Search for South Bay Molester Is Scaled Back

The prospect of defeat dogs the men and women who have gathered every day at the Los Angeles County sheriff’s station in Lennox to sift through hundreds of leads about a man with a goatee driving a gray van, a man who molests little girls on their way to school.

The tips, totaling 1,850, have dwindled to a dribble, and none of them led anywhere promising, Sheriff’s Department representatives say. And now the task force’s numbers are dwindling, too. Last week, sheriff’s Sgt. Ronald Spear said officials were in the process of slowly “breaking down” the task force and that 30 staffers remained.

For a time, the task force in charge of finding the South Bay molester numbered 150, more law enforcement officers than were assigned to find the Unabomber or the Night Stalker.

They stopped gray vans right and left, to the point where drivers received letters to present saying they already had been stopped. They staked out schools in unmarked cars. They plastered wanted posters on just about every school bulletin board around.

And they took hundreds upon hundreds of phone tips, followed hundreds upon hundreds of fruitless leads.

The South Bay molester, suspected of abducting and molesting six girls in six months and trying to abduct five other children, goes free.

The hunt has been frustrating, but Spear said it will continue.

“They [investigators] still have a strong sense that they will catch him,” Spear said. “The overall feeling is that he is laying low, and the detectives want to communicate to parents to stay concerned, especially when school starts.”

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Already, parents in one affected neighborhood notice that more students are walking without adults to year-round schools. That’s a sharp contrast from June, when heightened media exposure and a heavy police presence had just about every child and adult thinking and talking about the molester.

“You see so many children around here walking by themselves,” lamented Linda Ferguson, 50, who was at Highland Elementary School in Inglewood to pick up her 8-year-old granddaughter, who has been enrolled in a karate class for self protection.

Larhonda Reid, 30, has walked her three children to school every day. “You try to protect your children as much as possible,” she said. “But then there are those who don’t do anything at all.”

Just outside Highland on May 30, a 7-year-old girl was abducted moments after her mother dropped her off. The little girl was thrown into a gray van, raped and returned to school.

The incident has worked its way into the young students’ minds. “My two grandsons are still very worried,” said Eddye Wallace, 59, who was at Highland to pick up her 7- and 8-year-old grandsons. “They say, ‘Granny, you going to walk with me to school?’ and ‘Are you going to be there when I get out?’ ”

Although some parents keep their own vigil, they complain that they see fewer police cars near the year-round elementary schools.

“I really haven’t seen the police patrolling like I thought they would,” Wallace said.

The Inglewood Police Department, however, insists its officers have been patrolling schools more often than usual.

In the last month, detectives have received slightly more than 200 tips, a mere dribble compared with the 440 tips called in during the last week in June. They have 100 more clues to check and will return to reexamine the 200 most promising leads in hopes of finding something they overlooked.

Detectives continue to break down clues, enter them into a computer and play a needle-in-the-haystack game of trying to see if there are any similarities. They have a personality profile sketched by a psychologist, but haven’t released it to the public.

People keep asking why law enforcement officials can’t do a database analysis, comparing information on known sex offenders with details from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

But detectives don’t know the year or make of the gray van, and the DMV doesn’t register vehicles by color.

Meanwhile, parents in another affected neighborhood prepare for the start of school in September.

Michelle Humphrey, who has three children attending Cimarron Avenue Elementary School in Hawthorne this fall, where an 8-year-old girl was abducted and molested June 4, spent several days this spring passing out fliers with a composite drawing of the molester.

At the end of August, she said, parents will meet to discuss how they will protect their children before and after school. Again there will be a morning patrol of parents from 7:45 to 8 a.m. and after school. Again children will be warned not to talk to strangers.

And another school year will begin.