The other outrage in kidnapping case

By Abigail Goldman

Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The most dazzling details about Cole Puffinburger’s kidnapping were whispered into fact by nameless “sources and authorities.”

Metro walked a tight-lipped tightrope over the 6-year-old’s Oct. 15 disappearance, initially revealing only that it came at the hands of two, or maybe three, men who were possibly Mexican nationals.

An unknown number of insiders, however, had far more interesting information to share: Two days after Puffinburger’s kidnapping, the words “Mexican drug cartel” materialized in the mainstream media. On Oct. 17, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s front-page story read, “Sources said it’s believed that a member of Cole’s family owes a Mexican drug cartel between $8 million and $20 million.”

The news cyclone opened its mouth wide and swallowed all of that.

If Puffinburger was kidnapped once as leverage for a drug debt, he was kidnapped a second time by the media as leverage for your attention. Both heists were snatch-and-grab affairs that, respectively, left Puffinburger stranded at a bus stop and on the front page of the paper, with no real explanation of how he got there in the first place.

Two days after Puffinburger was dumped at that Las Vegas bus stop by his kidnappers, Metro grew fed up with the suggestion drug cartels were involved. Police spokesman John Loretto scolded reporters pushing him for additional information on the cartel connection during an afternoon news conference.

“It was you in the media that said ‘cartel,’ ” Loretto said. “We never said that.”

The entire time Loretto was talking, a documentary crew from Texas had a video camera trained on his face. They were gathering footage for a documentary on drug cartels.

This is the dance: The more information people want, the less, it seems, police will provide. This sends reporters scrambling for some scrap of usable information, something to satisfy readers and viewers itching to understand how a 6-year-old was kidnapped from his home in a city that, while not perfect, is no Juarez.

Unnamed “sources and authorities,” it must be said, are often credible, just worried about job security. Without confirmation, the likelihood this was the work of a Mexican cartel is as great as the likelihood it wasn’t. Law enforcement entities investigating the kidnapping have been painfully secretive, calling news conferences to reveal they won’t be revealing anything.

Legitimate sources can often be persuaded to talk if names are withheld. (Just ask the source who told this reporter he thought the $8 million to $20 million spread was ridiculous, then said the reporter could not attribute the statement to him.)

When a story skyrockets so quickly into the national news, the information cycle speeds up, and fallout comes in the form of errors and assumptions presented as fact, such as a Sunday headline in Britain’s The Observer that read: “Desperate search for 6-year-old as Mexican cartels bring bloody vendetta to Las Vegas.”

Nobody has gone on record to say there is connection between the kidnapping and murderous cartel wars in Mexico. Nobody has denied it either. All we know officially from police is that Puffinburger was kidnapped from his home.

This case, according to Metro Capt. Vincent Cannito, had something to do with a “drug nexus” and bad guys trying to “send a message.” This kidnapping had something to do with Puffinburger’s grandfather, Clemens Fred Tinnemeyer, who Cannito said may owe someone “millions” of dollars. We don’t know who, or how much, or if we ever will.