Sadly, there has been two children abducted/murdered at one time in the past so while still rare is not unheard of.
In 1997 Washington State did an in depth study involving 600 children who had been abducted and murdered. Then in 2006 they added an additional 175 cases. All of these cases were solved with the perpetrators known.
That collectively is 775 children who were abducted and murdered. Now these are just cases that have been solved. There are thousands of unsolved cases concerning missing young teens who have never been found dead or alive. I think there are way more children murdered than we can even imagine and many of them murdered by strangers IMO. Cases where there is no link between the victim/s and suspect are the hardest cases to solve. Imo, these two teens were murdered by someone neither of them
The study is very interesting. When they went back in 2006 to add the additional 175 child abduction/murder cases they found some changes from the 1997 in depth study they did. These study was partially funded by the DOJ and is one of the largest studies on the subject.
Here are the key facts and findings:
2006 Child Abduction Murder Study
In late 1993, the Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General's Office undertook a 3-1/2 year research project, partially funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, to study the investigation of child abduction murder cases.
In this first research project, published in 1997, researchers reviewed more than 600 child abduction murder cases across the United States, then interviewed the investigating detectives. This data provided law enforcement valuable insight into what investigative techniques tend to be most productive.
Now the Attorney Generals Office has released a follow-up study, including 175 additional solved cases. The additional cases generally reflect and support the findings in the original report with
several significant and definite differences:
With more killers identified, researchers found threat that the killer will be a friend or acquaintance is nearly equal to that of a stranger. * The stranger abductor/murderer remains at the top at 44% while those who knew the victim/s even casually was 42%.
The probability that the killers name will come up during the first week of the investigation has decreased.
The use of *advertiser censored* by killers as a trigger to murder has increased.
Key findings:
In 74 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child murder victim was female and the average age was 11 years old.
In 44 percent of the cases studied, the victims and killers were strangers, but in 42 percent of the cases, the victims and killers were friends or acquaintances.
Only about 14 percent of the cases studied involved parents or intimates killing the child.
Almost two-thirds of the killers in these cases have prior arrests for violent crimes, with slightly more than half of those prior crimes committed against children.
The primary motive for the child abduction killer in the cases studied was sexual assault.
In nearly 60 percent of the cases studied, more than two hours passed between the time someone realized the child was missing and the time police were notified.
In 76 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child was dead within three hours of the abductionand in 88.5 percent of the cases the child was dead within 24 hours.
Be aware that children are not immune from abduction because they are close to home. More than half of the studys abductions took place within three city blocks of the victims home.
http://www.atg.wa.gov/child-abduction-murder-research
