The Oregonian did a multi-page story on the family and how it has been coping all these years. It appeared last year, but I can't get a link to it because the Oregonian's archives are pay-per-view. It included the information about the bathroom, but, and this is my rusty memory, I think it was discounted.Mr. E said:
Here is an article I found on another web-site. BTW, sadly to say, I think the other child who survived Milligan's attack recently died in a car crash.
Convict is prime suspect in boy's disappearance Police think a notorious state pedophile picked up a Bonanza 8-year-old in '98
Oregonian - Saturday, November 13, 2004
MICHELLE ROBERTS
An Oregon man who is serving 30 years in prison for abducting, raping and slashing the throat of a 10-year-old Dallas boy in 2000 is the prime suspect in the disappearance of an 8-year-old boy who vanished in 1998 during a family Christmas tree hunt, The Oregonian has learned.
Derrick Engebretson, a Bonanza third-grader, was searching for a Christmas tree with his father and grandfather on Dec. 5, 1998, when he wandered away in the snowy mountains above Upper Klamath Lake. His disappearance led to a massive search with dogs, snowmobiles and hundreds of volunteers. He was never found.
For years, it was feared that the child had frozen to death in a snowstorm. But law enforcement officials now say they think Engebretson found his way to the roadside, where he was picked up by a man who would later become the state's most notorious pedophile, Frank J.Milligan, 36.
"He is a suspect," said Oregon State Police Detective Ken Pecyna.
Other high-ranking law enforcement officials confirm that Milligan is the lead suspect.
In July 2001, Milligan pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, sodomy and sexual abuse after he lured a 10-year-old boy at a Dallas park in 2000 into his black Honda Civic by offering the child $100 to mow his lawn.
Milligan raped and strangled the boy, slashed his throat and left him for dead. The child survived. At the time of the attack, Milligan was out on bail in a sexual assault case of an 11-year-old boy in Seaside.
Milligan surfaced as a person of interest in the Engebretson disappearance after a fellow inmate said claimed that Milligan had bragged about abducting and killing Derrick Engebretson, sources close to the case told The Oregonian.
When confronted, Milligan, who by then faced 36 years behind bars, confessed to killing murdering Engebretson and agreed to lead detectives to the place where he claimed to have buried the boy's body, law enforcement sources said.
But nothing was found, and Milligan later recanted the confession, according to police and Engebretson's family.
"He took them to the spot where he said he had buried the body, then he didn't do much to help them find it," said Lori Engebretson, Derrick's mother. "He said, 'Well, I guess I don't know where it's at. It was night, dark, and I was trying to hurry.'"
Based on evidence found at the scene, family members think believe Derrick was making a snow angel near the road and was abducted by someone who happened to be driving by. "We think it was a crime of opportunity," Lori Engebretson said.
One witness reported seeing a man struggle with a boy near the road but didn't stop because he assumed that the man and they boy were father and son, she said.
Police have never before publicly identified Milligan as a the suspect. In 2002, they announced only that they were investigating a tip that Engebretson might have been abducted by a man driving a black Honda automobile.
The man, they said, was seen near where the boy disappeared and might have been seen struggling with him, but police declined further comment about the tip or the tipster.
At the time, police also released a photo of a black Honda parked in front of a white ranch-style house. The Oregonian, however, obtained from court records in another case an original copy of that photo that includes Milligan, meaning law enforcement officials had used a computer program to erase him from the one released in connection with the search.
The Oregonian learned of Milligan's alleged involvement in the Engebretson case while researching a story about child sex abuse on the children's ward of the Oregon State Hospital in Salem. Milligan, a longtime state worker, was a psychiatric aide on the children's ward from 1994 to 1997.
A law enforcement official said police suspected that Milligan molested at least one Ward 40 child - and that he was the prime suspect in the Engebretson case.
Other law enforcement officials close to the case later confirmed Milligan's status as the main suspect in Engebretson's disappearance.
Contacted Friday, one of the lead detectives in the case said he could not comment on specifics.
Milligan "has not been charged with any crime regarding this, so it would be premature for me to say anything," Pecyna of the state police said.
"If a person ever gets charged with this, I want to make sure it gets done right," he said. "I don't want to say anything to hamper that."
Milligan, who is three years into a 36-year sentence for the cases involving the Dallas and Seaside boys, will be eligible for parole in 2037, when he is 69 years old. Fearing that Oregon inmates would harm him, Department of Corrections officials have transferred him to a prison in another state.
State police are asking anyone with information about the case to phone them at 1-800-452-7888.
