Girl, 5, Found in Alaska May Be L.A. Kidnap Victim

A sexually molested 5-year-old girl found living with a 58-year-old man in a trailer park in Alaska is believed to be a child kidnaped from a park in Venice in 1981, FBI officials in Los Angeles said Friday.

The man, John Robert Altig, who was arrested by Anchorage police late in January, will face federal charges of interstate transportation of a female for immoral purposes, said Richard T. Bretzing, who is in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Office.

Altig was indicted by a grand jury in Anchorage Friday on charges of child molestation, said FBI press spokesman Fred Reagan in Los Angeles. Those charges apparently stem from attacks on the child committed in Alaska.

Bretzing said laboratory tests are being conducted to determine whether the girl is Elvia Vasquez, the daughter of Javier and Juanita Vasquez, who was kidnaped on Aug. 25, 1981, when she was 18 months old, from Penmar Park in the Venice area. He added that it might be several weeks before the tests are completed.

“We have met with the parents of a child missing in the Los Angeles Basin since August, 1981,” Bretzing said. “We have conveyed to them certain positive results of our investigations. The parents are hopeful that the child in Anchorage is their own.”

Altig was detained Jan. 25 after a telephone tip to police that a small girl living alone with a man in a trailer park in Anchorage might be in danger, Reagan said.

Altig reportedly told police the girl’s name was Crystal (Crissie) Morgan and that she was the daughter of a former girlfriend. He was booked on three counts of sexual abuse of a minor and held in lieu of $250,000 bail.