Infant Taken at Gunpoint : Suspect Stalked Baby’s Family, Police Claim

The day before 3-week-old Lauren Nicole Howard was abducted at gunpoint from her parents’ home, her accused kidnaper spotted the baby in her mother’s arms on a Riverside street and followed the pair home, Riverside police said Thursday.

The blue-eyed girl was returned unharmed to her parents late Wednesday, nearly 1 1/2 days after she was taken by a woman who police said “simply wanted a child.”

What remained unclear on Thursday was the degree of planning behind the seizure and the reasons for the false claims the woman made to neighbors about being pregnant with twins.

Police found Lauren after an informant telephoned them and said a neighbor had turned up Tuesday afternoon with a baby that matched the missing child’s description. The little girl is easily identifiable by a faint birthmark between her eyebrows.

About an hour after receiving the phone tip, police located the baby at the Riverside apartment of a couple identified as Elyse Joyce Ricker, 39, and her husband, Timothy Wayne Ricker, 23. Both were taken into custody--Elyse Ricker on suspicion of kidnaping and her husband on an undisclosed parole violation.

When police arrived at the couple’s 12th Street apartment, they found the baby “inside on a couch having her diaper changed,” Riverside Police Lt. Jim Rector said. A bassinet and other baby paraphernalia were among the Rickers’ possessions. Police declined to say whether they recovered the gun believed used in the kidnaping.

The infant had “been well fed, well taken care of,” her mother said.

Flanked by the sleeping, pink-swaddled infant and her beaming parents, Monte and Sharon Howard, at a press conference at Riverside police headquarters, Rector said the accused kidnaper apparently did not know the Howards before spotting them outside their pediatrician’s office Monday morning.

Rector would not say how police knew the suspect was outside the physician’s office. Nor would he speculate on why she was there.

“The suspect saw Sharon leave the doctor’s office and followed her home,” he said. “She returned Tuesday morning and kidnaped her (the baby) at gunpoint.

“Elyse Ricker simply wanted a child.”

Ricker, who used the surname Talia to secure a job at a Riverside photo shop and in renting her $150-a-week apartment, had explained the child’s presence by telling neighbors that she had been pregnant with twins, but that one of the infants died at birth, residents said Thursday.

Police said Elyse Ricker had not been pregnant and apparently had no young children of her own.

“Her family background still is being investigated,” Rector said. “She possibly may have had older children.”

But neighbors said the Rickers, who rented their two-bedroom corner apartment on Sept. 9, had talked to them of an impending birth. According to apartment manager Mary Shotwell, Elyse Ricker’s sister and a third woman also resided with the couple.

“Just last Saturday when she came in to pay her weekly rent . . . she said . . . ‘I’m two weeks overdue,’ ” Shotwell recalled. “That woman didn’t look pregnant at all.”

“She told me she was pregnant when she moved in, expecting twins,” said Ricker’s next-door neighbor. “She didn’t tell me when.

“Then (Tuesday) I asked her if she had the baby and she said, ‘Yes, it was a girl. I lost the other one.’ He (Tim Ricker) walked by with a baby in his arms and that’s all I saw.

“But I’ll say this, for somebody who just had a baby, she was walking up stairs awful good,” the neighbor added.

Police said the anonymous informant said Ricker announced on Tuesday morning that she was leaving for the hospital. Hours later, she returned with a baby.

Investigators said they believe it was during that time that she drove to the Howard home and duped Sharon Howard into thinking she was a stranded motorist.

Howard, who was at home with the baby and her 7-year-old son, said a woman knocked on her door and asked to use the phone, saying her car had broken down. Moments later, the same woman returned and asked to use the phone again.

Before leaving a second time, however, she pulled a gun from her purse, instructed Howard to lie on the floor and left with the sandy-haired infant.