And Never See Her Again (6 page)

The program aired at 9:00 P.M. Central time, and by 9:30 P.M., the show's hotline had received nineteen tips. More calls were expected after the show aired in Mountain and Pacific time zones. Saginaw police were relieved that six new phone lines had been installed prior to the show's airing to handle the magnitude of tips expected. One hundred fifty calls poured in. Each lead would be checked out, no information disregarded. Every tip was fed into an FBI computer system called "Rapid Start," which could process huge amounts of information. The system linked into the federal crime information databases in Pocatello, Idaho, and Savannah, Georgia. More than ever, authorities were determined to find the missing six-year-old girl.

Help to find Opal came in many forms. Donors gave more than $30,000 toward reward funds for information leading to Opal's abductor. The fund had been initiated by a $10,000 donation from Schepps Dairy. A local industry, Schepps Dairy routinely offered rewards for missing persons in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Anonymous benefactors also gave the Sanderfords a fax machine and computer to help the family send and receive information about Opal's disappearance. Close neighbors began a fund to help Sanderford family members who had to take off from work. A proud family of modest means, Robert and Audrey were grateful for all the assistance provided them.

The gifts of money and machines were appreciated, but, more than the tangible, the Sanderfords were most grateful to the hundreds who searched for Opal.

As volunteers combed rain-swollen creeks, railroad tracks, saturated fields, construction sites, and residential developments for any clues leading to Opal's whereabouts, more than 750 Saginaw children lined up at a local grocery store to be fingerprinted, photographed, and measured. Their parents stood in line with them, many with arms draped around their child's shoulders, seemingly in fear of letting them go.

The assistant manager of Harvest Grocery Store on Saginaw Boulevard organized the event in conjunction with the Saginaw Police Department's Crime Prevention Unit. The goal was to provide parents with current photographs and fingerprints to give authorities if any child was to go missing. With Opal's abduction and the massive search for her abductor under way, local parents feared the kidnapper could strike again.

Search One and Children Education Search and Rescue, two trained volunteer search groups, joined local volunteers. Dressed in jeans, boots, bright orange vests, and carrying flashlights and walking sticks, they looked for clues that might lead them to Opal. They pushed back barren branches of bushes not yet covered with lush green leaves, which soon would be sprouting. They walked through dried grasses and smashed the random sprigs of green spring turf, which would blanket the area soon. They marched through gullies and combed the quarry shoreline. A Texas Department of Public Safety dive team searched the small lake in the quarry, but there was no sign of Opal.

Joining the ground hunt was Texas EquuSearch, a mounted exploration and recovery team. EquuSearch had begun with the purpose of providing volunteer horse-mounted searchers to recover missing persons. Launched by Tim Miller, the team was based in Galveston County, Texas, where a high incidence of missing persons occurred in a largely undeveloped area. Known as the "killing fields" after a number of bodies were found in the area, Miller had a personal interest in developing the search-and-recovery team. Miller's own daughter's body was one of those that had been dumped in the killing fields.

In 1984, Laura Miller was abducted and murdered. First thought by authorities to be a runaway, Tim Miller had disagreed and pressured authorities to investigate a particular area north of Lake City, but his appeals went unheeded. Nineteen months later, kids riding dirt bikes stumbled across Laura Miller's body in the same section of South Texas her father had requested searchers to explore.

"I remember that helpless feeling," Miller said. "I can't leave those families (who have lost children) alone. I know the feeling of despair."

Since Miller began the organization of dedicated, compassionate professionals, their membership has grown to more than 250, many of whom were trained in various rescue and lifesaving skills. They included business owners, medics, firefighters, housewives, electricians, and students. They are experienced riders, foot searchers, divers, and pilots. In 31/2 years, Texas EquuSearch had conducted more than 330 searches and recovered more than forty bodies; out of nineteen Houston area alerts, they had saved six persons.

Watching as his troops climbed on their horses, Tim Miller hoped the group would be lucky in their search for Opal Jennings. He prayed that Opal, unlike his own child, would be found alive.

Sitting atop hundreds of pounds of horseflesh, the EquuSearch team set off to explore a rock quarry area that included Marine Creek, south of Saginaw. They searched until nightfall, rubbed down their horses, and rested, waiting to return to the search on the following day.

Tim Miller knew from painful experience that the longer they went without finding Opal Jennings, the more likely the search would turn from one of rescue to recovery of the child's body.

As the hunt for Opal continued on the ground, authorities set up trap trace devices and recorders on the Sanderford family telephones. If the kidnapper was to contact the family for ransom, or hopefully, to let them know where Opal could be found, they would have a recording of the conversation and a way to trace the call in an effort to identify the abductor. Meanwhile, the tedious process of establishing alibis for the nineteen registered sex offenders residing in Saginaw began.

Tears pooled in Teresa Sanderford's eyes as she watched Opal's smile light up the television set. Her hair was slightly longer than in widely circulated photos, she clutched a white stuffed cat with black ears and tail and a doll wearing a blue dress and straw bonnet. Teresa remembered the day the video had been taken, during spring break only days prior to her abduction.

"And when she grins, it's clear that Opal is missing an upper front tooth,"John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted, said. "That's important information."

It was the second time Opal Jennings's disappearance had been aired on the highly rated television program. The longer segment created more than twelve hundred leads, and authorities worked feverishly to prioritize and follow up on each tip.

On April 15, as thousands of Texans worked frantically over their income taxes before the midnight filing deadline, and hundreds of other Texans were spread out across the far reaches of northern Tarrant County looking for signs of Opal Jennings, Audrey and Robert Sanderford boarded a plane for New York City. Advice given to Audrey by others who had suffered similar losses was ever-present in her mind: "Keep Opal's picture and name in front of the public." She planned to do just that.

The following morning, Audrey and Robert sat in the ABC television studio of Good Morning America. The popular morning news program would be another vehicle Audrey would use to get Opal's photo and description out to millions of people across the country. The Sanderfords had already appeared on Good Morning Texas, the local ABC affiliate's answer to post-GMA programming each morning.

Audrey sat relatively calm while awaiting their turn to talk about Opal. It seemed to have become Audrey's purpose, what drove her every day to get tip, and she appeared to thrive on it. Robert, on the other hand, was as nervous as a child in his first school play. He wanted no part of talking on TV. He left the public speaking to his wife.

After a few moments of lighthearted bantering between cohosts Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson, Gibson's smile turned serious.

"Coming up this half hour, we are following a story that has gripped the entire Southwest section of the country. You may have read about it in other areas of the country, but it has been a focal point in the Southwest.

"A six-year-old girl, her name is Opal Jennings, is missing."

A few short minutes later, millions of people who had never heard of Opal Jennings or Saginaw, Texas, were aware that the precious child with the big eyes and engaging smile had been ripped from her family.

That same evening Inside Edition broadcast a similar segment. The family desperately hoped that the exposure of Opal Jennings to both national audiences would provide the break needed to find her.

Two fishermen cast their lines into the murky waters of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River in Irving, Texas, some twenty miles from Saginaw. They waited for a strike and a catch they could take home. Neither man ever expected to see the deteriorating body of a small child.

The anglers scrambled up the bank of the river and flagged down a Dallas police officer. Shaking from the sight, the two frantically told the officer of their grim discovery.

Within an hour a small boat from the Irving Fire Department (IFD) was in the water. Divers carefully lifted the remains into the craft while news crews sped to the site, hoping to learn if the body was that of Opal Jennings, missing for twenty-six days, or that of three-year-old Cristy Ryno, a toddler abducted from her parents' Irving apartment only three days earlier.

As the Rynos huddled around their television set in Irving, Leola Sanderford and friends stared at a television provided by a TV station on the lawn of the Sanderfords' Saginaw residence. Leola's eyes were mere slits as she strained to see any sign of familiarity from the small covered body. Her lips pressed tightly in fear, her neck tensed from anxiety. The white T-shirt Leola wore left no doubt that her thoughts were of her daughter. HAVE YOU SEEN OPAL was in large block letters with a prominent photo of the smiling six-year-old in the center.

Teresa Sanderford was confident the body wasn't that of Opal.

"Anytime that there's talk about a kid's body, you get concerned," Teresa said. "But my heart and everybody else's heart says she's still with us."

At the same time the Sanderfords concentrated on news reports, Karl Johnson, a Saginaw police spokesman, watched with the same intense interest. He also waited to hear from the Saginaw officer who had been sent to Irving in case a connection was made between the body and Opal's abduction. Although the name of the child wasn't released immediately, awaiting positive identification, Johnson soon learned from his inside source that it was the body of Cristy Ryno, not that of Opal Jennings, that had been pulled from the Trinity River.

Audrey Sanderford nervously faced a studio audience and thousands of at-home viewers from the stage of The Montel Williams Show. She sat between Williams and psychic Sylvia Browne. Browne, a frequent visitor to Williams's show, often answered questions from the audience and guests concerning missing or deceased persons. Browne had expressed an interest in Opal's case and the show's staff had flown Audrey to New York to appear on the nationally televised program.

The family kept reports of a child's body found in nearby Irving from Audrey. There was no need to upset her until a positive identification had been made, since Audrey was two thousand miles away in New York, hoping to gain information on the whereabouts of her granddaughter. Unsure of her feelings about the paranormal, Audrey was willing to try anything to find Opal.

Browne's red hair blazed under the bright studio lights. She spoke to Audrey in a serious, somber tone, telling her that Opal was alive, but had been sold into white slavery in Japan. The idea seemed far-fetched but gave Audrey a ray of hope that Opal would be found alive.

Audrey also met with Texas congressman Martin Frost in Washington, DC. Frost presented Audrey with a picture of Opal that would be featured on his constituent services envelopes in an effort to present Opal's picture to as many people as possible who might have information.

"I wanted to come to Washington to meet with the people who may be able to prevent this experience from happening to other families," Audrey told reporters. "Communities need to do more to keep our children safe. Expanding the AMBER Plan and tracking the people who prey on kids can help do this."

Frost planned to meet with members of the Arlington, Texas, Police Department, who had devised the AMBER Alert, later in the week. He had invited them to speak to members of the U.S. Congress about the tremendous effectiveness of the program and how to expand it to other media markets throughout the country.

Believing whoever took Opal probably had committed a similar crime previously, Frost also proposed stiffer penalties for child predators. He hoped to mandate life sentences for two-time child sex offenders.

Opal's case had gained national prominence and some positive steps to protect children would eventually come from it, but the Sanderfords' focus remained on getting Opal back. Alive.

Leola Sanderford had remained back in Texas while her stepmother appeared on national programs asking for help to find her daughter. More than anyone else, Leola wanted her daughter back, but the shy mother of two hurt too much. She knew she wouldn't be able to control her emotions if she were to beg the American people for help.

There was still an undercurrent of tension between the two Sanderford women. The friction that developed between Audrey and Leola when Audrey married Leola's father apparently hadn't eased with the passage of time. Audrey couldn't seem to recognize Leola as an adult, instructing her not to smoke outside in public, chastising her for having a drink. Leola, in turn, still appeared to resent her father's marriage to a woman she'd barely known. But the two women had one common bond: Opal. They both desperately wanted Opal back and agreed to do anything in their power to bring her home again.

On April 23, 1999, twenty-two days after arriving in Texas, Leola Sanderford returned to North Dakota. She had another daughter to look after, and she had no idea how long it would take for Opal to be found. She felt it was best to wait for word of Opal at home.

Back in Texas, Audrey Sanderford's optimism began to fade as exhaustion set in and she bent under the strain of waiting for Opal's reunion.