FBI Joins Search for Missing Girl

INDIANAPOLIS, Dec. 29, 2004 — -- The FBI has joined the search for a 12-year-old girl who has been missing since Christmas Eve, according to local police.

Christina Tedder, 12, was last seen by her brother between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Friday, when she left their home at the Eastgate Terrace Apartments to go to a nearby Shell gas station.

Marion County Sheriff's Department investigators have questioned those working at the gas station that night, but told ABC News affiliate WRTV in Indianapolis that they have no clues to the girl's whereabouts.

The surveillance equipment at the gas station was not in use that night, WRTV reported.But nearby businesses and the apartment complex where the girl lives have offered to provide investigators with their surveillance tapes, officials said.

Investigators also have been questioning a "person of interest" in the disappearance. Vince Cooley, 42, was seen in the area around the time Christina disappeared and is a convicted child molester who lives at the same apartment complex, police officials said.

Cooley was paroled earlier this year after serving two years of a five-year sentence for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl whom he had stalked.

He was taken into custody on a probation violation. He failed a drug test and missed a meeting with his probation officer, county Commissioner Ted Robinette said Tuesday during a Superior Court hearing for Cooley.

Sheriff's detectives told The Indianapolis Star that Cooley, who also went by Anthony McGregor, passed a polygraph test.

"He's just a person of interest like everybody is going to be," Sheriff's Lt. Brian Mahone told the newspaper. "We're still canvassing. There's a lot of work to be done."

Police said an Amber Alert was never issued in the case because it did not meet the criteria. Nobody witnessed an abduction or a crime, which is needed to issue an alert.

"As we always do, we investigate every missing child as a person who's missing. Could be runaway, could be possibly abducted. We investigate them all the same until we come to some type of conclusion," Deputy Chief Herman Humbles said.

Police and the FBI have also been getting help from the girl's neighbors, who have tried to make more people aware of her disappearance.