Kidnap Victim Was Stalked, Officers Say : Abduction: Three neighbors in affluent community used long-range eavesdropping gear, videotaped young man’s movements and scribbled detailed ransom plan in a diary, authorities say.

For weeks before 19-year-old Ryan Curtis--a model student and star athlete--was kidnaped Sept. 13, three neighbors in his exclusive ocean-view community stalked him with long-range eavesdropping equipment and scribbled a plan for the abduction in a diary, authorities said Monday.

In one suspect’s journal, seized during an FBI search that freed Curtis unharmed Saturday, “there are detailed plans of how the kidnaping would take place,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Thomas said at a news conference.

Charlie Parsons, agent in charge of the FBI office in Los Angeles, said the suspects also videotaped Curtis’ movements.

“It’s an unusual story,” Parsons said. “Look at the victim and look at the people who did it. It’s the old classic--abduction and ransom.”

Local and federal officials, displaying two semiautomatic weapons and an array of electronic and paramilitary equipment seized from the suspects’ home, sketched the outline of their case against three Hope Ranch roommates they said held Curtis for an $800,000 ransom for 13 days.

Curtis, an A student and star water polo player at San Marcos High School who was to have started his freshman year at UC Santa Barbara last week, said in a prepared statement:

“I was scared for me and my family, and all that I could do was trust that the Lord would protect me--and He did. . . I am going to try to get back to my normal lifestyle as soon as possible.”

Curtis may have met one suspect--Eric Alden Panizzon, 24--in 1989 when the man sold and delivered two golden retrievers to the Curtis family, authorities said.

“The family had contact through the purchase of the dogs, but they can’t remember whether Ryan met Eric at that point,” family spokesman Jonathan Bernstein said. “The family has no idea why or how Ryan was targeted for this.”

Curtis was not a friend or acquaintance of any of the men, Bernstein said. Authorities would not comment on why the son of William R. Curtis, a partner in an Irvine insurance brokerage, was selected by kidnapers.

Panizzon and Jeffrey Real Locas, 21, were scheduled for arraignment today in Santa Barbara Municipal Court on felony kidnaping charges. Stephen Gregory Gillen, 29, was charged Monday as the third suspect and is being sought.

In addition, Panizzon was charged with sexual assault in the case. Authorities said Panizzon is the only suspect with prior criminal problems. He was arrested in 1986 for possession of stolen property, but no charges were filed, investigators said.

Both Panizzon and Locas are enrolled at Santa Barbara Community College, records show.

The suspects lived for the past three years on a two-acre estate owned by Panizzon’s parents. The suspect’s father, Ernest Panizzon, is a prominent Santa Barbara lawyer. His mother, Ann Panizzon, is director of the Center for Law-Related Education in Santa Barbara.

Ann Panizzon, who neighbors said is separated from her husband, lives at the Hope Ranch estate. But her quarters are separate from the rooms the suspects shared, investigators said. There is no evidence that the woman knew of the kidnaping, they said.

An FBI SWAT team rescued Curtis early Saturday after raiding Panizzon’s home in Hope Ranch, a community of $1-million homes between U.S. 101 and the Pacific Ocean in an unincorporated area just west of Santa Barbara.

Abducted Sept. 13 while leaving his girlfriend’s Goleta home, Curtis spent his first night in a 5 1/2-foot-long metal tool chest equipped with air vents, investigators said.

For the next 10 days, he was kept handcuffed and monitored electronically inside a 10-foot-by-10-foot wooden toolshed behind the Panizzon house, they said. Curtis was moved back and forth to the house to make phone calls to his parents, Parsons said.

Using voice-distorting devices, the kidnapers contacted the Curtis family eight times by phone, including three times late Friday and early Saturday to arrange the drop-off of a ransom reduced to $600,000, authorities said.

The family was prepared to pay the money, investigators said, but a rapid trace of the last telephone call allowed agents and police officers who had blanketed Santa Barbara to capture Panizzon “within moments” at a service station phone booth. FBI agents were unaware that Gillen was across the street and he escaped, authorities said.

At the Panizzon house, FBI agents unlocked a bedroom door to find Curtis physically unharmed but shaken, Parsons said. Parsons said there was no foundation for the suggestion by a defense attorney that Curtis may have been unrestrained and able to flee.

Curtis was not tied up when rescued. But he was kept in a locked bedroom, “and he was afraid to escape because of all the circumstances,” the agent said. “(We can) categorically say he was a victim.”

“To you or I Ryan now appears to be of sound mind and body,” family spokesman Bernstein said. “But only time will tell what impact this has had on him.”

Curtis’ sister, Christy, an 11th-grader at San Marcos High, said life at home is returning to normal.

“He’s doing good,” she said. “Anybody going through that kind of experience is going to be a little traumatized. He lost a little weight.”

Ralph West, pastor at Trinity Baptist Church where the family attends, said Curtis is “the kind you want your daughter to bring home. . . . Younger guys look up to him.”

Times correspondent Matthew Heller also contributed to this story.