Body Found Could Be Abducted O.C. Girl

The frantic search for a 5-year-old girl snatched from outside her Orange County condominium came to a heart-stopping pause late Tuesday with discovery of a child’s body beside a mountain road west of Lake Elsinore.

Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona said investigators will not be able to determine if the body is that of Samantha Runnion of Stanton until early today. But it is a girl between 4 and 6, and “there are enough similarities ... to lead us to believe it could be Samantha.”

After word of the discovery, Samantha’s family called off public appearances and went into seclusion with crisis counselors. “They’re hoping and praying, as we all are, that it’s not Samantha,” Carona said.

The abduction, which immediately attracted national media attention, was the fourth high-profile kidnapping of a young girl in the last few months. Experts caution, however, that kidnappings of this sort remain uncommon. The vast majority of child abductions involve custody disputes, and deaths are rare.

The girl’s body was spotted just after 3 p.m. by two men at a hang-glider launch point off the Ortega Highway, a mountain road that winds through the Cleveland National Forest.

The body was left in the rugged terrain above the road. “You could see it--it wasn’t hidden,” said Riverside County Sheriff’s Sgt. Shelley Kennedy-Smith, adding that detectives are now checking for tire tracks and other evidence. “Obviously, the person who left the body here wanted it to be found.”

The killer left unspecified clues at the scene, said Orange County Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo. “We’re very confident that we’re going to be able to hunt this guy down,” he said.

The discovery capped a day of frenzied activity. Police launched a search for Samantha shortly after she was reportedly carried off screaming as she played outside her family’s condominium Monday evening.

Early in the day, Samantha’s mother broadcast a desperate plea and donors quickly offered rewards totaling $60,000 in the hope of a quick recovery. But investigators said they were stymied by the lack of clues. They focused on a kidnapper described as a Latino male in his 20s with a mustache and short black hair, wearing a powder-blue, button-down shirt and driving a light green car--possibly a Honda.

But all those details came from a 5-year-old witness, and authorities were uncertain how much weight to give them.

“We don’t know who or what we’re dealing with,” Carona said Tuesday afternoon, before the body was discovered. “We’re not sure if it’s a stalker, a friend of the family or a random act.”

Father Interviewed

Authorities interviewed Samantha’s biological father, Derek Jackson, from his home in Massachusetts and said they do not believe Samantha was the victim of a custody dispute.

Samantha’s mother, Erin Runnion, 27, repeatedly went before reporters to appeal for her daughter’s return. “Samantha, if you are watching, baby, I love you,” she said early Tuesday.

“You are such a good girl. You’re so clever. Please ask your captor to let you go.... Please let her go. She is such a sweet child. We don’t want vengeance. We just want our baby back.”

Samantha was abducted shortly before 7 p.m. Monday as she played with a 5-year-old friend, Sarah, on a low wall outside their condominium complex in Stanton, a working-class city in northern Orange County.

Sarah said Tuesday that a man in a light green car drove past them slowly, then turned around and came back and parked in front of them. The man got out and walked up to the two girls.

“The bad guy said, ‘You see a little chihuahua?’ ” Sarah said.

Samantha asked the man how big the dog was, bending down to use her hand to suggest a height. The man scooped Samantha up, grabbing her under the arms and carrying her screaming to his car, then drove off, Sarah said.

Sarah said she ran back to her condo and told her mother, and both went to the Runnion home and told Samantha’s grandmother. By the time sheriff’s deputies arrived a few minutes later, the car and the girl were gone.

More than 100 state and local law enforcement officials were joined Tuesday by about 30 FBI agents in efforts that included scouring state auto registrations for green Hondas, searching databases of sex offenders for possible suspects and alerting the U.S. Border Patrol.

Police also canvassed neighborhood businesses in hopes that security cameras might have captured an image of the car, and conducted an extensive search of the neighborhood itself.

Rewards Posted

As it became clear that Samantha was not in the area, authorities said, they expanded their focus. The Center for Missing and Exploited Children began disseminating posters displaying a photo of Samantha and a composite sketch of the kidnapper.

The posted rewards include $50,000 pledged by British Petroleum, where Erin Runnion works as an analyst, and $10,000 by the Coalition of Police and Sheriffs, a law enforcement organization. Stanton officials said they also may offer a reward.

Authorities said they hope to draw out witnesses who may recognize the abductor. “Hopefully, someone will see the broadcasts and recognize the subject and contact authorities,” said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Investigators said they were trying to make sense of some puzzling details. For instance, access to the condominium complex is limited, and Westcliff Road, where Samantha was playing, is on the back side of a loop that weaves through the complex--not an easy spot for a snatch-and-run kidnapping.

Also, the kidnapper did not take the quickest route out, heading north instead of south. Despite this most recent high-profile snatching, experts said kidnappings by strangers have remained steady in recent years. Unrelated kidnappings that have grabbed the nation’s attention in recent months include the disappearance and killing of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam in San Diego last year. Family acquaintance David Westerfield is on trial for murder in that case.

In April, 2-year-old Jahi Turner also disappeared in San Diego, a case authorities are treating as a kidnapping. And in June, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was taken in the middle of the night from her family’s Salt Lake City home.

“We only get 200 to 300 of this type of abduction a year,” said Tina Schwartz, spokeswoman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, outside Washington.

“To keep things in perspective, these are scary cases but parents need to remember that they are very rare.”

Times staff writers Mai Tran, Jeff Gottlieb, Jack Leonard, Evan Halper and Tina Dirmann contributed to this report.