Kidnaped Girl, Family Reunited

Elvia Vasquez was scared--after all she is only 5 years old--but she was being brave.

The fear and puzzlement showed in her large, dark eyes as she scrunched down in her mother’s lap Friday morning for the first time in 3 1/2 years. She hugged her new teddy bear for comfort.

Out there in the big, brightly lighted room she saw scores of eyes, all focused directly on her--the intense, questioning eyes of news reporters, the hard glassy eyes of news cameras. They were all staring at her, and she didn’t quite know why.

The reason was because two hours before, in another room in the same big building, Elvia had been reunited with her mother and father and her four brothers and sisters. She had not seen them since that strange man had taken her away from the park so long ago, when she was just a baby.

Entered and Left in Silence

Neither Elvia nor her parents, Javier and Juanita Vasquez of Venice, wanted to say anything to the reporters. They entered the room in silence and left in silence a few minutes later.

So Richard T. Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, did the talking. He said the reunion took place at 9:25 a.m., in a suite set aside for the family in the Crowne Plaza Holiday Inn near Los Angeles International Airport.

“Upon seeing her parents,� he said in his policeman’s voice, “she embraced them. There were tears shed. Great emotions were displayed, and she has been pretty much in her mother’s grasp, like she is now, ever since.�

That was about as dramatic as the brief news conference got.

The Vasquez family--mother, father, Elvia and the couple’s other children--sat stiffly and solemnly through what was yet another harrowing ordeal for them.

The facts of the case were fairly well known before the briefing began: On Aug. 25, 1981, as she played in Venice’s Penmar Park, 19-month-old Elvia vanished. Her mother was feeding another child while the rest of the family was playing baseball.

A widespread search failed to turn up any trace of the girl with dark eyes and dark blonde hair.

Tip Led to Suspect’s Arrest

Then, last Jan. 29, in Anchorage, Alaska, a 58-year-old drifter from Los Angeles, John Robert Altig, was arrested by local police and FBI agents on a tip from a suspicious neighbor.

The 5-year-old girl living with him in his trailer park home was known as Crystal (Crissie) Morgan.

Anchorage police said Dorothy Keller, manager of the trailer park, called them because she didn’t think it “looked right� for such an old man to be living with such a young girl. In fact, as cellular and blood laboratory tests showed later, the girl was Elvia Vasquez.

Altig claimed that the girl was his illegitimate daughter by a former girlfriend. However, Anchorage police and FBI agents did not believe his story. They jailed Altig on suspicion of child molestation and other charges.

And they put out a description of the child.

Veteran Los Angeles Police Officers Ken Majors and Joe Aparicio had been assigned to the Vasquez case from the beginning. They had kept in periodic contact with the missing girl’s family and over the years, had checked out hundreds of leads.

At Friday’s news conference, the FBI’s Bretzing did not mention Majors and Aparicio by name but did praise them for their “determination and doggedness,� in investigating the case.

Not Bothered by Lack of Invitation

Neither of the Pacific Division officers was present. They had not been invited to the news conference. However, later, Majors said that didn’t bother him or his partner.

“That doesn’t concern us,� Majors said. “We’re still doing our work here. We’re just happy the little girl was found and the family is back together.�

In fact, Majors credited a veteran Los Angeles reporter, Norman (Jake) Jacoby, with making the link between the girl found in Alaska and the Venice kidnaping.

Majors said Jacoby called him a week ago Friday and read him a press release about an unidentified child found in Anchorage. The child had told investigators there that she didn’t know her real name but that she remembered living near a beach.

The description of the girl in Alaska and the missing Vasquez child appeared to fit, although not in all details.

“From there,� Majors said, “a lot of things began to fall in place. Jacoby gave us the phone number of the FBI in Anchorage and gave us a picture of the Anchorage child from the Associated Press, which we were able to take to the Vasquez family.�

The family did not immediately recognize Elvia from the photo.

Later, however, the laboratory tests provided positive identification Thursday.

Child Placed in Foster Home

Meantime, the child had been put in the care of a foster parent in Anchorage, who counseled and comforted her.

And the bearded, stout Altig was indicted by an Alaskan grand jury on three counts of sexual abuse of a minor, after a physician’s examination found evidence that the child had been molested.

He was also indicted by a federal grand jury in Alaska on a charge of taking the girl across a state line for immoral purposes. Altig is being held in an Anchorage jail in lieu of a $250,000 bail.

Bretzing said Friday that evidence will be presented to the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles for possible kidnaping charges as well.

No one mentioned Jacoby’s name at the news conference either, but like Majors and Aparicio, the reporter, who works for City News Service, also didn’t seem upset.

“I’ve been a police reporter since God knows when--I walked into a press room (the first time) in 1935,� he said in his gravelly but gentle voice. “I know you’ve got to check things out. . . . Most of the work I have to handle is gruesome and violent. But once in a while you get some remuneration for your work. This is probably one of the things I’m most proud of.�