Police response differs in cases of 2 missing teens

March 7, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

SAN DIEGO

The disappearances of 14-year-old Amber Dubois and 17-year-old Chelsea King illustrate a sad fact: not all missing-children cases are treated the same.

Chelsea disappeared Feb. 25, last seen in a park with running clothes. The case sparked a search involving about 1,500 law-enforcement officials and thousands of volunteers. It ended five days later when a body was found in a shallow lakeside grave.

Amber was walking to school when she vanished a year ago just 10 miles north of the site where Chelsea was last seen. Leads went nowhere. The news media showed little interest.

After prosecutors charged a convicted sex offender in Chelsea’s death, a search for Amber has intensified. On Saturday, police drained a pond for a second day at Kit Carson Park in Escondido to search for evidence of Amber, but they found no clues, Lt. Craig Carter said.

Perhaps the biggest determinant in getting the attention of law enforcement and reporters is whether there are signs of foul play that may put other children at risk. The skill of a victim’s family at working with the media and mobilizing supporters also helps decide which cases capture public interest.

There are 115 nonfamily child abductions a year in the United States — an average of more than two a week, according to the latest Department of Justice figures from 1999. But only a handful get anywhere near the attention that followed the disappearance of Chelsea King.

FBI dive teams scoured Lake Hodges for Chelsea, the Marines dispatched a C-130 plane, and an unmanned aerial vehicle circled above. Law-enforcement officers came from as far as Santa Barbara, more than 200 miles away.

San Diego County Sheriff William Gore was at the scene the same night Chelsea’s father found her 1994 BMW parked at Rancho Bernardo Community Park and stayed throughout much of the round-the-clock search.

Signs of foul play quickly emerged. In addition to the locked car, a California Department of Justice spokeswoman said authorities found Chelsea’s semen-stained clothing, leading them to arrest convicted sex offender John Albert Gardner III outside a restaurant in Escondido.

Gardner, 30, spent five years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old neighbor in 2000. He has pleaded innocent to Chelsea’s murder and the attempted rape of another woman in December.

Susan Plese, a spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, said no one was available Friday to discuss the scale of the response to the King case compared with other disappearances. Experts said evidence of foul play was probably key.