Thousands of Tips on Missing Boy Pour In to Police

The tips are coming in by the thousands--from as far away as New York. A psychic drew a map that he thought would direct searchers. Hundreds of volunteers have scoured alleys, fields and ravines for miles around. Police and family have appeared on national television. A million fliers have been distributed.

And on Tuesday, Gov. Pete Wilson and the Riverside County Board of Supervisors authorized $50,000 rewards for solid information that would break the case.

But 10-year-old Anthony Martinez, who was stolen at knifepoint from a group of playmates 12 days ago, is still missing, and no one can pin a name on the man with the striking blue eyes who snatched him.

The case might be solved with the next phone call--or the needed tip already may be cataloged in a file--buried among half of the 3,000 calls that bone-weary investigators still have to check out.

“We’re getting 300 calls a day, and we’re investigating them as if each one might be the call that will solve this,” said FBI Senior Agent Randy Parsons, who with other FBI agents is aiding in the search.

But he and others acknowledge that not all missing children are found.

Beaumont Police Lt. John Acosta conceded that in the search for Tony, believed to be the first youngster ever kidnapped from Beaumont: “As time goes by, it diminishes the likelihood the boy’s still alive. But we’re not losing hope.”

Tony was kidnapped about 5 p.m. on April 4 while playing with his brother and three other children in an alley near his home here. A stranger asked for their help in looking for a cat; when the children balked, he pulled a knife from his waistband and forced the fourth-grader into his car and drove off.

Despite the trauma, Parsons said, the other children were “surprisingly articulate” in offering a description of the suspect: a thin white male, about 5-foot-8, with a mustache, between the ages of 25 and 35. They said he drove a mid-size white, four-door car with red pinstripes and no hubcaps.

As word spread through town, some reported seeing the same man earlier that morning at a local doughnut shop. Others said they saw the man--this time with a German shepherd puppy--talking to children just the day before. The same man supposedly spent about 40 minutes in an antique shop on the previous Tuesday.

Based on those witnesses’ descriptions, a more detailed police composite sketch of the suspect has been drawn and is being faxed nationwide.

Locals in this small town alongside Interstate 10 don’t remember seeing the suspect before the week of the abduction. Police surmise that he was a drifter who didn’t live here.

Optimism has waxed and waned as investigators chase tips. Four or five possible suspects have been questioned and released, Acosta said.

The most detailed tip so far came from a sheriff’s deputy who knew a man near Idyllwild who fit the kidnapper’s description and who had recently shaved. He even owned a white car and a German shepherd puppy.

Investigators interviewed the man Sunday night and Monday, and on Tuesday forensic experts searched his car. But later, Acosta said police were “95% sure” that he was not their man.

Acosta said the suspect--and Tony--could be anywhere in the country by now. Investigators are reasonably certain that they are no longer around Beaumont.

Bob Sherwood, who is coordinating the volunteer search effort out of City Hall, said, “Every door in Beaumont has been knocked on--some twice,” and searchers have walked every alley and looked in every dumpster. Fields, orchards, ravines and hills within a 15-mile radius of Beaumont have been searched by air and on the ground. On Tuesday, volunteers on horseback expanded the perimeter.

Volunteers on horseback and in off-road vehicles are even organizing their own informal searches, Sherwood said.

“I thought the number of searchers would drop off by now,” he said, but every day, between 50 and 100 volunteers show up for instructions--including some who have taken leave of absences from work.

“We haven’t found a body yet, so we feel Anthony is still alive out there,” he said.

Said Parsons: “We’re throwing everything we can into this, as long as we’ve got some hope they’re still out there.”

The toll-free tip hotline is 1-888-709-7997.