Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Report: Abduction likely done by stranger

Seven-year-old Karla Rodriguez was kidnapped in 1999 near her Las Vegas home probably by a stranger, and her disappearance was not likely linked to a debt her parents owed to a former family member, a team of retired investigators has concluded.

The girl's abduction probably was not related to high bills from her ongoing medical problem either, the investigators found.

"After review of the files and discussions with officers, it appears that this is most likely a stranger abduction," according to a preliminary report they wrote. "No evidence has been found to link any known family member to her disappearance.

"All three (detectives) do not feel that the parents are involved in her disappearance or are aware of who might have abducted her."

The report contains the conclusions of volunteer investigators from Project Alert -- a program of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children -- designed to help authorities in investigations. Metro Police missing persons Detective Roberto Juarez requested that Project Alert send the retired detectives to review the Karla Rodriguez case to see if he and other Metro investigators might have missed something.

"They had something like 75 years of law enforcement experience between them and they might have seen something that we overlooked, because we were too close to the case," Juarez said.

The independent review of the Karla Rodriguez investigation in February didn't solve the case, and it didn't find any obvious holes into the search for the little girl.

The Project Alert volunteer investigators did suggest Metro detectives watch the activities of two men police previously investigated. Their report noted the previous investigation uncovered no evidence positively linking them to Karla's disappearance.

Metro investigators have been searching for Karla Rodriguez since she disappeared Oct. 20, 1999, after being seen playing in her neighborhood near Sixth Street and St. Louis Avenue that night. She disappeared just blocks from her house, prompting a door-to-door search.

The search for Karla has drawn nationwide attention, and her picture has appeared on Purely Sedona bottled water, on home mailers that regularly feature missing children, and on the hood of Joe Nemechek's stock car at race at the California Speedway last year.

All of that turned up nothing. So Juarez turned to Project Alert and its volunteer investigators.

The three detectives -- William Gleason, retired from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, Alex Torres, retired from the San Antonio Police Department, and Frank Balazs, retired from the Drug Enforcement Agency -- reviewed the case file of more than 30 binders filling a filing cabinet. They also went to various places around town connected to the investigation and interviewed Karla's mother.

The investigators reviewed the theory that a former brother-in-law of Karla's parents living in Mexico could have been behind the disappearance. Prior to Karla's birth, when the parents were living in Mexico, Karla's father borrowed money from the man to start a business.

The man apparently periodically demanded the debt to be repaid. He came to Las Vegas a couple of months before Karla's disappearance and demanded the money, according to the report. The family paid him $1,000, but he claimed it was only the interest and the debt still needed to be repaid, according to the report.

The report also says the 26-hour delay in reporting Karla missing could have been due to the fact that an aunt would often pick Karla up without notifying the parents, that she sometimes also stayed overnight at friends' homes and that "the parents appear to have not kept a close eye on her whereabouts at all times."

Metro Police investigated the parents in connection with Karla's disappearance, which Juarez said is standard in missing children cases. FBI agents checked on the large extended family in Mexico but found no trace of Karla or any information, Juarez said.

The Project Alert investigators talked to Karla's mother -- who along with her husband moved to a different home after being evicted from the previous house.

"She appeared very stoic about her daughter's disappearance and seems to have a lot of guilt for not paying closer attention to her daughter's activities," investigators wrote. "When asked if she had kept her daughter's clothes and toys, she showed several plastic bags of items stored in a closet.

"At that point she broke down crying and displayed a lot of emotion," the report said.

Karla's mother also said she discussed the possibility that her former brother-in-law may be involved in the girl's disappearance and both agreed, "although the man was mean, even he would not do such a thing," according to the report.

Project Alert was primarily designed for smaller departments to assist investigators during investigations, from answering phones to reviewing the case file, said Ann Scofield, Project Alert manager based in Alexandria, Va. at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

But she added that the program will assist any department that asks for its help.

Juarez insisted the review of Metro's Karla Rodriguez investigation was helpful.

"Anytime you can have people of their experience look at what we have done, it is a help," he said.

The volunteer investigators said they made several suggestions during the course of their review, but "almost all had already been done."

The search for Karla continues, and Juarez said the investigation will remain open until the case is solved.

"It will never close until it is resolved," he said.

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