Police Call Kidnapping and Beating a Hoax

A man who told police he was abducted in Riverside, beaten and held hostage in the trunk of his car until he escaped in a Santa Ana parking lot fabricated the story, police said Friday.

“No one discounted what he said until it became glaringly apparent that it didn’t happen,” said Riverside County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Schatz. “There should have been some physical evidence in the car and there absolutely was none. The whole thing just couldn’t have happened. No one believes it.”

But Dan Barrie, 30, of Upland maintained Friday that he was beaten and kidnaped.

“I don’t know what kind of evidence they looked for,” he said. “They can say what they want, but I know it happened. I can’t very well go after the guy myself.”

Barrie told police that he was kidnaped at gunpoint by a man outside a convenience store in Lake Elsinore on Feb. 20 and held for more than 24 hours until he escaped from his captor in the parking lot of a Santa Ana motel. Barrie reported that he was kicked in the ribs repeatedly and forced to withdraw money from the bank.

But Schatz said there was “an incredible lack of evidence.”

“We thought the call was a little peculiar and we were not able to find any fingerprints or hair in the trunk,” Schatz said. “It was flawlessly clean.”

Three days after Barrie made the report, an anonymous caller told Santa Ana police that Barrie had fabricated the story. Police then impounded the rented car.

Schatz said Barrie also became “increasingly uncooperative” as the investigation progressed. A detective had been assigned full-time to the case.

Barrie angrily defended his story in an interview on Friday and said he stopped cooperating with investigators only because they accused him of lying.