Kidnap Suspect Arrested, but Girl, 7, Is Still Missing

A transient mother and her three children were living in a car in the parking lot of a Laughlin, Nev., casino. On the evening of Oct. 2, a fellow transient offered to take the mother’s 7-year-old daughter for a ride on the ferry passing on the Colorado River from Laughlin and across the water to Bullhead City, Ariz.

The girl never came back, and now the man thought to be her kidnaper is being held in the County Jail in Vista.

Rebecca Lanning is described by an Arizona police official as “a child among the homeless,” for whom “no clues whatsoever” have turned up in a search spanning Arizona, California and Nevada.

The first crack in the case came Saturday, when the Oceanside Police Department announced the arrest of Timothy P. Quinton, who, along with another man, was stopped for driving a stolen car near Airport Road and Production Avenue at 12:45 in the afternoon.

Cynthia McGee, the homeless mother whose daughter is missing, said that Quinton is the man who kidnaped her girl.

Police said Quinton fled on foot but was later captured in Oceanside. A warrant check revealed that Timothy Price Quinton, originally from South Carolina, where his criminal record is “extensive,” said the FBI, was wanted in Arizona for “unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.” (A check of his criminal record revealed no previous kidnaping charges, police said.)

Quinton is also being held on suspicion of auto theft and is wanted in Los Angeles County on “harassment by phone” charges, said a spokeswoman for the Vista Detention Center. Bail is set at $300,000.

Quinton ‘Isn’t Saying Anything’

Oceanside police also arrested Robert Lopez, who told them he was a friend of Quinton’s from South Carolina. Lopez is being held in Vista on suspicion of auto theft.

Lt. Bob Schubert of the Bullhead City Police Department said papers are being prepared to extradite Quinton to Arizona, where he faces the more serious charge of kidnaping. Schubert said that Bullhead City detectives, as well as agents from the San Diego office of the FBI, had been to Vista to question Quinton, “but he isn’t saying anything.”

Schubert outlined the scenario of the kidnaping as follows:

“The suspect came into town little more than a week ago. We don’t know where he came from, although we think it was South Carolina. The mother wandered in, from where we don’t exactly know, on the night of Sept. 30. She met the suspect at the Riverside Casino in Laughlin, and they struck up a friendship, of sorts.

“A few days later, the mother and the suspect are at the Riverside Casino, just talking. The little girl says she’s never been on a ferry boat. So, the suspect offers to take her. The boat goes from the Nevada side to the Arizona side and back. Well, the mother’s there waiting in Laughlin. Just waiting and waiting . . . and the girl never comes back.

“The story gets rather amazing at this point. The mother goes over to Bullhead City and somehow locates the suspect, just walking up and down a street. He has the girl with him. He said, ‘Oh, we just ran into somebody--you know, got delayed. I had to come over to find my car anyway.’ The incredible thing is, the mother lets him take the girl again, this time to find his car. He tells the mother to wait there and says they’ll come back and pick her up. Well, of course, he never comes back, so, after about an hour, she calls us. She hasn’t seen the girl since.”

Schubert said the mother, like Quinton, is “a transient, a wanderer, somebody who just drifted in.”

Schubert described McGee as a Canadian national, who along with her other children (ages 11 and 5) has taken refuge in an Arizona shelter for the homeless.

Dave Lanning, a casino security guard in Bullhead City who is not related to the missing girl, said that, until recently, he had worked as a security guard for the Riverside Casino before taking a job with another casino.

“There’s a lot of homeless folks who live in their cars near the casinos,” he said. “They come in, hoping to strike it lucky. She was what folks around here call a river rat. She was just a river-rat gambler trying to get lucky at a casino, but she lost more than money. She lost her girl.”