Girl: We Tried to Kill Kidnapper
L O S A N G E L E S, Aug. 2, 2002 -- The two teenage girls kidnapped from a lovers' lane outside Los Angeles tried to kill their captor, one of the victims said in a television interview today.
"We got this plan, we were gonna try to kill him," 17-year-old Jacqueline Marris, told KABC-TV in Los Angeles, recalling the harrowing 12-hour ordeal she and a 16-year-old girl endured.
The girls are recovering after being rescued from the wanted rapist who held them captive for hours Thursday and was apparently planning to kill them when police moved in.
Marris added that she and the other captive girl planned their attack on ex-convict Roy Ratliff as he slept, after they noticed a knife and a whiskey bottle in the car.
Marris said she tried to stab Ratliff in the throat with the knife while the other girl hit him in the head with a whiskey bottle. But he woke up, was able to grab his gun, and regained control of the situation.
Saved in the Nick of Time
The girls were later pulled clear of a vehicle driven by Ratliff as police fired multiple shots into the man, who refused to surrender after being cornered in a remote area north of Los Angeles, authorities said.
One police official said Ratliff had raped the girls and that he believed the man was just minutes away from killing them when authorities closed in on him where he was apparently trying to hide the vehicle.
Ratliff, 37, who was already wanted on a warrant for a rape charge, was suspected of a carjacking in Nevada and was out of prison on parole for drug charges, and had no intention of going back to jail, police said.
Marris added that Ratliff drove them around for hours and seemed very familiar with the area. "He knew every single spot, every secluded area, every single dirt road," she said.
"He already hurt the girls," Kern County Sheriff Carl Sparks said at a news conference today. "There wasn't anything else to do there. He went to a remote area where he was going to be trapped. He saw the helicopters. He knew what they were. He was a 'two-striker.' He had to get rid of the girls."
When police surrounded the Bronco, Ratliff was still not ready to give up, Marris said. "He said something like 'no way. I got the girls here,' and he grabbed his gun."
One of the first officers on the scene after the shooting, Cmdr. Hal Chealander of the Kern County Sheriff's Office, said that he could see the relief they felt that the ordeal was over.
"In their faces I could see the terror that they had experienced," Chealander said. "Yet I saw a sparkle in their eyes and a smile in their faces regarding our presences and their freedom from the situation they had been in. It sent chills up and down my spine."
Power Puff Girls
The girls were chosen randomly, Marris told KABC. At one point, Marris said they tried to distract Ratliff with conversation and he explained how he picked them.
According to Marris, he replied: "You guys didn't do anything. I was mad at someone else and I took it out on you guys."
Friends who visited one of the two girls in a hospital Thursday night said despite the ordeal, both of the victims seemed to be in good spirits.
The three girls from Palmdale High School in California said that their friend and the other kidnap victim both never gave up hope during the 12 hours they were held by Ratliff.
"They tried to fight as hard as they could," Crystal Ackerman said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "We knew deep down they would be OK. We knew."
The four are "like Charlie's Angels, like the Powerpuff Girls, the Four Musketeers," Christina Estrada said.
After meeting the other victim for the first time, Lauren Kadena said they found they had "a new best friend."
The two girls suffered minor physical injuries and were released late Thursday from Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, hospital administrator Peter Bryan said.
Both girls were back with their families this morning, authorities said.
"Clearly they've been through an ordeal," Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Capt. Tom Pigott said today at a news conference. "It's my understanding that they have the support of their families and the support of the sheriff's department and they're doing as well as can be expected."
12-Hour Ordeal
The ordeal began around 1:50 a.m. Thursday when the girls were kidnapped in Lancaster, about 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles. They were taken at gunpoint by the suspect, who interrupted them and their boyfriends at a lovers' lane. He came upon the two couples sitting in separate cars.
Ratliff blindfolded one girl's boyfriend, Joshua Brown, bound him with duct tape and tied him to a post, authorities said. He ordered the girl who was with Brown out of the Ford Bronco at gunpoint, and then approached the other girl, who was with Frank Melero Jr. in another car, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Deputy Brian Lendman said.
Ratliff forced the girl out of the car and tied Melero up and blindfolded him with duct tape. He then drove away with both girls in Brown's Ford Bronco, Lendman said.
After the abduction, it took Brown and Melero about 20 minutes to get free of their bonds, police said, and by the time investigators got on the case, the kidnapper had about an hour's lead time to get away.
Police used five helicopters and three planes to search the canyons and desert around the kidnap scene. Other police departments in the region were notified to be on the lookout, and police used for the first time a new "AMBER Alert" system designed to spread the word when a child is abducted.
Police: Suspect Aimed Gun at Them
Kern County officials received two reports of sightings of the vehicle Thursday morning, but could not locate it before an animal control officer spotted Ratliff and the Bronco half concealed under some trees off Route 178 on Thursday afternoon, Chealander said.
The officer contacted the Kern County Sheriff's Department, and the California Highway Patrol came upon Ratliff at Walker Pass in Kern County. A short pursuit ensued, but Ratliff crashed the Bronco when he tried to jump a dry creek bed and the vehicle became stuck on a boulder.
As two officers approached, one on each side of the vehicle, the suspect reached behind the seat and rose up with a handgun, Chealander said. The deputy approaching from the passenger side saw the gun and fired through the rear window, even though at that point neither of the deputies knew whether the girls were in the Bronco or not, he said.
It seemed that Ratliff had been hit, but in an instant he again rose in the seat and turned and pointed the weapon at the deputy on the driver's side, and this time both deputies fired.
As the deputies started to approach again after apparently hitting Ratliff, the deputy on the passenger side of the Bronco saw that the girls were in the back of the vehicle. As one girl started to climb out the back window and the deputy tried to help the other out the passenger side door, Ratliff again sat up, aiming his weapon at the deputies, and both of them shot at him a third time, Chealander said.
This time, Ratliff was dead.
"He got exactly what he deserved," Sparks said. "You don't point guns at Kern County officers and get away with it."
One of the deputies fired nine shots, and the other fired eight times, said Sgt. Mike More of the Kern County Sheriff's Department, who is conducting the investigation into the shooting. It was not clear yet whether Ratliff ever fired either of the handguns that were found in the vehicle, More said.
He had a .38-caliber Colt revolver and a .22-caliber Colt handgun, both of which been reported stolen earlier this year, More said.
Sparks, who Thursday night on CNN's Larry King Live program, said the girls had been raped, said he was willing to apologize to the girls' families if that remark or his statement that Ratliff was looking for a place to "dump 'em" had offended them.
Ratliff was accused of raping his 19-year-old stepdaughter last year, and a warrant for his arrest on five counts of sexual assault was issued in October 2001, three months after he was paroled, but he was never apprehended.
Over the last 13 years he had been convicted three times on felony charges, including burglary and drug charges.