sentenced to life in prison after abducting a 9-year-old South Austin girl at knifepoint in 2009, the state’s highest criminal court said in a Wednesday ruling that could have wider implications for abductors and their victims.

Ruling 7-2, the Court of Criminal Appeals said a Travis County jury had reason to reject Butcher’s claim that he deserved a lighter sentence because he had released the girl, unharmed, near where he had abducted her about eight hours earlier.

But one of the dissenting judges, Lawrence Meyers, wrote that the ruling jeopardized a state law designed to protect victims by offering a lighter prison term — no more than 20 years, instead of a life sentence — to abductors who free their victims in a safe place.


“Today’s holding renders the provision useless, as this case seems to exemplify precisely the circumstances to which this (safe place) provision should apply,” Meyers wrote.

The difficulty, all nine judges agreed, comes because the Legislature did not define “safe place,” leaving juries and courts to interpret the statute’s meaning on a case-by-case basis.

According to trial testimony, Butcher grabbed the girl before dawn, threatening to cut her with a knife if she screamed, as she walked down a long driveway leading from her family’s condo. After taking her cell phone, Butcher drove her to his apartment, tied her hands and placed her in a closet.

After deciding to release the girl, Butcher drove her to an apartment complex near her home. When she said she did not know the area, he took her to the site of the kidnapping and released her.

Writing for the majority, Judge Barbara Hervey said juries should be allowed to weigh all circumstances in determining whether a kidnapping victim was released in a safe place — including the time of day, weather conditions, the remoteness of the location and the character of the surrounding neighborhood, the proximity of help and the victim’s familiarity with the area.

The age of the victim, and the presence of disabilities, also can affect the safety equation, Hervey said.

In Butcher’s case, she wrote, jurors justifiably determined that the girl was not safely released because there was testimony that the area was desolate, she was dropped off in the middle of the road without her cell phone, and she returned to an empty house, which did not have a phone, because her mother was with police.

“The record contains much more than a scintilla of evidence that the place … was not safe,” Hervey wrote.

Meyers, however, argued that the jury should have been instructed to weigh the safe-place provision based on whether Butcher believed the area was safe and whether that perception was “rational and justified.”

Butcher met the law’s intent by returning the girl to the place where she was taken, Meyers wrote.

“Regardless of whether a jury would determine the location to be safe, it is where the victim chose to be (or in this case, where the victim’s parent chose for the child to be),” Meyers said. “In these situations, the determination of whether the location is safe or not has already been made by the victim, or the victim’s guardian.

“I believe we should continue to encourage defendants to return their victims, rather than discourage such an act with decisions such as the majority’s today,” he said.
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  " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."  - Daniel Moynihan
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