commentary by Patrick H. Moore
When I first heard that two little Amish girls had been kidnapped at about 7:30 on Wednesday evening from their family’s fruit and vegetable stand near Oswegatchie in upstate New York, my heart sank, and I would have been even more concerned had I known how difficult it would be for law enforcement to find them. You see, I was unaware that many Amish adults avoid photographs entirely which meant the girls’ parents could not provide the St. Lawrence County police with pictures. Instead, the authorities had to work with police sketches and the parents apparently would not allow their six-year-old to even be sketched.
AP writer George M. Walsh reports:
The sisters, who are among the youngest of Mose and Barb Miller’s 13 children, vanished at about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday after a white or light-colored car pulled up to the farm stand and they went down to tend to the customers while the rest of their family stayed at a barn for the evening milking. Both girls were wearing dark blue dresses with blue aprons and black bonnets.
The kidnappings touched off a massive search in the family’s remote farming community which spread out into the surrounding countryside when an Amber Alert was issued at 1:00 am on Thursday morning. I’ve driven through upstate New York, and although it is gorgeous countryside, it is also very isolated. Searching for the girls had to be a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
For unknown reasons, however, the kidnappers released the two sisters about 24 hours after abducting them in the hamlet of Richville, not far from the Canadian border, some 35 miles northwest of where they had been kidnapped. The girls, who must have been incredibly traumatized by this point, and were barefoot, cold, wet and hungry, somehow found the courage to march up and knock on the front door Richville residents Jeff and Pam Stinson.
Gio Benitez and Colleen Curry of Good Morning America write:
When the girls arrived on their doorstep, the Stinsons fed them watermelon and grape juice and the girls were so hungry they couldn’t stop eating the watermelon.
“They ate that watermelon in 30 seconds. It was fast,” said Jeff Stinson.
The Stinsons said they recognized the girls because they were aware of news reports about their abduction, and Jeff Stinson knew exactly where they lived because he had bought corn from the elder girl at their vegetable stand.
The Stinsons then proceeded to drive the girls back home to Oswegatchie. According to the Stinsons, at one point during the ride, the girls ducked down in the back seat because they saw the kidnapper’s car pulled over by the side of the road.
The kidnappers, Stephen Howells Jr., 39, and Nicole Vaisey, 25, both of Hermon, NY, were identified and arrested based on information provided by the two young victims, whom they allegedly sexually abused before releasing. Howells and Vaisy were arraigned Friday on charges they abducted the 7-year-old and 12-year-old sisters with the intent to physically or sexually abuse them and each face two counts of first degree kidnapping, according to St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain.
According to D.A. Rain, Howells and Vaisy were merely prowling for easy targets when they “grabbed” the Amish girls and very likely planned to abduct other children.
“We felt that there was the definite potential that there was going to be other victims,” St. Lawrence County Sheriff Kevin Wells said.
The sheriff said Howells, 39, and Vaisey, 25, “were targeting opportunities” and did not necessarily grab the girls because they were Amish.
“There was a lot of thought process that went into this,” Wells said. “They were looking for opportunities to victimize.”
There is a curious wrinkle to this story. According to a statement Vaisey’s lawyer, Bradford Riendeau, made to the New York Times, Howells had abused Vaisey and treated her as a submissive. Riendeau said Vaisy made a “voluntary statement” to investigators after her arrest and was obtaining a protection order against her “master”.
“She appears to have been the slave and he was the master,” Riendeau told the newspaper.
Sasha Goldstein on the NY Daily News reports that DA Rains said that the Amish girls were “extremely” instrumental in helping the authorities find and arrest the perpetrators. Rain spoke at Howells and Vaissy’s house at 1380 County Route 21 in Hermon, while investigators searched the residence.
The authorities are still trying to learn more about where the girls were held during their 24 hours of captivity.
Vaisey and Howells were arrested after “voluntarily” presenting themselves at the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office. (I assume “voluntarily” means they were ordered to come in for questioning after they had been identified based on leads provided by the two little girls.) DA Rain did not disclose if the couple admitted to the crimes. They potentially face 25 to life if convicted of the charges.
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I am somewhat stunned by the fact that Howells and Vaissy released the two girls rather than keeping them captive or simply murdering them to keep them from talking. Surely, they must have realized that by releasing the girls, they were putting themselves at considerable risk of being identified and apprehended. But of course, the fact is that there are plenty of pedophiles who, thankfully, are not murderers, which is apparently the case with these two miscreants.