Baby Be Mine Read Free Page B

one matched the age of the victim. Only one was eight months pregnant. The only one was her good friend’s daughter, Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Her worst fears were confirmed when she drove past Elm Street—official vehicles, flashing lights and yellow crime-scene tape marked the spot.
    She never knew a mother and daughter with a closer relationship than the one between Becky and Bobbie Jo. Her heart ached for the burden Becky now carried.
    The word spread to the local media and they descended on the crime scene. Espey sealed off the dead-end block to keep them at bay.
    An hour and a half into the investigation, the sheriff contacted the state headquarters of the Amber Alert system in Jefferson City. They asked for the hair color, eye color, skincomplexion, size and weight of the abduction victim. Espey had no answers. Officials denied his request.
    They insisted there was nothing they could do. An Amber Alert had to meet specific criteria. This case did not meet the established standards to issue this public notices-he had no description of the kidnapped child.
    Only one person did have that information—the one who abducted Bobbie Jo’s baby. With every moment, Espey sensed that person slipping further and further from his grasp.
    At the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children outside of Washington, D.C., word of the abduction hit the desk of Cathy Nahirny and she got busy. She pulled information from similar cases. She gathered contact information for the investigators who’d handled the most recent caesarean abduction in Oklahoma one year earlier.
    Once she pulled it all together, she turned it over to John Rabun, who forwarded the data on to law enforcement in Missouri. They wanted investigators to know the profile of this kind of offender—to realize that they were not looking for a typical criminal. They wanted the detectives to know they were not alone—an identical crime occurred just two states away twelve months earlier. They wanted them to be able to avail themselves of the knowledge of those law enforcement agencies and not waste time following up on leads that were destined to be unproductive. Cathy and John knew knowledge was power and they wanted the investigators to have all the power they could get to bring this infant home.
    The sheriff raced to the hospital and talked to the medical staff, who assured him that the baby was probably still alive. But, they continued, the infant was premature, may have suffered a variety of traumas during the assault—including the possibility of a lack of oxygen—and, thus, had special medical needs. “The newborn will survive if treated. You need to find that baby immediately,” they warned.
    Espey didn’t need to be told that this was the most pivotal, time-sensitive moment of his career. He knew he needed the help of the public. He knew the Amber Alert would generate thousands of vigilant eyes that would help track down the kidnapper and the baby. His request might not meet the criteria, but he was determined to shove his square peg of information into the neat round hole of the system. The authorities’ stubborn refusal could not—would not—stand.
    He called the home of United States Representative Sam Graves. The elected official was a quick study. He understood at once the necessity for cutting through the red tape and regulations—a child’s life was at stake.
    It was not just the infant’s survival at issue here. Every passing moment gave the murderous abductor time to travel further from the scene of the crime—perhaps far enough to obscure the wrongdoing, hide the baby’s identity and separate the infant from its real family for life. Bureaucratic process could not be allowed to aid and abet the kidnapper in achieving this goal.
    Representative Graves had a secret weapon. Not only was he the congressman for the district, with a certain amount of power in his own right, he was also