Cops: Kidnapper Killed Himself
A convicted sex offender suspected of abducting girls and holding them in a cabin shot himself to death Friday after being pulled over in his car with his latest victim.
The end of Tim and Linda Henry's nightmare came almost as abruptly as it started, CBS News Correspondent Maureen Maher reports. Their 11-year-old daughter Leah was safe.
Linda Henry says when she spoke to her daughter she "sounded very timid — perhaps scared, maybe exhausted — but she's talking."
The Houston girl had been kidnapped on Tuesday. In recent weeks two other girls had been abducted, held for days and then released, and investigators believed the same person, Gary Dale Cox, 48, was responsible.
 San Antonio police released these sketches of a possible suspectSIZE> |
When Cox was pulled over Leah bolted from the other side of the car and ran toward law officers, and Cox shot himself in the head, FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne said in Slidell, La., where one of the girls had been abducted.
Leah was taken to a hospital.
"The main thing is this child is safe and the individual is dead," Slidell Police Chief Ben Morris said. "The perpetrator is in the hands of God, and hopefully (God) has washed his hands of him and put him where he belongs."
Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer said the girl was evidently being kept in a deer hunting camp in Kerr County, in a rugged, brushy area.
Authorities began looking for a serial kidnapper after 11-year-old Lisa Bruno, who was abducted from near her suburban New Orleans home in April, gave a description of her kidnapper that closely matched one given by 9-year-old Nykema Augustine, who was seized in San Antonio in March. Both girls were held captive for days.
Cox fit the profile, both in appearance and on the record. A convicted child molester, he was released in 1998 on supervised probation after serving only half of an eight-year sentence and then disappeared in March of last year, violating his parole. His criminal record in Texas included at least three sexual offenses involving girls ages 12 to 14.
Federal agents and police had been searching for a cabin in the Seguin area, about 70 miles southeast of Kerrville, on Thursday and Friday. The search for the shack was based on highway signs Nykema and Lisa said they saw and the amount of time they spent in their abductor's car.
"It's very unusual for children to be returned after that much time has passed," said Ben Ermini of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "In most cases, the abductowill do anything to not be detected."
About 140 volunteers were sent out on the search for Leah.
Reunited late Friday afternoon with his daughter, Tim Henry said, "We talked to her about how much she has been loved, about how many people have been looking for her, and how much we cared about her; and it's just been a wonderful feeling."
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