Huntington Beach : TV Shows Spark Interest in Laura Bradbury Case

Mike and Patty Bradbury, whose 3-year-old daughter Laura vanished from Joshua Tree National Monument last fall, were busy Tuesday following up on interest sparked by two nationally broadcast television shows that included information about their daughter’s disappearance.

Monday night the Huntington Beach couple watched a rebroadcast of “Adam,” a dramatization of the abduction and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh in Florida, followed by “Missing: Have You Seen This Person?,” both of which featured photographs of Laura.

“Missing” also featured re-enactments of the disappearance of a number of other missing people. The segment recounting Laura’s disappearance included Mike Bradbury and Laura’s 8-year-old brother Travis, portraying themselves in the Indian Cove area of the monument.

“It was no picnic,” Mike Bradbury said of the viewing experience. “It was tough,” he said, watching the two programs with his wife in their home, adding that it was also “very educational in showing you what other people have gone through. I can identify with that.”

Gesturing around the shopping center headquarters of the volunteer effort to find his daughter, Bradbury said that he and his wife considered themselves “fortunate” because “we’re in an affluent area. People have been very generous to us.”

For example, he said, 24 Lamp Post Pizza stores in the area declared Monday “Laura Day,” designating 50% of the gross receipts to aid in the volunteer effort. On May 12, 30 bus shelters from Oxnard to Oceanside will feature large posters of the girl with details of the disappearance, space donated by Target Media. Laura’s face and name already appear on nearly 2 million flyers, bumper stickers, T-shirts, buttons and bracelets.

Tuesday, Laura’s grandmother, Virginia Winters, spent the morning fielding more than 30 phone calls, many of which she said were sparked by the television shows.

The next step, Bradbury said, will be the release later this week of a new, modified composite drawing of a man wanted for questioning in connection with Laura’s disappearance.