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The Kidnap Channel
August 2, 2002
by John Bloom
Is anyone besides me vaguely annoyed that the national news networks--especially CNN, MSNBC and Fox News--have increasingly become local TV stations that happen to broadcast nationally?
Murders, kidnappings, hostage situations, SWAT-team interventions, fires, even high-speed chases (do they ever bother to report what happens to those guys after they tumble end over end into the drainage ditch?)--all of this is the stuff of the "Eyewitness Metro Live at Five Report" or whatever they're calling it these days. The only difference is that you can watch it in your Budapest hotel room if you want to.
On the day of the Hebrew University massacre in Jerusalem, did we really need coast-to-coast live coverage of a Lovers Lane kidnapping case and rescue operation in Kern County, California? (And while we're on the subject, why are 90 per cent of the newsworthy "local" stories from California? Isn't there occasionally a juicy crime in, say, South Dakota?) Pretty much all you need to know about that case is that an ex-con nabbed two teenage girls and raped them, and the following day he was cornered and killed.
There's even a question in my mind as to whether the networks are being manipulated into becoming arms of law enforcement themselves--essentially being used, when convenient, to propagate messages that may or may not be entirely true in order to speed up the arrest process.
Take the case of five-year-old Samantha Runnion--kidnapped, raped, murdered and desecrated--a sensational crime that made an overnight national celebrity of Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona, to the point that he's now being touted as a political candidate.
Police news conferences are nothing new--it's a rare week when the top cop of Chicago or New York doesn't appear before the cameras to announce an arrest or update an investigation--but this particular sheriff decided to forego the usual dry factual terminology that, among other things, preserves the case for the courts. (The last thing a professional cop wants is some kind of emotional scene that a defense attorney can someday use against him during cross-examination.)
Carona didn't care about that. Sounding like Charles Bronson in the seventies, he looked into the camera and said, "Don't sleep, don't eat, because we are coming after you." Then, after they nabbed the perp, he held another press conference, celebratory in tone, in which he said, "I am 100 per cent certain that Mr. [Alejandro] Avila is the man who kidnapped and murdered Samantha Runnion" (another no-no in the cop handbook that's likely to be replayed at trial), and then he spoke again directly to the accused killer: "When I told you that we would hunt you down, wherever you were, arrest you and bring you to justice, if you thought for one minute that I was joking, that we were joking, tonight you know that we were deadly serious."
I don't recall any jokes being told. I doubt that the killer thought any jokes were being told. And aside from the content of this message--non-existent--Avila was in lockdown at the time Sheriff Carona delivered it and couldn't hear it anyway. So what was this exactly?
Theater. Pure theater. Is there some kind of Al-Qaeda-Chaser School of Public Speaking that local cops are being encouraged to attend? ("We will get you on the run, you can't hide from us," etc.) Carona went on and on, passing out kudos to the citizens who called in tips by saying, "If this were the Old West, you'd all be in the sheriff's posse."
And yet the girl was dead. Was there not a single iota of doubt, somewhere in the whole law-enforcement apparatus of Southern California, that perhaps charging down Main Street on a steed, brandishing a six-shooter and letting out war whoops, could be counter-productive in terms of the first priority-- preserving a kidnap victim's life?
Because what do we know about child killers? We know that their primary intent is sexual assault, and that the murder is an attempt to get rid of the witness. We know that they have deep shame issues, so they're likely to live secretive lives. We know that they resemble serial killers in that their psychotic obsession builds up over time. We know that they might think about the crime for weeks before actually doing it, and that their victim is likely to be a random target on the day they choose to give vent to their violence.
And we know that they resemble serial killers in another respect. Once the crime is committed--in this case, child rape-- they are prone to bouts of overwhelming guilt and depression, even rage at themselves. They kill the victim because they don't want anyone to know. They agonize over what they've done for a few days, and they vow never to do it again--and that vow triggers a subconscious process of pressure slowly building up, until they strike again.
This means you've got three chances to nail the guy:
1) After he makes the kidnap but before he rapes his victim.
2) After he rapes the victim but before he kills.
3) After he's completed both crimes.
Of the three, the third one is obviously the worst time to catch him. If you don't get him until number three, you've essentially failed. It doesn't matter whether he fries or not, because the horrendous damage is done.
But these three time frames all require different approaches to the criminal. At the first stage, you want him to be scared. You want his fear of the gas chamber to be stronger than his hormones. You want him to know that a million eyes are on him and that John Walsh is on the job. But in fact, most of the media appeals during this stage are not calculated to scare him at all. "All we want is the girl back." "We only want to talk to you." When what you should be doing is reminding him of the Lindbergh Act.
The second period, though, is the time when it's possible to reason with him. He's raped someone and now he's exhausted, guilt-ridden, scared, trying to find some way to redeem himself. He needs to be made to understand that the one way he can redeem himself is to give up the child. This is the time when, if there were some way to get him on the phone, you could possibly save a life. And perhaps there is a way to get him on the phone.
Much has been made of this California Child Safety Amber Network, which is actually modeled after a program in Texas and named after Amber Hagerman, the nine-year-old who was kidnapped while riding her bike and killed back in 1996. The idea is that, in a matter of minutes, a computer system can simultaneously alert law enforcement and all media to any kidnapping and, in the case of California, put pertinent information on 1,000 freeway message signs.
And yet all the information at this point is oriented toward apprehension--creating an "America's Most Wanted" dragnet of citizen informers. This is fine if the man has already killed. But what if he hasn't killed yet? What if he's in that vulnerable Stage Two? At this point, if he happens to see a freeway message board with his license plate number on it, he's likely to panic, flee or kill quickly.
But what if the sign offered him a way out? What if the media directed him to a public defender? What if there were some system in place to take advantage of his shame and let him know that he could give himself up in exchange for leniency on the rape and kidnapping charges, provided the victim is left alive? What if he were able to consult with the attorney anonymously, through some kind of special phone hookup? All of a sudden the accusing scared eyes of his victim--eyes he thinks of as his death sentence--become his way out. Wouldn't we rather have the little girl back?
But all of this would require more transparent information on TV, and less bluster--and we're not likely to get that if the Runnion case is any indication. For example, after the girl's body was found, Carona issued a public warning that the crime had been committed by a serial killer who had left a message for police that he was ready to kill again. He implied that the killer had positioned the body as a "calling card," telegraphing his future intentions. The psycho could be expected to strike again within 24 hours, if not caught.
It makes for good TV, but I'm not even sure this was true. Certainly what we know of Avila's movements after the time of the crime don't indicate he was planning another killing. So far I haven't heard the "100 per cent" suspect being linked to any other murders. What if the guy just threw the body down on the ground and it ended up in a weird position? The whole "body as message" theory sounds a lot like something that was made up on the spot to up the ante--get more CNN time--using the media as stooges in a cynically alarmist attempt to replace solid police work with simple panic. (The theory would be that, the more people you can scare, the more tipsters you'll have.)
In fact, Sheriff Carona almost admitted as much. He told the Los Angeles Times that "I was talking to Southern California and residents of California" through the national media "because that's where I thought he was." If that's where he thought he was, why did he need the national media?
Then there's the question of whether the national media truly has the air time to invest heavily in this new role as auxiliary sheriff's posse--and whether that's a wise use of time in the first place. Curiously, there were two other abductions the week of the Runnion case that were ignored by the networks entirely. In Conway, Arkansas, an eight-year-old girl was roused from her bed in the middle of the night by a stranger who told her her house was on fire. She was kidnapped and raped, and a suspect was arrested the next morning. And in the Bronx, two girls, aged six and eight, were approached by a man asking about their grandmother. He asked to be taken to the rooftop of their building, where he held them and assaulted them both. He hasn't been arrested, but there's no coast-to-coast coverage seeking his capture.
I'm sure the networks were aware of these crimes, and I'm sure they decided "not a national story." Why? Because the overnight Nielsens from Arkansas don't matter? Because those tight-lipped Bronx cops aren't media-savvy enough? Because a Bronx apartment building is not that telegenic? Because there were no cute snapshots of these girls available, showing their beatific smiles and that missing tooth?
Or maybe it was because they've already done five child kidnappings this year and it's time to spin the story in a new direction. Even reality series have cast replacements in the summer.
© Copyright 2002 United Press International and John Bloom