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Thursday, October 9, 2003 Posted: 0102 GMT ( 9:02 AM HKT)
FREEPORT, Bahamas (AP) -- Two officials from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States were assisting local authorities in their search for five missing boys in Grand Bahama, police said Wednesday.
Retired FBI profiler Bill Hagmaier and retired Las Vegas homicide Det. David Hatch were sent by the Alexandria, Virginia-based organization's missing child rapid response program known as "Team Adam," said project manager Bob O'Brien.
They arrived Monday and will be here at least a week, said O'Brien, also a retired FBI agent. It was Team Adam's first international request for assistance since the program's creation in January with a $3 million grant from The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. The program also sent officials to the Bahamas to investigate the case this past summer.
Hagmaier, who was chief of the FBI's child abduction and serial killer unit, and Hatch, will assist in the search, investigative techniques and provide assistance to the families of the missing boys.
Team Adam, named for the abducted and murdered son of the Virginia center's co-founders, John and Reve Walsh, has investigated 57 disappearances across the United States and have found 49 children, O'Brien said. Of those, three were found murdered and two had drowned.
Police here are also being helped by current FBI agents and British officers from Scotland Yard. Monday afternoon two officers with cadaver dogs arrived from Riviera Beach, Florida.
Meanwhile, police remained tightlipped about details of the investigation, saying only that detectives have a long road ahead.
Investigators have received "a tremendous amount of leads," Assistant Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade said. But he declined to say if any have brought police closer to finding the boys.
The first three -- Jake Grant, 12, Mackinson Colas, 11, and DeAngelo McKenzie, 13, -- went missing within 18 days of each other in May. Junior Reme, 11, disappeared June 30. The last, Desmond Rolle, 14, never made it home Sept. 28 from his job packing groceries at a supermarket.
No one has been charged and no witnesses have come forward, though rewards for information have risen from the $10,000 advertised on an old billboard to $75,000.
Desmond Rolle has not been seen since September 28.
But Rolle's disappearance apparently led police to their first common link in the case -- all five boys had helped pack groceries at Winn Dixie Supermarket.
Police searched it for clues Thursday and detained one person. Over the weekend, several more were detained, though police refuse to give details.
In the first major breakthrough, police on Monday began combing a wooded area in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood, a few miles (kilometers) from downtown.
On Tuesday, officers appeared to narrow the search to a small area of pine wood, and emerged with a white T-shirt and other tattered clothing.
All five boys played at a video arcade near the supermarket, where business has dropped sharply.
There were 52 murders last year in this former British colony of 300,000 people, up 17 percent from 2001, police said. But abductions of children are rare.
FREEPORT, Bahamas (AP) -- Two officials from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States were assisting local authorities in their search for five missing boys in Grand Bahama, police said Wednesday.
Retired FBI profiler Bill Hagmaier and retired Las Vegas homicide Det. David Hatch were sent by the Alexandria, Virginia-based organization's missing child rapid response program known as "Team Adam," said project manager Bob O'Brien.
They arrived Monday and will be here at least a week, said O'Brien, also a retired FBI agent. It was Team Adam's first international request for assistance since the program's creation in January with a $3 million grant from The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. The program also sent officials to the Bahamas to investigate the case this past summer.
Hagmaier, who was chief of the FBI's child abduction and serial killer unit, and Hatch, will assist in the search, investigative techniques and provide assistance to the families of the missing boys.
Team Adam, named for the abducted and murdered son of the Virginia center's co-founders, John and Reve Walsh, has investigated 57 disappearances across the United States and have found 49 children, O'Brien said. Of those, three were found murdered and two had drowned.
Police here are also being helped by current FBI agents and British officers from Scotland Yard. Monday afternoon two officers with cadaver dogs arrived from Riviera Beach, Florida.
Meanwhile, police remained tightlipped about details of the investigation, saying only that detectives have a long road ahead.
Investigators have received "a tremendous amount of leads," Assistant Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade said. But he declined to say if any have brought police closer to finding the boys.
The first three -- Jake Grant, 12, Mackinson Colas, 11, and DeAngelo McKenzie, 13, -- went missing within 18 days of each other in May. Junior Reme, 11, disappeared June 30. The last, Desmond Rolle, 14, never made it home Sept. 28 from his job packing groceries at a supermarket.
No one has been charged and no witnesses have come forward, though rewards for information have risen from the $10,000 advertised on an old billboard to $75,000.
Desmond Rolle has not been seen since September 28.
But Rolle's disappearance apparently led police to their first common link in the case -- all five boys had helped pack groceries at Winn Dixie Supermarket.
Police searched it for clues Thursday and detained one person. Over the weekend, several more were detained, though police refuse to give details.
In the first major breakthrough, police on Monday began combing a wooded area in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood, a few miles (kilometers) from downtown.
On Tuesday, officers appeared to narrow the search to a small area of pine wood, and emerged with a white T-shirt and other tattered clothing.
All five boys played at a video arcade near the supermarket, where business has dropped sharply.
There were 52 murders last year in this former British colony of 300,000 people, up 17 percent from 2001, police said. But abductions of children are rare.