Kidnap Suspects Arrested; Man Still Missing
April 6, 2004 -- When Arkansas police went to a ramshackle backwoods cabin to talk to two men they hoped might be able to help in their search for a missing husband and wife, they were answered with gunfire. They thought they had their kidnappers.
They surrounded the isolated log cabin deep in the Ozark Mountains and tried to drive the two men out with tear gas. When that didn't work, they drove an armored vehicle into the shack.
The men were already gone. But police found bunkers, supplies of food and water and so many weapons that they called in federal authorities. Parts of the compound were hung with camouflage netting so the structures wouldn't be visible from the air, police said.
What followed was an 11-day manhunt that involved not only the Van Buren County Sheriff's Department and the Arkansas State Police, but agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI, and rattled the quiet community of Alread, the nearest town to the cabin where the two men lived.
The two suspects are finally in custody, captured after one went with the missing woman to a home in Newton County to ask for food and water and placed a call to an acquaintance in Van Buren County, asking for a ride, police said.
But despite two days of questioning the two men, along with the missing woman, Ann Throneberry, who is also under arrest, police still don't know what happened to her husband, Theodore Throneberry, who was last seen in February when he was coming home from a pipefitting job in Illinois.
"We still have not located Ted," Arkansas State Police Sgt. Dan Short said. "We're following all leads that come in. We're not discounting anything."
Ann Throneberry disappeared on March 1. Police declined to say what role she might have played in her husband's disappearance, only pointing out that she is facing charges of aiding and abetting the two fugitives, Mark Holsombach, 49, and William Frazier, 28.
Holsombach and Frazier are both facing charges of attempted capital murder, accused in the shooting of a state trooper wounded during the standoff at their cabin.
There are still no charges in the disappearance of Theodore Throneberry, and police did not answer questions about whether they had any evidence that Holsombach and Frazier were involved.
Sheriff's deputies, state police and ATF agents had spent much of the last two weeks scouring the hundreds of caves in the rugged Ozarks of north-central Arkansas. An army of law enforcement personnel scoured the region, looking for any trace of the missing couple or the fugitives.
Officials have declined to go into much detail about Holsombach and Frazier or the amount and type of weapons found in the cabin or in bunkers and caves around it, citing the ongoing investigation.
Both men have extensive arrest records, ATF spokesman Larry Scott said, but he and other law enforcement officials declined to discuss the past of either of the suspects. Scott said it was believed the two had been living there for three years with no electricity or running water.
"We're not calling them survivalists, but they did find water and food stashed up there throughout the area," Scott said.
It seems that whatever survivalist skills they might have had failed them once they went on the run. Holsombach was captured Friday along with Ann Throneberry, after they emerged from the woods and went to a home in Newton County to ask for food and water, Van Buren County Sheriff Scott Bradley said.
The residents of the house gave Holsombach and Throneberry food and water and let them make a phone call to someone in Van Buren County, Bradley said.
"I believe they stayed in the woods the whole time covering some 30 miles of the roughest country in Van Buren County and out where they were caught," Bradley said.
Police got their break when the person Holsombach called to ask for a ride declined to help and then called the authorities and told them the number the fugitive was calling from, Bradley said. The two were arrested a short distance from the home.
Frazier was captured Saturday, when a sheriff's deputy in neighboring Johnson County saw him walking along a highway.
On Saturday, police said all three were cooperating with investigators trying to determine what happened to Theodore Throneberry.
"They've all been talking, we're trying to piece it all together," Bradley said. "I can tell you everything is starting to come together, hopefully we'll have answers before too long."
The arrests brought some relief to a town on edge since the shocking end to what had started as police just going to the mountain cabin hoping to get some information from people they believed were acquainted with the missing couple.
Investigators didn't think Holsombach and Frazier were involved in the disappearance when they went to the cabin, Van Buren County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Randy Gurley said. It was only when someone in the cabin started shooting that police decided the two were suspects.
Authorities knew little about the two before the standoff. "They kept to themselves, just a few neighbors ever even saw them," Gurley said. "We didn't know much about them before this started."
But the two have made an impression on the community since the standoff. With investigators combing the woods with tracking dogs and helicopters and planes searching from the sky, schools were closed in Alread for a week, as residents worried about putting children in harm's way if there were a confrontation between the fugitives and police.
Turkey hunting season also got a delayed start. Hunters had been nervous about going into the woods with the two men still on the loose.
"I'm out turkey hunting now," Alread resident Rudy Freeman told ABCNEWS affiliate KATV. "I wasn't going to before in this area, but I'm not afraid now. I think that's how most people feel about it."