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CNN Live Today

Two Teenagers Rescued Who Were Kidnapped at Gunpoint

Aired August 02, 2002 - 10:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: A situation we were covering live here yesterday morning, the rescue of two teenagers who were kidnapped at gunpoint. Police say the girls were just minutes away from death when they were found and brought to safety.

Our James Hattori is standing by. He is in Monterey Park, California with the latest.

James, good morning.

JAMES HATTORI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

Let's first talk about those two girls who are, obviously, uppermost of our concerns. We are told they are in relatively good condition considering the ordeal they have gone through. They were reunited with their families last night. One of them was flown back by the sheriff's department from the crime seen to their home. The other was driven back by their family. Obviously, we're not using their names or their faces because they are minors and victims of sexual assault. They are obviously still traumatized, not only from the kidnapping, but being raped. The families , at this point, have had no comments since reunion has taken place.

As for the suspect, he is 37-year-old Roy Ratliff, a convicted felon wanted on burglary and drug charges. He was also wanted on a rape charge out of Kern Country. He's a three-striker, which means he would have faced a mandatory sentence if he was convicted again. Police say he was a really bad guy, apparently with very little to lose in this situation, and they focused on him initially because of a composite sketch they obtained from talking with the two girls companions who were left tied up in the Lancaster area early Thursday morning after the kidnapping.

Police put out a bulletin that the vehicle had been taken from that crime scene, a white Bronco, then later on, yesterday morning, a neighbor of Ratliff's called the sheriff's deputies because he recognized the car that Ratliff left at the kidnapping scene, which was a car that he had taken at gunpoint from a couple in Las Vegas two weeks earlier.

Now, one other factor that plays in all this and which made all this come to a successful ending in terms of the kidnapping victims, and that is the Amber Alert, which was put out statewide, which puts the description of the vehicle and a crime on highway signs, and on radio and on television, and based on that information, there were at least two sightings. One at about 9:30 by someone on the road, saw the vehicle, then a couple hours later, a state highway worker spotted the white Bronco, phone in the license plate number that he saw, and then shortly after that, a Kern county animal control officer saw the bronco in the Kern County area, and that's when shortly afterwards, deputies moved in, and that's when they were able to rescue the two girls and kill Mr. Ratliff -- Daryn.

KAGAN:: All right, James Hattori, in Monterey Park, thank you very much. Much more on the story now. Officials are crediting California's new child abduction alert system with helping rescuers track down the teenagers. The alert went out across California within hours of the kidnapping. Assistant Sheriff Larry Waldie is part of that manhunt. And he is going to join us now. He is here to talk about the search and the rescue operation, and a lot about what went right yesterday.

Sheriff, good morning. Thanks for joining us.

ASST. SHERIFF LARRY WALDIE, L.A. COUNTY: You're welcome. Good morning to you.

KAGAN: First of all, was the department in contact with the girls today? And what's the latest on their condition?

WALDIE: No, we haven't been in contact. We flew one of the families back last night. They arrived at Foxdale, and we got them home safely and in pretty good spirits. So we have had not any contact since that time.

KAGAN: This story had been such an emotional roller coaster. First, this random abduction taking place in these early morning hours, and then the search for the girls, and then finding them, which was such a joyful moment. But then the news later that, in fact, it appears that these girls were sexually assaulted before they were found.

WALDIE: The circumstances before they were found, you asked?

KAGAN: Yes.

WALDIE: Well, basically, we tracked them, we had information from clues, from the good detective work, from Las Vegas, and then we were getting calls that came in. One informant called, where he came in and said, I know that car. We had tracked him from the scene from Quartz Hill through 14 through 178, to the last sighting from an animal control officer. Eventually a helicopter then flew into that area, saw the van where it was parked, and called Kern County Sheriff, who was en route already there, and then they confronted the vehicle.

KAGAN: A lot of credit going to this thing called the Amber Alert System. Now that we are past the drama of the moment, can you explain better what that is, how it set up and why it worked so well.

WALDIE: Well, it worked so well, because it was just instituted last Friday, and practically everything went right with it. It's a system where we can put out information via the Internet, via radio and television, to the media, the press, the public, the electronic signs on the freeways. It's almost instantaneous information regarding the suspect, the vehicle, the victims, and that puts us out to literally millions of people now looking for these people and for that van in a very, very short time.

KAGAN: And it's called Amber because it is name after a little girl I believe who was kidnapped and murdered, and it's a family who wishes things could go differently for other families.

WALDIE: That's correct. It's named after a child from Texas.

KAGAN: And is it only in California right now?

WALDIE: It is a California system. I don't know if other states have it, but Governor Davis had actually sent it out, had emergency legislation that asked us to do it, and we implemented actually, quite frankly, last Friday. We got the information late Friday, and we disseminated it immediately to all our sheriff's stations, and they were up and running almost at once.

KAGAN: That is just absolutely amazing. And then what part in how that system was working would you give credit to finding the car, the man, and most importantly, the girls.

WALDIE: A very great part. You know, we had the girls had a head start on us. He could have gone anywhere. The sightings making people aware the car was out there and we were seeking for them. I think it had a great to do with us to get to the scene before something very terrible probably would have happened.

KAGAN: And you said, in general, it worked really well. Anything that you learned in using it over the last 24 hours that you would tweak the system a little bit.?

WALDIE: We have to work out a couple of kinks in terms of getting the system. It really kind of a tri-part system. Some of the systems didn't work as effectively as they should have. We just started something, it's a statewide system, and it's really uniting us, two or three different types of systems. As for the most part, it worked extremely well. And we got two teenage girls safe and alive, I think, because of it.

KAGAN: The first round, I think you can give huge kudos to how the system worked. Sheriff Waldie, Larry Sheriff Waldie, with the L.A. County sheriff's department. Thank you for joining us today, sir. Appreciate it.

WALDIE: Thank you very much.

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