Logan Lynn Tucker, 6, Missing since 2002, Mother Charged With First Degree Murder- OK

[PonderingThings]

http://www.doenetwork.us/nampn/cases/tucker_logan.html
PHOTOS AT LINK


Logan Lynn Tucker

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

# Missing Since: June 23, 2002 from Woodward, Oklahoma
# Classification: Endangered Missing
# Date Of Birth: April 10, 1996
# Age: 6
# Height: 3'6"
# Weight: 42 lbs.
# Hair Color: Blond
# Eye Color: Blue
# Race: White
# Gender: Male

Details of Disappearance
During June 2002, Tucker was living with his mother, Katherine Rutan, his younger brother, and a roommate. The exact date of Tucker's disappearance is unknown, but on June 23rd, Rutan told her roommate and her friends that the Department of Human Services had removed him from the home. Human Services had taken the child before when his mother threatened him, so no one questioned Rutan's story.
Tucker's grandparents reported his disappearance on July 7, after trying to contact Tucker and getting evasive answers from his mother as to his whereabouts. When the police went to question Rutan, she said Tucker went to stay with an uncle in West Virginia. The uncle, however, does not live in West Virginia and claims he had not seen Tucker in over a year. Tucker's uncle has cooperated with police and is not considered a suspect in his nephew's disappearance. Rutan has hired a lawyer and refused a polygraph test. Tucker's case remains unsolved.

[PonderingThings]

http://www.channeloklahoma.com/news/7404913/detail.html
PHOTO OF MOTHER, and VIDEO AT LINK

Woodward Mother Charged With First-Degree Murder

POSTED: 12:17 pm CST February 24, 2006
UPDATED: 1:52 pm CST February 24, 2006

WOODWARD, Okla. -- Woodward police have arrested the mother of a young boy missing since June 2002 and have charged her with first-degree murder.

Katherine Pollard was arrested 3 1/2 years after 6-year-old Logan Tucker disappeared.

A massive air and land search failed to turn up any sign of the boy and, until now, no arrests had been made in connection with his disappearance.

Authorities have pointed to inconsistencies in Pollard's statements during the course of their investigation. Pollard was also jailed recently in Missouri for writing bad checks.

In an interview with Eyewitness News 5 in July 2002, Pollard said she was cooperating in the investigation.

"I do feel like a suspect, but I've tried to help anyway I could," Pollard said.

But Woodward County Sheriff Les Morton on Friday confirmed to Eyewitness News 5 that Pollard has indeed been charged.

"I think we've got a good case based on the evidence and things that we have," Morton said.

Pollard has claimed that she gave her son to a relative for care, but that relative has denied ever seeing the child.

Volunteers joined deputies and officers to search the area of Fort Supply Lake for several days following Logan's disappearance. The search failed to turn up any signs of the boy. Several tips on the case also failed to pan out.

[PrayersForMaura]

Grandmother Of A Missing Oklahoma Boy Speaks Out About Why She Thinks Her Daughter Is Responsible

The mother of a murder suspect says she's certain her daughter is guilty. The daughter is accused of a killing her own 6 year old boy.

News on 6 reporter Emory Bryan says this is a complicated case. The suspect's mother is the victim's grandmother. She's having to deal with the loss of a grandson and the trial that's coming for her daughter, Katherine Rutan.

Connie Henson lives in Tulsa. She's the grandmother. Her grandson - 6 year old Logan Tucker has been missing for four years.

Authorities believe Katherine Rutan killed him, and they arrested her last Friday. Henson has believed all along that her daughter killed Logan and that she didn't want her other child either. "She would call my husband and me all the time and tell me to come get the boys, she was about to kill them. Everytime she broke up with a man, she wanted us to take the boys."

More: http://www.kotv.com/main/home/storie...age=1&id=99648

[cathieq]

Everytime she broke up with a man, she wanted us to take the boys."
So she continually threatened to kill the boys and still had custody of them? How so? What went wrong? Grandmom, from what I've read of her, surely reported her daughter so why did no one act on it? Did they even check the woman out? Our system of checks and balances is so terribly screwed up....

[Mygirlsadie]

I am so sick of people..

[SadieJane]

New search for this poor kid. A lead came in to police that he was left in a landfill. The person the tip came from apparently passed a polygraph. I hope Logan gets the proper burial that he deserves and they use this evidence to lock up his mother FOREVER! I remember seeing his sweet face when this happened-- how could someone hurt such an innocent little person?

More: http://www.enidnews.com/localnews/lo...yword=topstory

[lisag]

This breaks my heart. How on earth can a parent do this to their own child... I will never be able to understad. I hope this POS spends the rest of her life rotting away.

[SewingDeb]

The trial is in progress.

Witnesses refute suspect's story on boy's whereabouts

ALVA — Testimony continued Tuesday in the first-degree murder trial of a woman accused of killing her son in 2002 and dumping his body somewhere near Woodward.

Prosecutors say Katherine Rutan killed 6-year-old Logan Lynn Tucker sometime in June of 2002 while she and her two sons were living in Woodward.

Despite a series of searches of the surrounding area and the local dump, Logan's body has never been found, yet prosecutors believe they have enough circumstantial evidence to convict Rutan of his murder.

much more at this link:


http://newsok.com/article/3112717/1188362525

[SewingDeb]

Testimony: Mother Emotionless About Son's Disappearance

http://kotv.com/news/local/story/?id=134787

[SewingDeb]

Interviews of little brother shown at murder trial

Big Snip

Jurors hear DHS workers' testimony
The jury also heard testimony from two state Department of Human Services workers who say in 2002 Justin directed them to several rural locations around Woodward where he said his mother took him and Logan about the time of Logan's disappearance.
"I asked why this place, and Justin answered that this was the place where they stopped to dig flowers,” Linda Semmel said.

"He said, ‘This is where my mom went through the fence to the grassy area.'”

Semmel testified that they also drove by Rutan's former boyfriend's house in Fort Supply, where Justin said his mom got a shovel and plastic, as well as another location where DHS worker Christie Castor testified that as they stopped the car, Justin became agitated.

FBI Special Agent Ron Parrish testified during one interview Parrish asked why Justin's mother needed plastic and a shovel, to which the boy replied, "to bury Logan.”

Parrish also testified that on the day Justin said his mother took Logan away, his skin was "white — whiter than all of us.”

http://newsok.com/article/3113433/1188411385




Your ThoughtsMore Stories By By Chad Love

[SewingDeb]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/artic..._1__ALVAT62814

In testimony last week, jurors were told Rutan once said she wished she could find a way to kill her children and get away with it. And a document prepared by Rutan's father says two months before Logan disappeared he asked if he and his younger brother could live with the grandparents in Florida.

Prosecutors also presented photos they say show Rutan taking part in a topless contest just days after Logan disappeared.

[SewingDeb]

Brother debunks Pollard story

http://www.woodwardnews.net/local/lo...240094328.html

Parrish said during the interview Pollard told him that she had, in fact, had asked Marquardt take her son, but did not know why her brother had not returned him as she said he was supposed to on July 13,14, or 15.

“She was saying that she expected him to be returned, she had no idea why he wasn’t returned,” he said.

Parrish testified that Pollard told him about two phone calls she claimed Marquardt made to her on June 21 and 22, saying he was coming to Oklahoma to visit their mother, Connie Henson. He said Pollard claimed Marquardt agreed to take Tucker and then picked him up on June 23.

and

But Pollard maintained Marquardt had taken Tucker. She even told Parrish about a message she received on her answering machine which she claimed was from her brother.

Yet, when it became public that Tucker was missing in mid-July 2002, a man named Don Hackley came forward telling the police that Pollard approached him on July 8 and asked him to make a phone call and leave a message claiming to be Marquardt and saying that Tucker was okay.

A copy of that message was played in court Monday and jurors were able to hear Hackley stumble over the message and even hear a pause where it seems someone in the background might be telling him what to say. Hackley testified that it was Pollard in the background telling him what exactly to say.

A number of law enforcement officials testified that Pollard tried to pass the message off to them as proof that her brother did have Tucker.

~much more at link~


http://www.woodwardnews.net/local/lo...240094328.html

[SewingDeb]

Lots of links here but they require registration to read
:
http://newsok.com/keysearch/?er=1&CA...ATEGORY=PERSON

[SewingDeb]

While cross examining Ron Cathcart, Pollard’s adoptive father, Defense Attorney Larry T. Jordan asked about Pollard’s childhood.

Cathcart testified that she was a loving child and especially loved animals. He recounted one instance when the young “Kathy” found a nest of mice, which he would have normally killed, “but she protected them.”

Still, there were times that Cathcart and his wife appeared to be concerned that Pollard, 32, would hurt her sons, especially her oldest son Logan Tucker, who she is charged with killing.

Cathcart said he and his wife called the Department of Human Services in Woodward 18 times on July 1, 2002, and spoke with a worker there named Regenia Ives because they were concerned about Tucker’s location after hearing various stories from their daughter as to the six-year-old’s whereabouts.

“We were mainly concerned that he was not where she said he was,” he said.

And while Cathcart testified that he could not recall telling Ives about their fears that Pollard would hurt Tucker, Ives said she did.

“He just kept saying over and over that he felt Miss Rutan would hurt Logan,” she said.

Kathy Reilly Link, who came to know Pollard, then Rutan, in 2002 through a neighbor who was friends with Pollard’s boyfriend Michael Pettey, testified that Pollard admitted that her parents were afraid she would hurt Logan.

Link said Pollard admitted this on July 6, 2002 when she came to Link’s home trying to find someone to call the Cathcarts and tell them Tucker was okay.

In response to Pollard’s request, Link said she told Pollard “it would be hard to do. . . probably couldn’t find anybody.”

But that did not keep Pollard from trying. Two other witnesses testified that Pollard also approached them about phoning her parents to tell them Tucker was okay. Pollard told them each a slightly different story about where the boy really was.

much more at link:
http://www.woodwardnews.net/local/lo...237220917.html

[SewingDeb]

Witnesses offer dramatic testimony in murder trial

ALVA – From pushing her son away when he asked for hugs to trying to have him arrested, many of the 16 witnesses who testified in the first degree murder trial against Katherine Rutan Pollard Thursday commented about how she rarely, if ever, showed him any motherly affection.

Barely choking back her emotion, Faye Randell, who lived next door to the defendant and her children in Nowata, Okla., in the fall of 2001, described Logan Tucker as “a very love-starved child.”

“He would come up to Katie and say, ‘Mom, I love you,’ and he just wanted her to say it back,” she said, “... [but] she would put her hand toward him and say ‘go play.’”

http://www.woodwardnews.net/local/lo...236012640.html

[SewingDeb]

From the link I posted above:
In a frantic call to the Tulsa Police Department on April 27, 2002, Pollard herself admitted a desire to hurt her children, specifically Tucker.

Tulsa Officer Jamie Wofford said that she told him that Tucker “made her so mad that she wanted to hit him as hard as she could.”

He said Tucker and his younger brother Justin Daggett were then taken into protective custody, but were returned to Pollard within a few days.

and

Christi Lennington Vaughn, the oldest daughter of Melody Lennington, testified that after Tucker’s disappearance on June 23, 2002, she spoke with Pollard, who although claiming Tucker had been taken away by DHS workers, also admitted she felt relieved he was gone.

“She said that it felt like the stress had just melted,” Vaughn said.

[SewingDeb]

From the opening statement given earlier this week:


Ross said part of the answer to Logan's fate rests in a bucket recovered by police at the Woodward home where Rutan was staying at the time of her son's disappearance.

"Inside the bucket was a wad of tape," Ross said. "And on the tape was blood and hair. DNA tests would later determine that blood and hair was Logan Tucker's."

Ross also promised to deliver testimony from FBI agent Ron Parrish, who interviewed Logan's younger brother, Justin Daggett, in the aftermath of his brother's disappearance. Daggett, now 9, told Parrish about the last day he saw his brother.

"Essentially, this is what Justin said: On that morning, Logan was sick," Ross summarized. "His mother had taped his mouth and eyes. He couldn't walk so his mother carried him from the house to the car. She placed him in the backseat. Logan didn't talk. ...

"They then went into the country. He saw his mother carry Logan over a fence with a shovel in hand. She took him into a field, and buried Logan. When she came back, Logan wasn't with her."

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher...99809&start=14

[SewingDeb]

Witnesses say woman had varying accounts of boy's whereabouts

http://www.kjrh.com/news/state/story...f-7be3a04f26de

[SeriouslySearching]

I was just searching the UIDs for Logan then this thread popped up. I search for Logan a lot on different sites...just in case.

It is such a tragic and horrible case. From everything I have read, this mother is responsible...but with the trial ongoing, we will soon find out what more there is to know about her actions surrounding Logan's disappearance.

I don't recall where the article is...but in one it stated that Logan's brother was asked what his mom needed the shovel for (or something to that effect) and he said to bury Logan. If he did say this...it will come out in the trial or on the tape, too.

[SewingDeb]

I think it has already come out at trial. It was in one of the links I posted.

I think she's toast just from the testimony that has come up already.

[SeriouslySearching]

I agree. It is so sad no one can find Logan tho and she isn't telling. It is the reason I keep looking.

[jantel74]

This is so very sad. I do wonder why the grandparents didn't take the boys since "mom" kept asking them too. Of course, it's not their fault that this happened but still. They called DHS a number of times so they were concerned about the children. Poor Logan and his brother. I can't even imagine what either of them went through. I hope that Logan can be found and given a proper burial.

[missacorah]

For Justin to have the memory of Mummy going to bury Logan, thats just heart wrenching.

[SeriouslySearching]

OKlahoma's DHS system is like every other system in this nation designed to protect children...they are broken and beyond repair.

First and foremost, Department of Human Services should be placed under the umbrella of LE, IMO. Instead of having to go through LE...they should be a part of it to cut out the time wasted.

Second, they need to ACT on complaints immediately. A child should be taken out of the home as soon as a complaint can be verified. Again, LE can get this done in a timely manner. Judges need to be aware of the dangers facing children in abusive situations and strive not to return a child into that environment.

Third, this child would still be alive today if someone of authority had listened to the Grandparents or others. It is disgusting how many of these children fall through the bureaucratic cracks to their deaths. There have been several in Oklahoma. (ie. Logan, Kelsey, etc.) It is sickening.

Our DHS isn't able to handle the load and complain constantly of not having enough staff. They need to stop whining while kids are dying and revamp the darn system!!

[iNTERESTEDWOMAN]

Originally Posted by missacorah

For Justin to have the memory of Mummy going to bury Logan, thats just heart wrenching.

I just saw this thread for the first time this morning, and when I read that part about his poor brother, I broke down and cried...the waterworks came when it was reported that when Logan would tell his mother he loved her, she would send him out to play...I mean, what a cold hearted snake. Does she know how lucky she was to have had a child who COULD say I love you? I hate her.