Mikelle Biggs
Detectives Domenick Kaufman, who has been the primary detective for about six years, and Jerry Gissel, who has been on the case from the beginning, still chase the occasional lead, but now are left to wait for either technological advances in forensics or the assailant’s heart to soften.
“Hopefully, the individual who did this will realize the nightmare that they’re putting this family through,” Gissel said. “I know this person has got to be aching to get this information out. I know, like I’m sure he knows, that he needs to clear up this before he leaves this life because it’s not going to be very good for him afterwards.”
When the Lindbergh Elementary School sixth-grader vanished from the street just outside her home, Mesa police heaped resources into finding her for months and the case drew national attention.
Police have followed more than 10,000 leads, rappeled down mine shafts in search of her, hypnotized witnesses, consulted with the FBI, who conducted polygraph and voice stress tests and developed a profile of the perpetrator.
At first, “Missing” fliers with her school photo saturated Mesa’s high visibility areas such as doors of convenience stores, light poles at major intersections and on car windows.
And over the years, Kaufman has chased the intermittent leads, which usually are third- or fourth-hand information from either jailbirds or ex-cons.
But even those tips have slowed to a trickle, Kaufman said.
