A 14-year-old was rescued after she climbed into the motor home of a sex offender after Bible study at church.
By DUANE BOURNE
Published February 6, 2004
BROOKSVILLE - The 14-year-old girl had finished Wednesday evening Bible study and walked outside Community Bible Church alone, a cordless phone in hand.
When her mother arrived a short time later at the dimly lit corner of Griffin and Powell roads to pick the girl up, she had vanished.
In the grass outside the small, white church in a rural area south of Brooksville was the church's phone, along with the girl's backpack, which contained some of her clothing.
With many apprehensive about the unsolved disappearance of an 11-year-old girl in Sarasota County on Sunday, authorities and the Spring Hill girl's family and friends feared the worst.
Another young girl had disappeared, and no one had a clue where she might have gone.
For five tense hours Wednesday night, authorities thought they were dealing with a kidnapping.
Automated telephone messages were sent to a network of residents by the Hernando County Sheriff's Office. Authorities swept the area searching for clues. Inside the church, about 85 members of the congregation prayed.
"We were just surrounding her family with prayer because there was uncertainty for a few hours," said the Rev. Carl Brown, the pastor at the church.
Then, about 1 a.m., came the news: The girl had been found. She had not been abducted. She admitted to authorities that she had willingly jumped into a motor home with a man she said she had met days earlier in her Spring Hill neighborhood. Their meeting at the church had been prearranged.
The man, a 41-year-old sexual offender, had taken her to New Port Richey, where he is accused of molesting her.
Thomas Michael Vicari, whose last known address was 14700 Little Ranch Road in northern Pasco County, was taken into custody and charged with three counts of sexual battery. He was being held Thursday without bail at the Central Pasco Detention Center in Land O'Lakes.
Authorities say Vicari gave the girl wine coolers and forced her to have sex with him inside his motor home, despite the fact that she had "had a change of heart" about 10 minutes into their trip to Pasco County and had asked to be let out.
The teen, whose name is being withheld by the Times because of the nature of the allegations, tried to stop Vicari's advances, authorities said. She relented only because she feared what might happen if she did not, a Pasco sheriff's report said.
Authorities said they had not decided Thursday whether they would charge Vicari with kidnapping.
"This girl is pretty lucky we got to her when we did," Hernando sheriff's spokesman Capt. Alan Arick said. "This guy has a pretty significant criminal history."
Given the disappearance of Carlie Brucia in Sarasota, Arick said, "I think it just heightened everyone's concerns. Just the circumstances being so close to the other abduction, it made people a little afraid and jumpy. Everything just looked suspicious."
According to a background check, Vicari became classified as a sex offender in 1992 after he was convicted of two counts each of sexual battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated battery in Pasco.
He was sentenced to 37 years in prison. Vicari was released in October 2001, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.
He was wanted in Pasco County for allegedly violating his probation and failing to register as a sex offender.
The extensive search for the teen began about 8 p.m. Wednesday, with 30 sheriff's deputies, search dogs and helicopter units.
According to Arick, the girl had finished Bible study at Community Bible Church, 5041 Griffin Road, about 30 minutes earlier.
She used the church's cordless phone to make a call near a remote stretch of rural road with a single street light at the intersection.
With very little known about where the teen was or whom she might have left with, authorities advised state and local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for a girl wearing a multicolored shirt and a long, black skirt.
Authorities received their first and best clue about 10:30 p.m. when they activated the department's new CodeRED alert, a voice messaging system that called residents in the vicinity and advised them of the disappearance.
Arick said that a woman who lives down the street from the church received the telephone message and went to her neighbor's house to see if she had received the same message. The neighbor said she had not heard the alert, but recalled seeing a cream-colored motor home, possibly with damage to the roof, blocking her driveway earlier in the evening.
The neighbor walked toward the church, where authorities had set up a command center, and told them about the motor home in front of her home.
"It took some detective work, but it all started with this woman getting the CodeRED alert and telling this other lady, who had seen the motor home," Arick said. "We thought it was pretty significant."
With that information, the teen's mother told detectives that a motor home fitting the same description had been parked at 461 Stillwater Ave. in Spring Hill, not far from the 14-year-old's home.
Investigators went to the address on Stillwater and spoke to a man who identified himself as Vicari's friend.
He told authorities that Vicari had been staying there for the past five days and led them to another friend's home at 9424 Kiowa Drive in New Port Richey about 1 a.m. Thursday.
By that time, officials in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Tallahassee office were ready to declare a statewide "Amber Alert." Then, at 1:26 a.m., Arick, Hernando Sheriff Richard Nugent and Chief Deputy Michael Hensley emerged from the church with a jubilant message: "(The girl) was found, and she is okay," Arick said.
Sheriff's deputies who had stood watch along the road began to remove the yellow police tape and left.
Arick said the girl's disappearance bore stark similarities to the 1993 kidnapping and slaying of 12-year-old Jennifer Odom, a crime that still haunts investigators. The case has generated more than 6,000 leads - all dead-ends.
"Jennifer Odom was found just down the street within a quarter-mile of here," Arick said Thursday morning, pointing to a patch of woods. "There were some similarities. They were both about the same age."
Odom's naked body was found on Feb. 25, 1993, in an abandoned orange grove about a quarter-mile north of the church. Six days earlier, Odom had stepped off a school bus in rural eastern Pasco County, waved goodbye to her friends, and had started walking 200 yards to her home.
Her classmates told authorities they saw a blue-colored pickup truck trailing behind her as she walked down the road. They lost track of her; Odom never made it home.
So, for authorities, the outcome of Wednesday night's disappearance was a relief.
"We don't take this lightly," a relieved Sheriff Nugent said Thursday morning. "We don't take any chances."
- Information from Times files was used in this report. Duane Bourne can be reached at 352 754-6114. Send e-mail to dbourne@sptimes.com
