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Every missing child is his

They never found the body of Roy Brown's daughter, Amanda. And now whenever a child like Jessica Lunsford disappears, Roy is drawn to a scene he knows all too well.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published March 5, 2005

[Times photo: Ted McLaren]

Roy Brown, rear, listens to Mark Lunsford speak to the media in front of Lunsford’s Homosassa home on Feb. 28. “That morning I seen him on the news, I seen me,” Brown said, referring to Lunsford, whose daughter, Jessica, is missing.

	[Times file photos]
	Amanda Brown, 7, was taken from her mother’s Seffner home on Sept. 11, 1998. Willie Seth Crain is on death row for her murder.		There was no sign of forced entry and few clues in the Feb. 24 disappearance of Jessica Lunsford, 9, of Homosassa.
	Roy Brown and his wife, Sylvia, listen to a news conference Feb. 26 outside Mark Lunsford’s home in Homosassa. When Roy’s daughter, Amanda, was abducted, she was living with her mother, Kathy Hartman.

HOMOSASSA - His wife told him to turn on the news, the morning of the search's second day. She knew what Roy Brown was going to do, and he did it. He grabbed his black jacket, skipped work and drove to the scene.

Every time a child turns up missing in Florida, Roy Brown materializes. Usually, he stands outside the crime scene, his shadowy presence and tragic aura casting a pall on those clinging to hope.

This time would be different. This time he was really going to do something. He drove to Homosassa planning to help in the search for Jessica Lunsford, the 9-year-old girl whose disappearance had stolen the nation's attention.

He steeled himself for this moment during the long trip from his Tampa home. "Time to move on with my life," he told himself. Six years, he thought, was an awful long time to be on the sidelines.

When Brown arrived at Faith Baptist Church in Homosassa, he walked up to the woman signing up volunteers to look for Jessica. He signed his name and walked outside. Gray clouds blanketed the sky. Doubt crept back in.

"I can't do this," Brown said. "What if I find her?" What if he found her dead, he meant.

He told the woman he could not volunteer. He drove two blocks to the home of the missing child instead. As with Carlie Brucia and Zachary Bernhardt and - of course, Amanda Brown - Roy Brown just stood there. He couldn't help search. But he couldn't leave either.

His wife later went out with volunteers to look for the girl. He stood with the media and the others who can only watch and wait. He asked to speak to Mark Lunsford, Jessica's father. A deputy and a victim's advocate said they'd try. No one got back to him for six hours.

"And I stood there all day and all night," Brown said.

Mark Lunsford reported his daughter, Jessica Marie Lunsford, missing from her bed sometime before 6 a.m. on Feb. 24. Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy doesn't think she ran away. But he can't call it an abduction. There was no sign of forced entry. There are few clues.

Within a couple of days, the nation was on alert and a crowd had overrun Jessica's small Homosassa neighborhood. On one side of the yellow police tape, detectives and more than 100 state, local and federal authorities worked from a command center across from the missing girl's mobile home.

On the other side of the police tape, where 11 television-truck satellite dishes stood like plates in a dish rack and reporters hunted sound bites in packs, was Roy Brown. Ever since his daughter, Amanda, was abducted and murdered when she was 7 in 1998, he has tried to talk to the grieving parents of missing children in person. He wants to remind the media that his daughter's body is still missing. When the authorities prosecuted her killer, all they had to go on was a little blood.

Every missing child might as well be his daughter.

Showing up at these scenes "helps him keep his sanity," said his wife, Sylvia. "I'd worry if he didn't."

"I want to be out here when they say they found her," Roy Brown said of Jessica.

"I've been around people who've found their kids. It leads me to believe there's a chance Amanda will come home."

Thomas Frantz, an associate professor at the University of Buffalo and an expert on bereavement counseling, said that thinking is not unusual for people who cannot bury their dead children.

"You got a question there that's not answered," he said. "Where is her body? The chances of finding her are remote. But that's going to take over your life. And the only way you can get past that is to stop asking the question."

Roy Brown is desperate for an answer, he acknowledges. He is not ready to stop looking for Amanda. He often walks the beaches wishing for more hurricanes, hoping they would pummel the waters into giving up her body, which is thought to be there.

Roy Brown, 53, has receding brown hair tied in a ponytail. He has sunken blue eyes hidden by glasses and a beard. He wears a faded button that bears a picture of Amanda's toothy smile. It says: "Missing since 9-11-98. Amanda Brown." It's his Sept. 11.

His tennis shoes are caked in dust and grease. Paint covers his cuticles. He shuts down his auto body shop when he learns a child is missing. His wife, who works for a pregnancy help program sponsored by Hillsborough County, makes enough money to allow Brown to do this.

She's the one who volunteers to search when children go missing. He's the one who can only stand at the scenes.

John Walsh hosts America's Most Wanted, which filmed a segment on Jessica. Walsh's grief over the abduction and murder of his son, Adam, has given him purpose. Brown, meanwhile, is still searching for direction.

"I don't know what it is," he said. "I can't stay away."

He can't help but imagine the worst. He does not see Jessica, lost in the woods, when he looks out into the trees that surround Jessica's home in semirural Homosassa.

"I see a sexual predator somewhere out here," Brown said. He wishes he could yank the roofs off the neighborhood's mobile homes. "I just think she's being held in one of these trailers."

He lurks near the deputies guarding the restricted areas of Sonata Avenue, where Jessica's mobile home and yard remain protected because they may hold clues. He sidles up to reporters and listens to the rumors and gossip. Like them, he haunts those participating in the search as they walk from restricted areas. He seeks their attention like a sports fan standing outside a stadium. Some, such as Al Danna, a rangy Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent in a blue windbreaker, stop for Roy Brown. Danna investigates crimes against children.

He remembers Amanda's case.

Willie Seth Crain, 58, is on death row for the abduction and murder. Amanda was taken from her mother's Seffner home. Roy Brown didn't live with the girl's mother, Kathy Hartman. Investigators found the girl's blood on Crain's boxer shorts and toilet seat.

They think he dumped Amanda's body in Old Tampa Bay, where Crain, a crabber, fished. Last week, as Roy Brown watched ATVs and a helicopter buzz around Homosassa looking for Jessica, he recalled how divers and boaters scoured the bay just north of the Courtney Campbell Parkway, where he camped out for weeks.

He remembers the little things people did for him. A man gave him a chair to sit in. A company bought him a camper to stay in. Deputies bought him all the Camels he could smoke. A woman in a Mercedes gave him a blank check. People pulled the back of his shirt to see what size fit him. Reporters clung to him. Then, the TV crews deserted him.

"The worst for me was when the media left," he said. "They told me the search was over, and I was the last to believe it."

In Jessica's case, he feared rain would make authorities call off the search. He thought it would wash away the media and leave Mark Lunsford all alone.

"Once all these people leave," Brown said, "his whole world is going to crash."

For now, generators from the TV trucks provided a constant buzz that blanketed the area the way a vacuum cleaner lets an infant know that someone's there; someone's on the job.

Until the search is called off, Brown said, he will stay. He feels better staying. Bad days, he said, come when there's a missing child case that's too far for him to get to.

The first night Brown drove up, he stayed late. He talked to Channels 8 through 10. He spoke to neighborhood hunters dressed in camouflage. They also seem drawn to the scene. He talked to Jamie Gamble, a 20-year-old from Homosassa, who was also pulled like a magnet.

"When are you guys going home?" she asked Brown.

"Whenever we get the urge, I guess." He wasn't leaving without talking to Mark Lunsford.

"I can't believe they won't let me past that yellow tape," he said. "I believe I'm a victim's advocate. I don't have the paperwork, but I do the same."

He was allowed to go to the home of Carlie Brucia, the 11-year-old Sarasota girl abducted and killed last year. Brown said he still talks to her mother, as he does to many others like him.

Those affected by child abduction, he said, are his best friends.

Two nights after Jessica went missing, Lunsford finally came past the yellow tape to do an interview with victims' rights advocate Nancy Grace on CNN. She also interviewed Roy Brown six years ago.

As Lunsford put an earpiece in, Brown lunged for a handshake. He told Jessica's dad that he knew how he felt.

He told him he would be there, literally just outside his door, should Lunsford need him. In Lunsford's eyes, Brown saw the reason he stands there.

"Me," Brown said. "Six years ago."

- Justin George can be reached at 352 860-7309 or jgeorge@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 4, 2005, 09:25:03]