Santa Clara girl abducted & similiar abductions time/area to Anna's disappearance.

Cecil Wingo

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Fremont California
The Argus
Sept 25 1974

A 6 year old girl was kidnapped from her homeTuesday but released unharmed in a resevoir area.

Santa Clara County Capt Frank Musonic said it was believed that the abductor might have been the one who killed another small girl in the area.

Musonic said that Julie McMillan was tricked into getting into a green convertible by a man who promised to show her some rabbits. A short time later the official said , Julie was found wandering near Lexington Resevoir.

Julie was taken to the Valley Medical Center where she was reported to be in good condition.

Deputies said it was not immediately known when her kidnapper released her.

Her abductor was described as being caucasian with shoulder length hair, long sideburns and prominent teeth. Musonic said he told Julie his name was Ted.

The body of a 4 year old Sonya Johnson was found Saturday in a ravine five miles from her San Jose home. She had been reported missing September 11.

Deputy Medical Examiner Richard Mason said Sonya died from a blow to the head and could very well have been smothered or strangled.

Musonic said the description of Julies abductor might lead to Sonya's killer.

Forty law enforcement officers were added to the 14 man team investigating Sonya's death. They will also work on the case involving Julie.


Additional data to follow this post.
 
Half Moon Bay-----Santa Clara

Estimated Time: 46 minutes Estimated Distance: 38.08 miles
 
Was Julie McMillans abductor ever identified?
 
This makes three known abductions of young girls in the greater San Jose area in 1974:

Cynthia Sumpter - April 1974 / San Jose (missing)
Sonya Johnson - September 1974 / San Jose (murdered)
Julie McMillan - September 1974 / Fremont (released)

Ther may be more possibly related cases that we have not found yet. If anybody has access to archives of the San Jose Mercury News or any other local South Bay newspaper, this may very well be a productive area of research.

Thanks, Cecil Wingo, for finding this. I was unaware of these two cases.
 
There is also the case of 4 year-old Michelle Boober, kidnapped from her yard in Long Beach on June 17th of 1974. She was found on June 22nd with her kidnapper, 45 year-old William Clifford Knapp, in a San Diego boarding house. Knapp had been released from prison the day before Michelle's kidnapping after serving a 90-day sentence for child molestation.
San Diego police, aware of the missing girl, were suspicious of Knapp being in the boarding house with a young girl and arrested him.
Some distance from San Jose, but the circumstances are similar.
 
There is also the case of 4 year-old Michelle Booher, kidnapped from her yard in Long Beach on June 17th of 1974. She was found on June 22nd with her kidnapper, 45 year-old William Clifford Knapp, in a San Diego boarding house. Knapp had been released from prison the day before Michelle's kidnapping after serving a 90-day sentence for child molestation. San Diego police, aware of the missing girl, were suspicious of Knapp being in the boarding house with a young girl and arrested him. Some distance from San Jose, but the circumstances are similar.

I corrected the name of the victim in the above quote.

We have been looking at Knapp/Sharp. See http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56254&page=3, starting at post #111. SherlockJr and I had a conversation with the mother of another girl who Knapp abducted, a girl that he held for a period of time but was placed into the foster system when Knapp was arrested (LE thought that she was Knapp's daughter). The mother was able to provide us with some additional information about him, but we have yet to be able to place him in the Bay Area in January 1973. He did, however, live in the Bay area later in his life.
 
This makes three known abductions of young girls in the greater San Jose area in 1974:

Cynthia Sumpter - April 1974 / San Jose (missing)
Sonya Johnson - September 1974 / San Jose (murdered)
Julie McMillan - September 1974 / Fremont (released)...

One thought: Since Sumpter is missing and is probably assumed to be dead and Johnson's body was found, it seems odd that if the same perp was involved that he would have released McMillan. I would assume that once a perp starts killing his victims, it would be odd for him to change M.O. in a way that would increase his chances of capture. This points toward two different perps between Sumpter/Johnson and McMillan. IMHO
 
I have Karen Huber in my files, the kidnapper listed under his real name (or alias?) Jack Clifton Sharp, aka Cecil Russell. Since she was returned safe, I didn't delve any farther into the case.
Thanks for the typo correction.
 
Unfortunately, I have in my files, yet unfound for you, much information on another matter of abduction and killing in that area. Witnessed by a young girl, the killer fully identified by the girl, he was freed by some quirk of prevailing law, likely the failure to place full confidence in the young girl witness, decedent was found though.

I apologize for starting this as I cannot yet find what I intended to produce. A very good starting point for analysis of facts, comparison of geographics.

I will continue to look and hope you do not feel too badly.
 
Unfortunately, I have in my files, yet unfound for you, much information on another matter of abduction and killing in that area. Witnessed by a young girl, the killer fully identified by the girl, he was freed by some quirk of prevailing law, likely the failure to place full confidence in the young girl witness, decedent was found though.

I apologize for starting this as I cannot yet find what I intended to produce. A very good starting point for analysis of facts, comparison of geographics.

I will continue to look and hope you do not feel too badly.


No worries. Thank you for adding this info. Everything regarding the search for Anna is much appreciated! :blowkiss:
 
Unfortunately, I have in my files, yet unfound for you, much information on another matter of abduction and killing in that area. Witnessed by a young girl, the killer fully identified by the girl, he was freed by some quirk of prevailing law, likely the failure to place full confidence in the young girl witness, decedent was found though.

I apologize for starting this as I cannot yet find what I intended to produce. A very good starting point for analysis of facts, comparison of geographics.

I will continue to look and hope you do not feel too badly.

I just recalled the case that you are speaking of. This was one of the first cases involving "recovered memories" through hypnosis. This occured in the same general area and timeframe as Anna's disappearance. The family was from Foster City which is about 20 miles due west on Hwy 92 from Half Moon Bay. The father alledgedly dumped the body a friend of his daughter just off of Hwy 92 between Foster City and Half Moon Bay. (I cannot recall if a body was ever recovered there.)

The case was dismissed in a landmark ruling of the inadmissibility of "recovered memories". Does anyone remember the names of those involved?
 
July 2, 1996
Web posted at: 10:00 p.m. EDT
REDWOOD CITY, California (CNN) -- After spending the last six years in prison for the murder of an 8-year-old, George Franklin is expected to walk free Wednesday after new revelations overturned his conviction.
Franklin's conviction in the 1969 slaying of his daughter's friend -- the first conviction involving so-called recovered memory -- was overturned last year, and prosecutors had planned to retry him.
But the disclosure that his daughter may have lied about not being hypnotized before the 1990 trial has virtually ruled out the use of her testimony, District Attorney James Fox said.
Her credibility was also undermined by recent DNA tests that cleared Franklin of a second murder that Eileen Franklin had accused him of committing. In a second case, prosecutors have too few details to begin an investigation.

"It just creates a case where we don't believe we're going to be able to meet our burden of proof," Fox said of the 1969 slaying.
Franklin's conviction was overturned by a federal judge who ruled the trial judge should not have told jurors that Franklin's silence, in the face of his daughter's rape accusation, could be considered a confession.
The court also ruled that the defense should have been allowed to show the jury newspaper articles that Franklin's lawyers claimed were the real source of the daughter's knowledge.
Daughter taps memory

Franklin's daughter, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, told the court in 1990 -- more than 20 years after the murder -- that she remembered seeing her father rape her best friend, Susan Nason, and beat her in the head with a rock.
"I remembered seeing Susan sitting there and seeing my father with the rock above his head," she said.
The case unraveled when Eileen Franklin's sister told police last month that she and her sister had been hypnotized by a therapist before the 1990 trial. If true, Eileen would have been barred from testifying, because statements provoked by hypnosis are considered too unreliable in court.
 
Something else I had found from the San Jose area... 10 year-old Kelly Hulme was attacked and murdered on her way home from school on 11/22/1973. Her nude body, her underwear wrapped around her neck, was found in the garage of an abandoned house in East San Jose. She had been sexually molested.
19 year-old Keith Lamar Robinson was booked for her murder.
That's all I have on the case.
 
Hi Shadowangel,

I googled Keith Lamar Robinson. There is an article on Newspaper Archive. I don't have a subcription to it tho. Wonder where he was in early 1973?
 
Hi Shadowangel,

I googled Keith Lamar Robinson. There is an article on Newspaper Archive. I don't have a subcription to it tho. Wonder where he was in early 1973?

That's where I originally got this info. I just did another search on him but the only articles were the day after she was discovered, and the following day (the day of the arrest).

I'll try a few other search terms.
 
I want to bring our research into this serial kidnapper into focus with his own thread. I need to pull some relevant previous posts forward so the new information makes sense.
 
The name Jack Clifton Sharp, or is he William Clifton Knapp, came up in a newspaper archive I had Tuitsweet do a look-up of. Supposedly he was arrested in Dec 1973 for auto theft and had a 5 yr old girl claiming the girl to be his daughter. The child was placed in a foster home and later turned out to be a girl missing since Nov 1973. He was arrested in summer of 1974 after abducting a 4 yr old. All this I believe occurred in LA or San Diego. However, his name shows up in San Mateo Court system in 1974. Too close to home for me! Remember our newspaper tipster who claimed to have seen Anna was with a man named "Bill" who is about the same age as this guy.


Summary: Sharp was about the same age and used the same name as an alias as the man described by our tipster.
 
The link to San Mateo County was for a change of trial venue. From an article:

"His trial on two counts of child stealing, one of
child molestation and two of car theft was moved to
Redwood City on a change of venue motion granted by
Long Beach Superior Court Judge John Arguellcs.
In granting the motion, Arguclles said pretrial
publicity in the Los Angeles area could possibly prejudice
the Sharp case."

Summary: The above mentioned "too close to home" actually is a coincidence because San Mateo County was chosen for a change of venue for his trial.
 
The first child was kidnapped on her way to school by Sharp, but I can't find anything about the second child. Any idea if either known cases were random, or did he stalked these victims first?

Evidently, he stalked the second girl prior to her abduction. He was observed watching her as she waited to be picked up by a family member after school, then abducted her one day when the family member was a little late. She was enticed into the car by an offer of candy.

Interestingly, the first girl was told by Sharp that her mother had died and that he was her father. In the couple of months that she was with him, she became completely convinced that this was true. This is why when he was arrested for car theft, she was placed into foster care - she believed that this was true so LE had no reason to suspect otherwise. This scenario matches exactly what we have suspected may have happened to Anna.

At this point, we have no reason to believe that Sharp had anything to do with Anna's abduction, but it seems prudent to explore this possibility. I remain convinced that Anna disappearance was related to the two Georges and their insurance schemes, but must remain open to other options. One encouraging note, if Sharp was involved, is that all three of his known victims are alive. He seems to have been a kidnapper and molester, but not a murderer. Again, I do not think that he was involved, but if he was, there is still reason for hope.

Summary: It appears that this guy's M.O. is to follow young girls either to or from school and then grab them. Please recall my quoting of the what Tink Thompson (the PI who investigated Anna's case early on) said: The time to snatch a child is during the brief moments that they are out of the sight and control of a responsible adult. He called this window of opportunity "the seam".
 

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