Girl missing a year without anyone reporting it
cnn.com
May 1, 2002 Posted: 12:32 PM EDT (1632 GMT)
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Miami-Dade
police grappled Wednesday with the
strange tale of a 5-year-old girl who
has been unaccounted for since
January 2001 but who was reported
missing only last week by the Florida
agency that was supposed to be
tracking her.
Halfway across the country, Kansas City,
Missouri, investigators are trying to
determine if the fingerprints and palm
prints of the missing Florida girl, Rilya
Wilson, match the decapitated remains of
a girl found there a year ago.
"Everybody else thinks it's her," said
Miami-Dade Police Department
spokesman Lupo Jimenez. "We're not
saying that. We provided fingerprints. It's
certainly something we're looking at, but n
ow it's up to them to see whether there is a match."
Kansas City Police Department spokesman Sgt. Tony Sanders said officials
expected results of the palm print comparison between Rilya and the child they
dubbed "Precious Doe" later Wednesday.
"There are some interesting coincidences -- her age, her race, her size and the fact
that no one reported [Precious Doe] missing," Sanders said. "I wouldn't consider it
any different than the hundreds of other leads we have received, but it's still a very
good lead which we are following up on feverishly."
Jimenez said police in Miami have found "no positive linkage" in the two cases.
The Florida Department of Children and Families revealed Tuesday it had lost track
of Rilya, who had been placed in the custody of her grandmother in 1999 after the
parental rights of her mother and father were terminated. Agency records indicate
the required monthly meetings with the grandmother did not take place.
The case came to light last week when an agency caseworker contacted the
grandmother to set up an appointment to check on the child. The grandmother told
the caseworker that she had turned the child over to people she believed to be
caseworkers in January 2001.
The grandmother told authorities those people said they were taking the child for
evaluation. They returned about a week later for the girl's clothing, saying the tests
were taking longer than expected. The girl was not seen again.
The grandmother said she repeatedly called the state to check on the child, but the
agency said they have no records to confirm the calls.
Miami-Dade police said the grandmother, who was not identified, is not under
suspicion.
"The department and I take full responsibility for what happened," said Charles
Auslander, the agency's district director in Miami.
Florida agency officials said Rilya's original caseworker resigned recently after
being accused of falsifying documents in another case. Auslander said she was
permitted to resign rather than be fired and said she had told investigators she
knows nothing about what happened to Rilya.
Rilya's mother had drug problems, authorities said, and was last known to be in
Cleveland, Ohio. The girl's father reportedly remains in the Miami area.
Jimenez said Kansas City authorities contacted Miami-Dade police after information
was entered into a nationwide computer database of missing children. |
