A Rare Gift for Christmas

My six-year-old daughter, Mandy, and I were doing some last-minute Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. She had been well behaved all day as we gal-palled around the mall. I just had one last stop to make before leaving. I wanted to check a department store for a shirt for my mom.

I only looked away long enough to compare two articles of clothing. That’s all the time it took for her to disappear. I knew better. I knew how she was, just as all kids are. The ornate tree, the twinkling lights, a toy train delivering presents around the bottom of the tree, pictures of Santa, toy displays, racks full of candy; there’s a lot to attract a child’s attention.

At the same time, though, you expect your child to let go of you and explore at a reasonable distance. It’s part of growing up. So, when I turned around and she wasn’t there, I didn’t immediately panic. It wasn’t unlike her to wander off. I called for her calmly. I searched the nearby racks because she liked to hide and make me worry. I switched to a more authoritative tone that usually brought her out of hiding. When it didn’t, my voice cracked as it shot up several octaves when I began to panic. My voice grew louder as terror seized me. Other shoppers became concerned, watching me, whispering. An older gentleman offered to go find the store manager. We had the store manager call Mandy on the PA. I waited anxiously at the customer service desk biting my nails, waiting for her to come running up like it was no big deal. She never came.

We contacted mall security who called the police. The mall was shut down and searched. A detective by the name of Sam Renfroe kept asking me questions. I answered his questions, but it was hard to concentrate. I kept looking over his shoulder, past him. I wanted to be looking for my child. My heart sank when an officer walked up with her doll in his hand. He found it by one of the rear exits, one of those exits only mall employees are supposed to use.

At that point, the detective concluded that we were dealing with an abduction. Horrible, uncontrollable thoughts raced through my mind: I failed her as a parent. She must be so scared. Is he being mean to her? Is he abusing her? Does he intend on sexually abusing her? Selling her? Is he some kind of psycho killer who will take pleasure in torturing her? I hadn’t realized it, but I was saying those things out loud after I nearly collapsed. Detective Renfroe had caught me and was holding me steady. All he would say was, “Ma’am, we’ll do everything we can to find your daughter.”

The police issued an amber alert and set a perimeter to begin searching the surrounding neighborhoods. The detective told me that the best thing for me to do was to go home and wait by the phone. I couldn’t see it being a ransom case, personally. I’m a software engineer. I do better than most but am by no means rich. But as the detective explained, rich looks different depending on whose eyes you are looking through. Debt can sometimes make people desperate, and desperate people do dumb things. In all truth, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to head that investigation. I wanted to know what was going on at all times and be in full control of what was being done. But deep down inside, I knew that wasn’t what was best for Mandy.

The police chief made an appearance to handle the mob of news crews outside the mall, thank goodness. Their questions were overwhelming, pressing and unsympathetic. I made a statement. I offered one hundred thousand dollars for the safe return of my daughter, most of what I had in savings. Then the chief insisted that an officer take me home. I’m glad he did. My head was on a swivel trying to look into every car, at every child, and everywhere else I could see. I surely would have wrecked on the way home.

When I got home and inside, that’s when it really hit me. I let loose and cried at the sight of her little snow boots sitting by the door. There was nothing more I could do, and her absence was unmistakably felt. I poured myself some wine, but I didn’t feel like eating, so I took my cell phone to the couch to wait for a call, any call.

Before I got to the couch, I noticed it. On a square, glass coffee table, sitting like a centerpiece, was a present. It was wrapped in black with a red ribbon tied in a bow. It had a foreboding look about it. It didn’t say who it was from, but someone had obviously been in my house. The only two people who had keys and access codes were my mother and best friend. I found their choice of wrapping unbecoming, and the lack of a tag unusual. But I wiped my eyes and opened the package.

Inside was one of those old tape recorders, the rectangle ones with the speaker, cassette deck, and function buttons on the end. A tape was inside, so I pressed play. There were some distorted whispers at first, then I heard a sniffle and Mandy say, “Mommy, he’s hurting me,” through deep sobs.

I became frantic at the sound of her voice. I kept asking, “Who baby, who’s hurting you,” as if she could hear me.

Then a man’s voice I didn’t recognize said, “Merry Christmas, bitch. We’ll be in touch.”

Why did he call me a bitch? Because he knew me, and that was his opinion of me.

I called Detective Renfroe right away. He came over immediately with a crew to tap the phones. The detective stayed with me that night. I offered him the guestroom, but he preferred the couch. I couldn’t sleep, so I was up all night, playing on my phone, waiting for it to ring. It wasn’t until ten in the morning that the kidnapper called.

“A hundred thousand dollars? Do you think you can buy your way out of this? You killed my kid! Now I’m going to kill yours!”

He hung up and I started screaming. You know how someone jumps out when you’re not expecting it and scares you? That was how his words hit me but ten times over. Detective Renfroe grabbed me and lowered me to the floor. “Shh, shh, she’s not dead yet. She’s not dead yet. Help me find her, Kate. Help me find her. Who did you kill? Who did you kill?”

I was trying to calm down, but my breathing was so quick I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The detective had to help me calm my breathing before I could even begin to answer him.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” I told him between gasps of air. “He has the wrong person!”

I watched the detective's eyes widen as he slumped down on the floor, lost in thought. “Are you sure? I mean, was there ever an instance where someone might have thought you were responsible for the death of the child.”

I thought for a moment, then it hit me. “Jeffry Clark! It’s Clark,” I began to shout, excitedly. “He t-boned me at an intersection. He claimed I was responsible for the accident, but it was ruled that he ran a red light. It was one of those ‘I think I can make it’ situations gone wrong. His daughter died in the accident. Jeffry Clark has my baby!”

Detective Renfroe got on the radio and put out an APB and a request for Clark’s address. We got into the detective’s car and started driving. When we got to Clark’s home, he was gone. Police were ransacking it anyway. Detective Renfroe had me wait in the car while he went to talk to the officer in charge. I saw him go in for a few minutes and come back out. When he got back into the car, he told me that Clark had been surveilling me for a long time. They found photographs and journals inside. He told me he knew where Clark was taking Mandy. Lights lit up and sirens blared as we sped away.

The detective turned down what looked like an ATV trail in the woods about fifteen miles from Clark’s house, out in the country. There was a house there, not much of one though. It looked more like a clubhouse house for hunting or something. We went shooting past that, the undercarriage of Renfroe’s sedan bottoming out on every bump. The trees opened up onto what looked like a frozen hard mudding pit. In the distance, an old truck rammed a small car, pushing it along until it rolled over. The truck whipped around, gained speed and hit the little car again, straight on. Police cruisers sped past us. They started ramming the truck, forcing it away from the car, and a chase through the field was on. 

Renfroe and I pulled up next to the little car. I was hysterically running up to the car. I knew Mandy had to be in there. When I looked through the shattered window, I saw that the entire interior of the car had been removed. She had been knocked around in there unrestrained. She was unconscious and bleeding. Renfroe used his gun to knock away shards of glass that were stuck in the window frame and crawled in. I was holding my breath, hoping she was still alive. He said she was still breathing but didn’t want to move her. He climbed out of the car and radioed for fire and ambulance.

Jeffry Clark was eventually forced into a tree. He tried to flee on foot, but didn’t get far. He was arrested, charged with kidnapping and attempted murder, then was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.

Mandy is paralyzed from the waist down. It took a lot of therapy for her to get over the trauma she experienced over those two days. She has moved on now. She has adapted to life in a wheelchair and is just as happy as I am that she is still alive. Every time I look at her, flashes of that horrible day flood my mind. They make me realize how lucky I am. Children are kidnapped every day across the nation. According to the Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrown-away Children (ISMART), 2,300 children go missing in the U.S. every day*. Many of those children are never reunited with their families.

*Dinetman, Nicole, Missing Children Statistics and Resources, Just Great Lawyers, 2022, www.justgreatlawyers.com/legal-guides/missing-children-statistics