METROPOLIS “IT’S LIKE WE LIVE UNDER SIEGE”

The child molester could have been right there among them, and this was not lost on the parents. As they sat rigidly on their folding chairs in the Brinker Elementary School gym, they let their worst fears, many of which had already been realized, conjure up a tall, dark-haired, gloved monster man in their midst.

“I kept wondering if he was in there with us, looking at us,” said a tall, slender businesswoman with a red silk bow at the neck of her white blouse. “I’m just scared to death.”

The Far North Dallas childnapper had just struck again-his fourth successful abduction and assault of a little girl since September. And his pattern was becoming all too familiar: he chose girls between the ages of seven and ten; he chose girls who lived within a few miles of each other; he chose girls who were home asleep in their beds. He was unthinkably bold-he entered their homes in the middle of the night, stalked to their bedrooms, and carried them off, to a nearby alley or a dark place in their yard, to play out his sexual fantasies.

“The only way this thing could get any worse would be if there was any more violence involved,” says Detective Sam Schiller, the Dallas Police Department officer handling the case. “Obviously this is something the parents are finding hard to deal with because they don’t feel safe in their own homes, and they want to be able to protect their own children. And they’re starting to realize they can’t.”

Schiller had come to the Brinker school meeting, along with his partner and a profes-sional family therapist from the Piano school district, to tackle the fears of 150 parents firsthand. To contain the hysteria, squelch the rumors, advise and counsel and console.

As Schiller addressed the group at a microphone, a baby in his mother’s arms cried from the back of the room. Two large, white teddy bears sat atop an elevated stage next to the American and Texas flags. On the other side of the white plaster walls, dozens of little girls, ages seven to ten, read from storybooks; clicked open lunch boxes; scurried down tiled halls. All of them safe and protected-at least for now.

But the parents wondered: he could have been right there, absorbing it all, reveling in the havoc he alone had created, excited to be anonymous among the vanquished, so close to his prey.

HE SEEMS TO LIKE THE BENT TRAIL NEIGH-borhood-the private, pricey community along the far western stretch of Campbell Road, just north of Frankford Road. The homes are huge; the little girls are plentiful. Two of the four abductions have occurred there, not to mention two failed attempts the police suspect are the work of the same man.

“I don’t know if he necessarily prefers that area, although he has been hitting there,” Detective Schiller says. “We just don’t know what makes the guy hit where he hits.”

The first time he hit was on a warm Sunday night, September 17, about two in the morning. The back door of a large home in Bent Trail had been left unlocked. The man entered and went to a bedroom in the front of the house where a nine-year-old girl was sleeping. He awakened her, stuck a hand towel in her mouth, told her to be quiet, then picked her up and carried her boldly out the front door. He took her to the side of her house, removed her nightgown and panties, and started kissing her buttocks. At that point, the girl would later remember, a neighbor’s dog began barking and the man slipped a pillowcase that he had taken from the girl’s bedroom over her head. When the girl removed the case several minutes later, the man was gone.

The man has never raped any of the girls, though he has tried. He has taken off their clothes, kissed them, fondled them, and ordered them to perform oral sex on him. The thrill that a man like this experiences, according to the work of a Baltimore sexuality researcher, is twofold-first, the girls are young and unacceptable for him to desire in the eyes of society; second, they must be kidnapped to be had. The kidnappings are an important part of the equation.

“I don’t bel ieve this is the type of thing that you just up and stop,” Detective Schiller says. “He’s going to keep doing this.”

To the great chagrin of police and area Crime Watch captains, the man has never had to break into a house to gain entry. “He does an awful lot of snooping around,” Detective Schiller says, “and he hunts the easy entrance.” In three of the four incidents, he found unlocked back doors. In another, he broke into a parked car, removed the electric garage door opener, raised the garage door, and entered the house through, yes, another unlocked door.

But on the two botched attempts, which occurred between December 9 and January 10, the man apparently was unable to find an unlocked door. On one of the nights, he climbed up a second-floor balcony to a bedroom that turned out to be a master bedroom and not a child’s. He also went around to the back of the same house to a locked garage, where he broke a window, then fled,

The other aborted attempt was more dramatic. The man approached the locked window of a young girl who was home alone. When the man began banging on the window, she called one of her friends on the phone. He yelled obscenities at her and ordered her to open the door and let him in. When she refused, he gave up and left. It’s a simple concept-lock your doors and windows; set your alarm. But people don’t seem to be getting the message.

One night in January, a special task force of patrol officers assigned to the case cruised the streets and alleys around Bent Trail and Bent Tree West, where the fourth incident had taken place just a few days before. They were looking for suspicious pedestrians, suspicious cars, suspicious noises. To their surprise, they found something else.

“They observed open patio doors, garage doors open, windows raised,” says Deputy Chief Grant Lappin, commander of the North Central Division. “They would ring the doorbells and ask people to close their window or door. It came as a little bit of a shock to us. Many times, in fact-and this was late in the evening-when the officers went to the door, a young child would come and answer it.”

Gloria Burleson, Crime Watch chairperson for the Bent Trail, Briar Ridge, and Moss Creek neighborhoods, an area of about 700 homes, was not surprised to hear about the security lapse. “The story of Crime Watch in this neighborhood is that it hasn’t always been successful,” says the mother of two. “There’s always been great apathy in this neighborhood. People live here in these big houses with their big alarm systems, and they think they have good protection. So they leave their garage doors wide open, and they wonder why they have problems.”

It’s not as if she hasn’t tried to warn them. When Burleson started Crime Watch in 1985, she sent out an elaborate monthly newsletter, held periodic meetings on topics such as rape and home break-ins, and kept track of crime patterns, house sales, and vacant lots on a huge, hand-drawn, color-coded map of the neighborhoods.

But her block captains wouldn’t pass out the newsletters. Her neighbors wouldn’t come to the meetings-seven was a large crowd. And the garage doors always stayed open. She plugged along with it, on a smaller scale, but only because of the constant encouragement of DPD officers who know that Crime Watch not only works, it is the key to apprehending a man like the Far North Dallas childnapper.

“Now, my phone’s ringing off the hook,” Burleson says. “The sad thing is it took something bad to happen before people took an interest.”



THE MOTHER OF ONE OF THE LITTLE GIRLS who was assaulted knows, at least in part, why her daughter became his third victim. ’After the first two [assaults], I told my children about it,” she says, referring to her son and daughter. “We had a huge master bedroom, and I hauled two mattresses to a big master bedroom closet, and they slept in there. But we stopped doing that. And I think we let our guard down a little bit. Because it hadn’t happened in two and a half months.”

On the night of December 9, it appears, their back door had been opened for a pet cat and mistakenly left unlocked. The family had gone to bed. The house had no alarm.

Today, the little girl goes to the Dallas County Rape Crisis & Child Sexual Abuse Center for counseling. She is back in school. She even sleeps in her own bed without fear. Her mother says she is doing well. “She is very strong and intelligent,” her mother says. “Intellectually, she has handled this very well. . .Emotionally, though, I’m not sure she’s dealt with it.”

One thing is for sure. This family won’t be dropping its guard again. “My husband says it’s like we live under siege,” the girl’s mother says. “I always walk around and lock everything, and he’s always right behind me doing the same. We had an alarm system installed. And we set it.”

If the truth be told, she says, “I think a lot of us are making it easy for him.”