Police Hopeful, Parents Unsure : Missing Girl: End of a 3 1/2-Year Mystery?

It’s been two years since Los Angeles police Officers Ken Majors and Joe Aparicio had a decent lead to track in their search for Elvia Vasquez, but they never were able to forget the curly haired girl who was only 18 months old when she vanished from a Venice park during a family outing on a hot summer afternoon 3 1/2 years ago.

Her mother turned aside to bottle-feed a younger child in August, 1981, at Penmark Park, while the rest of the family played baseball nearby. Elvia hasn’t been seen by her family since.

Now the officers hope they have found Elvia, in the person of an as-yet unidentified 5-year-old girl found last week in Anchorage, Alaska, who is living with a 58-year-old man in a trailer park.

Not Certain About Photo

Juana and Javier Vasquez, who live with their four other children in a tiny Venice apartment, looked on Saturday at a picture of the 5-year-old girl, taken shortly after she was recovered by Alaska authorities. They told police they could not be certain whether the girl in the photo is their daughter.

Nevertheless, Majors and FBI officials in Los Angeles are convinced the child is Elvia, although a spokesman for the FBI said it might take several weeks before the girl’s identity can be positively determined.

“The same child can look like two different people at the ages of 18 months and 5 years, so we weren’t discouraged when the parents couldn’t make a positive identification based on the recent photo,” Majors said.

“But we have studied the curl of her hair, the spacing of the eyes and the shape of the nose and lips, and based on that and other information being compiled here and in Alaska, we’re pretty sure we found Elvia.”

Elvia, who was just under three feet tall and weighed about 25 pounds at the time she disappeared, was the subject of an intense but futile search involving police, Explorer Scouts and hundreds of volunteers who went door-to-door in the Venice neighborhood of Lincoln Boulevard and Rose Avenue.

Her disappearance received widespread media coverage, and police received calls from people claiming to have seen Elvia in Pasadena and Disneyland, among other places.

“We got hundreds of leads and pieces of information but they all led to dead ends,” Majors said. “I can’t say we gave up but it didn’t look promising until now.”

Majors was one of scores of police officers from the Los Angeles area who were given descriptions of the child found in Alaska, but it was his call to the FBI in Alaska that led to a tentative identification of the child.

He said he and Aparicio connected her to Elvia because the two had a “special recall of the child, because we could not shake that case out of our minds.”

“We still are partners working in that same neighborhood and we go past Penmark Park almost every day,” Majors said.

“You know how it is, you reach a certain point in your investigation, your clues finally all run dry and there’s not much more you can do. But almost every day one us would say something like, ‘I wonder what ever happened to that little girl,’ as we drove by the park. It was a constant reminder that we were never able to answer what really happened to the child.

“Now we’re looking for a happy ending and getting that family back together again. I’ve got to admit, we’re all going to be pretty anxious until we can confirm that it is Elvia.”

Majors said the FBI in Anchorage, in its effort to positively identify the girl, is reviewing evidence taken from the trailer where it is believed that the girl lived with John Robert Altig, who is being held in an Anchorage jail on $250,000 bail after being indicted last week on charges of child molestation.

Altig was arrested in Anchorage on Jan. 25 after police received a telephone tip from a neighbor worried about the welfare of the child. Altig reportedly told police the girl’s name was Crystal (Crissie) Morgan and that she was the daughter of a former girlfriend.

Federal authorities also have said they will charge Altig with interstate transportation of a female for immoral purposes.

This week, Majors and Aparicio plan to comb the Venice neighborhood in hopes of finding someone who remembers seeing Altig in the area at the time of Elvia’s disappearance.

The child, who doctors discovered had been sexually abused, has been placed in a foster home in Anchorage.