Many Hopes Dashed by Leticia’s Death

Investigators searched a lonely canyon Tuesday for clues in the apparent murder of Leticia Hernandez, the Oceanside 7-year-old whose kidnaping 15 months ago spawned a plethora of leads and purported sightings.

The partial remains of the girl were found last weekend near a rural road only 22 miles from her home. Her death dashed hopes born of literally thousands of leads and the fact that more kidnap victims are recovered alive than found dead,

“When we found out about the coroner’s identification of Leticia, it made us sick. There had been such hope and so many leads,” Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said Tuesday.

Yet false hopes and expectations are in the maddening nature of kidnap cases, and Leticia’s was especially harsh in that respect--both for investigators and her family.

Since her disappearance, the Oceanside Police Department and the FBI reported 18 “confirmed” sightings stretching from California and Florida, and composite descriptions of suspects helped draw nearly 3,000 leads from across the nation.

Police kept Leticia’s 33-year-old mother, also named Leticia, informed of all confirmed sightings, and, although those sightings fueled her optimism, they also set the stage for a final and tragic disappointment.

“That’s the risk you take,” said Oceanside police Sgt. Bill Krunglevich. “But we had no reason to believe she wasn’t alive and well. You do what you can to bolster the family.”

Even though Leticia’s skeletal remains were found between the Pala Indian Reservation and the Riverside County line, authorities won’t discount those purported out-of-state sightings.

“All of those things are still possible and still plausible,” said Krunglevich.

And, as far-fetched as it may seem, experts don’t rule out that Leticia, who medical examiners say was dead three to 12 months, could have been taken out of California before she was slain.

FBI Special Agent Robin Montgomery, chief of the Violent Crimes-Major Offender’s Section, which handles kidnap cases, said, “It’s possible she may have been taken out of state and brought back in.”

“Fact is stranger than fiction,” he said.

According to Krunglevich, while detectives and FBI agents were scouring other states in pursuit of promising leads, they weren’t neglecting clues in their own back yard.

“As we were following the odyssey trail going eastward, we were still searching” in San Diego County, he said.

Investigators in the Leticia probe had also been buoyed, especially months ago before the trail got cold, by the descriptions of her supposed abductors.

Briefly, they have been described as a tall white man with long, blond hair and a tattoo on his hand. Two women suspects were said to be a tall, slender woman with a light complexion and a plump, middle-aged woman with gray streaks in her dark hair.

However, those physical descriptions were composites taken from numerous people who supposedly saw those individuals with Leticia. And composite drawings aren’t considered an exact science.

“I don’t know of any recent kidnap case solved by a somebody making a composite,” Montgomery said.