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American Morning
John Walsh Comments on Baby Jasmine Disappearance
Aired December 27, 2001 - 08:25 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, to a predicament no parent wants to face: a missing child. A mother says her toddler, Jasmine, was taken from a Chicago bus station on Christmas Eve.
Joining us now to talk about missing children cases is John Walsh, the host of the TV show, "America's Most Wanted." He joins us from Orlando, Florida -- Mr. Walsh, good to have you with us.
JOHN WALSH, "AMERICA'S MOST WANTED": Thank you.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's go -- I hate to bring back what has to be a terribly painful memory for you back in 1981 when you lost Adam. But inevitably the question comes: What goes through a parent's mind at this juncture? What can a parent do? And how can authorities help them?
WALSH: Well, certainly I have walked in this family's shoes, and I know right now they're going through hell. They're hoping and praying that their daughter is alive, and I really think she is alive. And they're going to go through a nightmare, but they have to be strong. They have to remember one thing: Who is the real victim here? Little Jasmine, a one-and-a-half-year-old little girl who is probably very, very scared, wondering why she isn't with mommy, and the parents have to be able to do every media interview they can, because the media is crucial and vital in finding missing children.
O'BRIEN: Was it your experience in 1981 that that was the case? Did the media listen? Did the authorities listen to you? Did you feel like you got that kind of satisfaction?
WALSH: No. As you probably know, I wrote a book about how little help we got, and NBC did two movies about our battle back then. Authorities had these bizarre policies of waiting 24 to 48 hours to see if the child was a runaway, and our son was only six years old. And a lot has changed since then. We didn't get much help back in 1981, but now you have the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington that handles missing child cases. The FBI gets involved in every missing child case. The Chicago police are working long and hard on this case and got involved immediately. A lot has changed, and there are a lot of resources out there that we didn't have back in 1981.
O'BRIEN: You must be fairly proud of those accomplishments -- the fact that that has changed and the response has changed. I'm curious if the problem is growing, staying the same. We don't hear as much about it as we had perhaps around the era when Adam went missing.
WALSH: Well, I think that the problem is still there. The Justice Department says there were about 4,600 -- that's four thousand six hundred -- stranger abduction attempts last year. About 300 cases have been -- remained unsolved or the children have been found murdered.
If you remember just at Thanksgiving a month ago, a five-year-old girl was kidnapped from a Wal-Mart in El Paso, and her body was found murdered. Fortunately, we caught that guy. He was a convicted sex offender, who should have never been out of jail. He was on parole for raping an eight-year-old girl. But he was in the sex offender registry because of Megan's Law. We caught that guy.
But they are still out there. We are still doing a missing child every single week on "America's Most Wanted" -- some weeks three and four. And if Jasmine is still missing by Saturday, she'll be on "America's Most Wanted."
But this is a very different case, because unlike most stranger abductions, we have a composite of a woman. And most of the people who kidnap children are men, and this happened to be a woman who kidnapped this child in this bus station.
O'BRIEN: And we're looking at that composite right now. She is described as a woman who was white, perhaps Hispanic, 20s to 30s, 120 to 150 pounds, dyed blonde hair with black roots, and blue eyes, and then a tattoo, which said "Christine." I just want to leave that up there for a moment while we continue talking.
What are the words to the wise for parents? And admittedly this, perhaps, for many parents would sound like a little bit of common sense, but nevertheless, it's worth restating here what the rules are when you're traveling with children and you have children out in public.
WALSH: Well, absolutely. I think this mom -- God bless her -- was a little too trusting. She had two small children. Her three- year-old daughter was throwing a fit, because she was so tired. And I think she trusted this woman, and this woman was very convincing, just like many kidnappers are very convincing and very disarming. And she let her guard down for a minute, and this woman got away with her child.
But again, I've got to say one thing about this kidnapping, which is very unusual. We have a composite of a suspect, and if anyone out there watching this show or anything to do with this case knows a woman who fits this description who didn't have a child just before Christmas, then they should have the guts to make that call. They can call 1-800-The-Lost, which is the National Center number. They can call 1-800-Crime-TV. We have hotline operators working those phones 24 hours a day. We don't trace the calls or tap the calls. You can remain anonymous.
But I think we have a good chance of getting this little girl back alive. And I always say to people, don't assume it couldn't happen to you. It only takes two or three minutes for your child to disappear, and that's exactly what happened in this case.
O'BRIEN: Hold them close. All right, John Walsh, father of the late Adam Walsh and host of "America's Most Wanted" -- thank you very much for being with us with those words to the wise.
WALSH: Thank you.
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