Abductor Planned to Dump Victim's Body

ByABC News via GMA logo
June 12, 2003, 7:17 AM

June 12 -- The 9-year-old girl violently snatched from her home in a videotaped abduction duped her alleged kidnapper into releasing her after she heard him making plans to get rid of her body, her mother said.

In an interview with ABCNEWS' Good Morning America, the mother, Roselia Tamayo, said her daughter told the family that her accused kidnapper, Enrique Sosa Alvarez, kept her in a box after he took her from her home last Friday. Tamayo, who revealed her daughter's account of the ordeal with the help of family friend Silvia Nichols, said the girl remembered Alvarez using a screwdriver to poke at her body while she was sleeping.

"Once in a while he went to check on her. He said, 'Oh, you still alive. I was already thinking [about] how to dispose [of] the body,' " Nichols told Good Morning America. "So that, to her, was traumatizing. I think that's when she was thinking of a way to [get] out of here."

The girl told her family she was able to convince her kidnapper to release her after she told him she was ill and suffering from asthma.

"What I was told is that she was watching a show where all the kids they had asthma attacks," Nichols said. "So I think that's where she got the idea."

Authorities have said the girl's recollection of various details such as the number of the house where she was held and that the suspect ordered a pepperoni pizza from Little Caesar's helped lead to Alvarez's arrest. Her poise and ability to help win her release under the circumstances even surprised her family and friends.

"All the tricks that she used on him to release her I was amazed," Nichols said. "Not even an adult could have thought of the things [that she thought about during her captivity]."

Fooled Into His Arrest

The girl was abducted last Friday after she returned to her San Jose home from school. Video from a neighbor's surveillance camera showed the abductor had been lying in wait for nearly two hours.

The kidnapper entered the home, beat the girl's mother and her 15-year-old brother, and took off with the child, police said. Both the mother and brother were severely injured in the struggle.