Girl missing a year without anyone reporting it Miami-Dade police grappled Wednesday with the strange tale of a 5-year-old girl who has been unaccounted for since January 2001 but who was reported missing only last week by the Florida agency that was supposed to be tracking her. Halfway across the country, Kansas City, Missouri, investigators are trying to determine if the fingerprints and palm prints of the missing Florida girl, Rilya Wilson, match the decapitated remains of a girl found there a year ago. "Everybody else thinks it's her," said Miami-Dade Police Department spokesman Lupo Jimenez. "We're not saying that. We provided fingerprints. It's certainly something we're looking at, but now it's up to them to see whether there is a match." Kansas City Police Department spokesman Sgt. Tony Sanders said officials expected results of the palm print comparison between Rilya and the child they dubbed "Precious Doe" later Wednesday. "There are some interesting coincidences -- her age, her race, her size and the fact that no one reported [Precious Doe] missing," Sanders said. "I wouldn't consider it any different than the hundreds of other leads we have received, but it's still a very good lead which we are following up on feverishly." Jimenez said police in Miami have found "no positive linkage" in the two cases. The Florida Department of Children and Families revealed Tuesday it had lost track of Rilya, who had been placed in the custody of her grandmother in 1999 after the parental rights of her mother and father were terminated. Agency records indicate the required monthly meetings with the grandmother did not take place. The case came to light last week when an agency caseworker contacted the grandmother to set up an appointment to check on the child. The grandmother told the caseworker that she had turned the child over to people she believed to be caseworkers in January 2001. The grandmother told authorities those people said they were taking the child for evaluation. They returned about a week later for the girl's clothing, saying the tests were taking longer than expected. The girl was not seen again. The grandmother said she repeatedly called the state to check on the child, but the agency said they have no records to confirm the calls. Miami-Dade police said the grandmother, who was not identified, is not under suspicion. "The department and I take full responsibility for what happened," said Charles Auslander, the agency's district director in Miami. Florida agency officials said Rilya's original caseworker resigned recently after being accused of falsifying documents in another case. Auslander said she was permitted to resign rather than be fired and said she had told investigators she knows nothing about what happened to Rilya. Rilya's mother had drug problems, authorities said, and was last known to be in Cleveland, Ohio. The girl's father reportedly remains in the Miami area. Jimenez said Kansas City authorities contacted Miami-Dade police after information was entered into a nationwide computer database of missing children. -- CNN Correspondent Susan Candiotti contributed to this report.
How would the people who took the girl know about the situation unless it was some kind of inside job? Somebody who knew something about the case/situation was involved in the kidnapping. I mean coming back to get her clothes?? Even if she did call often, you have to ask yourself how the grandmother wasn't more adamant to find out the location of her grandchild. All around a very wierd thing.
There was a press conference earlier where KC deputies announced that the finger and handprints from the girl they found the remains of do not match those of the Miami baby, so the search continues. Related - Florida Dept of Children & Families (DCF) is screwed up. This is not the first time they've lost track of a child when it really matters, nor is it the first time they have screwed up in related cases (such as placing children in bad homes repeatedly, failing to see numerous warning signs, and the like). For some reason, through overhauls, it seems things don't change that much.
