FBI Joins in Search for Nurse : Thousand Oaks: Agents will use special high-tech equipment to help locate the missing woman.

FBI agents with specialized thermal-imaging equipment scanned parts of Thousand Oaks by helicopter on Thursday, joining the massive search for a Westlake nurse who has been missing since Sept. 14.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department called in the FBI and its high-tech gear after about a week of fruitless searching for 34-year-old Kellie O’Sullivan.

After testing the imaging equipment by air late Thursday afternoon, the FBI agents were expected to use it in earnest today to search six areas around Thousand Oaks totaling about five square miles, said Sgt. Bruce Hansen of the Sheriff’s Department.

Hansen declined to explain how investigators chose the six areas, but he said, “We have had some sketchy information that we want to check in more depth.”

The search intensified on the ground as well, as some 60 to 70 civilians joined 35 to 40 members of the Sheriff’s Department, scouring 170 square miles of brushy canyons by helicopter, horseback, dirt bike, four-wheel-drive vehicle and foot.

“We’re checking out leads from the community, trying to sift through the ones that are most promising,” said Lt. Craig Husband of the department’s major crimes division.

Mark Scott Thornton, 19, the prime suspect in O’Sullivan’s disappearance, is to be returned to Ventura County this week from Reno, Nev. He faces charges of kidnaping and either assault or attempted murder in the abduction of his ex-girlfriend, authorities said.

Thornton has admitted that he found O’Sullivan’s black 1991 Ford Explorer empty outside a Thousand Oaks pet shop on Sept. 14 and used it to abduct 16-year-old Stephanie Campbell of Thousand Oaks, authorities have said. Reno police arrested him just before midnight Sunday at the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino after Campbell sneaked away from him and summoned help.

However, both Thornton and Campbell told police they never saw O’Sullivan.

Husband said authorities are looking for Thornton’s chrome-framed BMX bicycle, which may have been left near the pet store on the afternoon of O’Sullivan’s disappearance. Anyone who has the bike is asked to call sheriff’s detectives at 494-8207 to arrange to turn it over to detectives, with no questions asked, Husband said.

Meanwhile, the search of O’Sullivan’s vehicle turned up evidence from another car burglary, but no obvious clues to her whereabouts, according to court documents obtained Thursday.

Ventura County detectives who combed through the truck in Reno earlier this week found a credit card and a prescription bottle for triamterene, a hypertension drug, that a Newbury Park woman reported were taken from her unlocked car on the night of Sept. 14, according to court records.

They also found a black purse in the truck, court records show.

It is similar in description to the one the woman reported stolen from her car, but when police found it it contained 41 .38-caliber special bullets--the same size ammunition found in the stub-nosed .38-caliber revolver that Thornton pulled out in the casino just before police arrested him, records show.

Police have said the gun had been taken in a house burglary in July, and court records show Thornton has been convicted twice on burglary charges.

Court records show the detectives also found a variety of clothing, camping gear, toiletries, hand tools, small change and other items inside O’Sullivan’s vehicle.

The search yielded an Amica Mutual insurance card in O’Sullivan’s name and a document addressed to her from “student affairs at UCLA,” the records show.

The search turned up a grocery receipt for $15.80 from a Ralph’s store dated Sept. 14.

The search also yielded a Realistic brand radio scanner, which O’Sullivan’s family said did not belong to her, and checks and a bank card belonging to Mark Sarrazin, the name Thornton has taken from his stepfather.

In addition, detectives took tire-tread impressions of the truck and photographs of its interior and exterior and used tape to lift trace evidence from 10 spots on the vehicle, records show.

Husband declined to comment on the fruits of the search.

O’Sullivan’s family said they welcome more people who want to join in the search. Those wanting to help should call 494-6736.