Teens Rescued, Abductor Killed After Massive Statewide Search

A terrifying odyssey that began early Thursday on a dusty lovers’ lane in the Antelope Valley came to a bittersweet end 12 hours later when two teenage girls were rescued from a man who had kidnapped them at gunpoint. The kidnapper was shot to death in a dry river bed in Kern County, ending a statewide manhunt.

“The girls are safe,” Assistant Los Angeles County Sheriff Larry Waldie told a grateful crowd gathered at the Lancaster sheriff’s station shortly after 1 p.m. The crowd applauded seconds later when Waldie announced, “The suspect is deceased.”

Only later did authorities say that the two girls, who are 16 and 17 years old, told investigators that the kidnapper, Roy Ratliff, had raped them. Kern County Sheriff-Coroner Carl Sparks said he believed Ratliff was on his way to kill the girls and bury their bodies in the desert when he was caught on a desolate stretch of road between Ridgecrest and Lake Isabella.

So ended a strange and troubling episode that featured the first use in California of a new freeway alert system designed to foil kidnappings. “Amber alert” freeway signs flashed for hours Thursday morning--until they were changed to “Child abducted” to end confusion.

In both cases, that warning was followed by a description of the vehicle being driven by the suspected kidnapper, a white 1980 Ford Bronco.

Authorities credited that system with leading to the first tip about the suspect’s whereabouts, and ultimately to his death.

The double kidnapping came on the heels of tragic abductions involving younger children in recent months, and terrified friends and relatives of the two girls, both of whom were described as exceptionally bright, strong and popular students at their respective high schools.

(The Times is not naming the girls because the paper withholds the names of alleged victims of sexual assaults.)

“My heart went back in my chest when I heard the girls were alive,” said the mother of the 17-year-old when the rescue was announced.

The girls, who were not friends, had been in two cars, each with a boy, when they were accosted sometime after midnight at a popular teen gathering spot on a remote hilltop overlooking the tiny town of Quartz Hill, just west of Palmdale and Lancaster.

According to authorities, Ratliff--a 37-year-old ex-convict who was on the run from a rape charge--pulled up in a gray Saturn that he had stolen at gunpoint in Las Vegas two weeks earlier. The car had a flat tire, leading some law enforcement officials to speculate that his primary interest was in getting another vehicle.

Brandishing a semiautomatic handgun, Ratliff approached both cars containing the teens, ordered them out, demanded money from the boys and tied them up with silver duct tape. He then ordered the girls into the Bronco that had been driven by one of the boys, Eric Brown, and drove off.

At some point before he left, authorities said, Ratliff poured a can of gasoline over the Saturn in an apparent attempt to destroy the car by burning it. It did not ignite.

Brown said Ratliff seemingly appeared out of nowhere on the plateau known locally as Quartz Hill Mountain, which offers a sweeping nighttime view of desert, city lights and stars.

“I never heard him get out of the car, I didn’t see him get out of the car, and he was just suddenly at my window with a gun,” he told KCAL-TV Channel 9. “He told me to give him all my money.... He said a lot of stuff. Mostly, it sounded like he was trying to decide whether to kill me or not.”

The other boy, Frank Melero Jr., eventually was able to wriggle free of the duct tape and call his sister, Elizabeth Melero, who said he told her he had been robbed. Initially, she said, he didn’t realize the girls had been kidnapped.

“He was just scared,” she said. “He was actually under control, but he didn’t really know what was going on.”

Frank Melero made the call about 1:45 a.m., and his sister followed it immediately by calling 911, authorities said. Sheriff’s deputies said they arrived at the scene of what they assumed was a run-of-the-mill robbery at 1:58 a.m.

It was not clear how much time had elapsed before Melero tore free of the duct tape. Some investigators estimated that the crime occurred at 12:30 a.m.

The discovery that the two girls had been kidnapped set in motion a massive manhunt. Ultimately, at least half a dozen law enforcement agencies in Southern California were intensively involved, and the search drew in motorists statewide through the new California Child Safety Amber Network, which posts kidnapping alerts on electronic freeway signs as well as on radio and television.

At 9:30 a.m., Kern County sheriff’s officials said, someone who had seen the alert stopped a deputy and reported seeing the suspect’s vehicle on California 178 in the Walker Pass area, about 70 miles east of Bakersfield.

About the same time, a neighbor of Ratliff’s called a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy to say he had seen Ratliff driving a Saturn matching the description of the car found at the crime scene.

Around 11:30 a.m., a Caltrans flagman working on a highway construction site was listening to the radio and heard the Amber alert. Moments later, he looked up and saw the Bronco pass by, a California Highway Patrol official said. He scraped the license number into a nearby patch of dirt and called CHP dispatch, the official said.

CHP officers, who were already stationed on California 178, began working their way westward. Kern County sheriff’s deputies began searching from the east in a pincer movement that, they hoped, would trap the suspect.

“There’s very few places to get away--it’s a two-lane road through a rough and rugged area,” said Kern County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Christopher Davis.

Also taking part in the manhunt were five law enforcement helicopters and three airplanes. Three helicopters focused on the California 178 area as the hunt intensified.

About the same time, authorities said, a Kern County animal control officer spotted the Bronco on White Blanket Road, a dirt road that traverses the White Blanket Indian allotment off California 178.

It was there, on scrub-covered Native American land, that the standoff between the suspect and Kern County sheriff’s deputies ultimately took place.

Two deputies, James Stratton and Larry Thatcher, were sent to the site. Driving separate vehicles, they spotted the Bronco about 50 feet in front of them, Sheriff-Coroner Sparks said.

Moments later, Sparks added, the Bronco sped up, swerved off the dirt road and then barreled down a hill where it became stranded in a dry river bed.

The deputies jumped out of their patrol cars. Scrambling down a hill, they approached the Bronco. As they screamed for the driver to get out, Ratliff hollered, “No way! no way!” Sparks said.

Ratliff reached into the back seat and pulled out a weapon, the sheriff said. He said Stratton fired one round into the rear of the Bronco, shattering the back window. Soon afterward, Ratliff fled the car.

Meanwhile, after firing, the deputies heard a noise coming from the back of the vehicle and realized that the girls were still in there.

As Stratton scooped up the girls and led them to safety, Thatcher came within four feet of Ratliff before firing at least two more shots, Sparks said. The sheriff, who put the time at 12:51 p.m., added that he didn’t know whether the kidnapper shot at the deputies.

Authorities said the girls told them they had been raped shortly after the kidnapping. They were later taken to Kern County Medical Center to be examined and sent home. Peter Bryan, chief executive officer of the hospital, said the girls were in “good medical condition, given the ordeal they have gone through.”

Investigators said they believed that Ratliff was driving up to the desolate Kern County site to kill and bury them.

“I honestly believe he was driving up here looking for a place to bury the bodies,” Sparks said.

“I suspect that the girls knew why he brought them up here,” the sheriff added. “He had already raped them. Why else would he bring them up there?”

Sparks said the girls had tape on them but were not bound when the deputies rescued them. He said Stratton helped the girls up the hill. The sheriff described the girls as “highly emotional.”

“They were scared, frightened and excited about being rescued at the same time,” Sparks said. “God was here today.”

A sketchy profile of Ratliff as an increasingly desperate felon began to emerge from law enforcement records and neighbors’ accounts.

Davis, the Kern County sheriff’s commander, said Ratliff, who lived in Rosamond, not far from Edwards Air Force Base, had been charged with spousal abuse and rape, for which authorities had issued a $3-million arrest warrant in October in Kern County Court.

California Department of Corrections records also show that Ratliff served prison time for three felonies including burglary and drug possession. At the time of the kidnappings, he was wanted by California authorities for absconding from parole, said corrections spokesman Russ Heimrich.

He was also a suspect in a July 18 carjacking in Las Vegas. A police spokesman there, Officer Tirso Dominguez, said a man had accosted a 64-year-old woman outside her downtown Las Vegas home. When the woman’s husband appeared, the man pointed a gun at him, demanded and received money, and then fled in the car--the same gray Saturn that Ratliff drove to Quartz Hill on Thursday.

In Rosamond, about 40 miles from where Ratliff died, neighbors said that he and his wife largely kept to themselves in a corner unit of a small townhouse complex. A next-door neighbor, James Flanagan, 42, said he rarely saw Ratliff, but when he did, there was a “lot of hatred” in his looks.

Regarding the kidnapping, Flanagan said, “I think it’s crazy. I’m sorry he got shot, but that’s one less crazy person in the world we have to worry about.”

Another neighbor, Robert Cunningham, said he had never seen Ratliff but that a woman he took to be Ratliff’s wife or girlfriend seemed to be very friendly and would smile and wave.

A woman who answered the phone at Ratliff’s home and identified herself as his wife said she was not ready to talk about the incident.

“I can’t talk to you right now,” the tearful woman told a reporter. “I have to be with the kids.”

In Palmdale, Greg Donahue, a high school math teacher and coach who is a neighbor of one of the abducted girls, spoke for many when he said he was thrilled to hear the girls were alive but happier still “when they said [Ratliff] was dead.”

And out at the site where the girls were rescued and their assailant killed, Sheriff-Coroner Sparks stood a few dozen yards from the dead man’s body and said he, too, was satisfied with the way the day ended.

“We don’t have to rehabilitate the son of a bitch,” he said. “This man right here is not going to appeal his case to the Supreme Court.”

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Times staff writers Sufiya Abdur-Rahman, Carol Chambers, Richard Fausset, Tom Gorman, Greg Krikorian and Michael Krikorian and special correspondent Don Wright contributed to this report.