Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Bowl to stop sex trafficking of boys and girls, an underground Super Bowl perversion. His
group rescued six missing children at the Miami Super Bowl in 2010. Brad is one of those
ebullient people who knows about the worst, but manages to find and bring out the best in
people.
Besides Haylee and her grandmother, who were listening to Brad, the room that evening
was filled with tired volunteer and law enforcement handlers. They had already worked their
dogs most of the day. I had worked my dog. Haylee had worked her dog. A few of us took
notes but most did not. Haylee was an exception; she was writing madly. Homeschooling
never ends.
Brad gave the group a scenario from a case that would challenge us. A case he worked
that ended, as many do, tragically. In every abduction case, minutes and hours count. A
seventeen-year-old disappears while jogging. What should agencies do? Get tracking dogs on
the ground immediately. Know exactly where to deploy them. Know how to deploy people
around the immediate area of interest. Know the area. Look for trails. Triage where to search
first. Separate well-meaning but inexperienced volunteers to the outer perimeter of the search
area so that search veterans can concentrate on the high-probability areas.
Brad noted that such work would have been too late for this particular victim. Her mur-
derer had already killed once, molested and raped before. He undoubtedly would have con-
tinued. Finding the victim's body led to her killer admitting where he buried his first victim
nearly a year before. He had killed one of the girls within an hour of her abduction, the other
within an hour and a half.
Brad then cited the grim statistics from a 2006 Washington State study: In 76 percent
of the missing-children homicide cases studied, the child was dead within three hours of the
abduction. In 88.5 percent of the cases, the child was dead within twenty-four hours. In the
majority of cases, 74 percent, the victim was female. Their average age, eleven.
Haylee's hand shot up. She was polite but unapologetic. “Could you go back to the last
slide, please?” she asked Brad. Her head was still hunched over her notes. She hadn't got-
ten down every single percentage. People shifted in their chairs. Brad cheerfully obliged and
clicked to the last PowerPoint. Haylee thanked him.
Brad continued with his lecture, talking about “the freeze moment.” He showed a grainy
bank security video of a girl's abduction that ended with her murder. The girl turned and
stood stock-still as her killer approached. That hesitation was all it took; she was gone. All of
us, Brad said, have this “awesome, God-given gift.” That moment when the hair stands up on
the back of your neck. As soon as you feel that? Use it, he said.
Now all the major organizations dealing with abduction have changed their tune on what
potential victims should do. Brad looked at the class to see if we knew.
