FBI Finds Kidnap Suspect, Boy After TV Airs Story

NEW YORK —  Within three hours after their story was depicted on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted,” an 8-year-old Seattle boy and his alleged kidnapper were found by FBI agents in a Manhattan hotel early Sunday.

Jason J. Murphy, 19, who faces charges of kidnapping and child molestation in Washington’s Snohomish County, was being held on a federal fugitive warrant.

The boy was taken to a hospital in New York City, and a preliminary examination showed him to be in good health, FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette said. He refused to say if the exam indicated the boy, Nicholas Sullivan, had been molested.

The child’s parents, Laura Stringfellow and David Sullivan, who are divorced, headed to New York to claim their son but only got to St. Louis before their flight was canceled by the blizzard in the Northeast.

“He just seems so far away,” Stringfellow said of Nicholas. “There’s nothing that can be done. It’s really frustrating. I’m anxious to give him a big hug.”

Sullivan said their son, in a 10-minute phone call, seemed “tired and kind of sad. It kind of came to an abrupt end, and I don’t think he really got to say goodbye to Jason.”

The boy and Murphy had been the subjects of a nationwide search since Wednesday, when the child vanished after his mother dropped him off at school.

Murphy had been free on $5,000 bail on charges including previous allegations of molestation involving the 8-year-old.

Murphy met the boy while working as a summer camp counselor a few years ago.

Stringfellow told the Herald in Everett, Wash., that she was pleased when Murphy first took a liking to her son. “He was just like a big brother to him.”

Later, however, she began to worry that the two were spending too much time together, she said. Sullivan said he also worried about Murphy’s preoccupation with the boy and finally told him to stop calling and visiting.

Last month, after a teacher reported seeing Murphy kiss the boy on the lips, Edmonds police arrested Murphy. He was charged with molestation and unrelated burglary and forgery counts involving break-ins at two schools.

Murphy was scheduled for a court hearing on the day he and the boy vanished.

Valiquette said the raid on the Hotel Grand Union in Manhattan was the “direct result” of Saturday night’s broadcast of “America’s Most Wanted,” a crime show that re-creates unsolved cases.

He said a clerk at the 95-room hotel saw the program and recognized the pair as a man and boy who had been at the hotel since Friday.

Jan Jorgensen, a Snohomish County sheriff’s spokeswoman, said Murphy had registered under his own name.