Kathlynn Shepard - LOCATED DECEASED

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Authorities in the Webster County town of Dayton are investigating the abduction of two young girls from a bus stop with one of those girls safe and the other still missing.

The police chief in Dayton, Nicholas Dunbar, says one girl is 12-years-old. She was found walking out of the timber near a farm house in Boone County, and is currently being treated at Trinity Regional Hospital in Fort Dodge.

The second girl, who is still missing, is identified as 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard. She was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and a Minnesota Vikings cap. Shepard is 5'6" tall and weighs 160 pounds. She has blonde hair and blue eyes.

Authorities say a man who appeared to be in his 20s or 30s was driving a big red pickup truck and abducted the girls. Police have been checking out the home of a possible suspect in the case. Late Monday evening, Dayton police said they had located the man but the girl is still missing. The suspect has not yet been identified. Authorities have not said what condition the alleged abductor is in or whether he is dead or alive.

Police say they suspect the man lured the girls into his truck under false pretenses.

Volunteer Dayton firefighters, ISU police, Boone County, Webster County and Dayton police responded to the call to help search for the missing 15-year-old.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Webster County Sheriff's Office at [phone].

The Iowa Department of Public Safety says residents in the area where Boone, Webster and Hamilton counties meet should keep an eye out for the missing girl.

At a 10:30 pm media briefing, state authorities released very little new information in the case.

Searchers are concentrating on a hog confinement house located about four miles north of the town of Pilot Mound.
www.thv11.com/news/article/265971/288/Authorities-search-for-missing-teen-in-Dayton-Iowa

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A 15-year-old central Iowa girl who was abducted after getting off her school bus was still missing Tuesday, and authorities said a massive search was underway. Meanwhile, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said the man who is suspected of taking her and another girl committed suicide.

Dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement officials are searching by air, land and water for Kathlynn Shepard. She and a 12-year-old girl, who are friends, were taken Monday afternoon shortly after stepping off a school bus in Dayton, about 60 miles north of Des Moines. The younger girl, who was later able to escape, told authorities the girls had accepted a ride from a stranger.

DCI Special Agent Bill Kietzman said Tuesday that the body of 42-year-old suspect Michael Klunder was found Monday night with a red Toyota Tundra pickup at a rural property northeast of Dayton.

Kietzman said authorities have begun focusing their search for Kathlynn to locations within 20 miles of Dayton, including Klunder’s residence. Previously, the search covered up to 100 square miles of mostly rural areas.

Authorities have also coordinated with the FBI to update electronic billboards around the state with information about the search.

Kietzman would not elaborate on the likelihood of finding Kathlynn alive, though he remained optimistic.

“Time obviously is not your friend in these kinds of situations,” he said at a news conference. “Our plan is that we’re going to find her alive. That’s our hope.”

The 12-year-old girl, who has not been identified, told investigators she and Kathlynn were taken to an agricultural facility. But she was able to escape a short time later and ran to a rural residence for help, Kietzman said. She was then taken to a Fort Dodge hospital and released.

The abduction spanned several hours, officials said, with Klunder’s body being discovered nearly four hours after the girls were taken.

Kathlynn is described as being 5-feet-6-inches and 160 pounds. She has blond hair, blue eyes and braces. She was last seen wearing jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt and a Minnesota Vikings baseball cap.
www.argusleader.com/viewart/20130521/ARGUS911/305210037/Police-Suspect-abduction-two-Iowa-girls-found-dead-one-girl-still-missing

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Kathlynn Shepard

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Suspected abductor of Webster County girls found dead; search on for missing girl

Authorities are asking for the public’s help to find a girl abducted Monday in northern Iowa.

Kathlynn Shepard, 15, has been missing since 4 p.m. Monday.

Dayton Police Chief Nicholas Dunbar said two girls were abducted from a bus stop Monday afternoon. Authorities said the girls were taken to a rural agricultural facility southeast of Dayton at 4:30 p.m.

Authorities said one of the girls, a 12-year-old, escaped and found help at a rural home. She was taken to Trinity Regional Hospital in Fort Dodge and is OK.

The girl was able to provide valuable information about the case to authorities including details about a red Toyota Tundra and a man identified as a suspect in the case, Michael J. Klunder, 42.

Authorities said Klunder was found dead about 8 p.m. at a rural property northeast of Dayton. The cause of his death is under investigation, authorities said.

Shepard is still missing Tuesday morning.

She was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and a Minnesota Vikings cap. Shepard is 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 160 pounds and has blonde hair and blue eyes.

Hundreds of volunteers are meeting in Dayton to conduct a search of the area — a 75 to 100 mile radius. Authorities are asking anyone who might have seen a red Toyota Tundra pickup truck in the area to report where and when they saw the vehicle to authorities.

An air search is also being conducted Tuesday morning.
thegazette.com/2013/05/21/suspected-abductor-of-webster-county-girls-found-dead-search-on-for-missing-girl/

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Klunder is listed on the state's sex offender registry, prison records show. He spent several years in prison after being convicted on kidnapping and assault charges, including the 1991 abduction and assault of a Rudd woman and the kidnapping of two toddlers from an apartment complex in Charles City, according to the Mason City Globe Gazette. The girls, both 3, were found alive inside a dumpster.

He was released from a work release program in February 2011.

The abduction comes less than a year after the high-profile disappearance of two cousins in Evansdale, about 90 miles east of Dayton. Lyric Cook, 10, and 8-year-old Elizabeth Collins disappeared while riding their bikes last July. Hunters found their bodies in a remote, wooded area in December.

Evansdale Police Chief Kent Smock said investigators were looking into whether Klunder was involved in Lyric and Elizabeth's kidnappings and deaths. DCI and FBI agents who have been involved in the search for the Evansdale girls have been dispatched to help search for Kathlynn.

Smock said investigators were trying to determine whether Klunder had any ties to the area.

"There's a multitude of things we're looking at to determine whether he may be a person of interest or not a person of interest," he said. "It's much too early in their investigation to be able to say with any degree of accuracy one way or another whether it's related to our case at all."

Authorities are asking the public for information about any interactions with Klunder, as well of any sighting of his pickup between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Monday.

Read more here: www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/21/3408727/police-suspect-in-abduction-of.html#storylink=cpy

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Authorities said the girls were abducted from First Avenue Northwest and First Street Northwest on school property, shortly after exiting the bus.

The 12-year-old girl escaped at 3023 400th Street in rural Pilot Mound.

Michael Klunder was found dead at 3319 Taylor Avenue in rural Dayton. He lives in Stratford, authorities said. Authorities said he died from a suicide.

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Stratford - Klunder's Hometown

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The young girl who got away

The younger girl, who has not been identified, escaped from her captor after the abduction and has provided crucial information in the case, Kietzman said.

The girl slipped out of a hog confinement farm about 15 miles south of Dayton. Klunder had taken her and Shepard there within 30 minutes of the kidnapping, police said.

“She was obviously an amazing little kid, very lucky,” Kietzman said. “And we’re very thankful that she’s OK.”

After the girl’s escape, she most likely ran south for about a half-mile along a deer trail and past a cemetery, said Jeff Moyle, 58, of Pilot Mound. He was one of the men who said he found the girl.

The girl lifted a wire fence and crawled underneath it to reach the residence of Patrick Fairchild, 58, who owns a farm south of Dayton, Moyle said.

The two men were standing over a pile of split wood when they heard an unusual sound near the fence. They found the girl, whose legs were scraped and bleeding. She wore shorts and a T-shirt but had no shoes, Moyle said.

The girl had a thick zip tie cable around one of her wrists that Moyle said he struggled to cut free with scissors. Then he raced toward the hog confinement facility.

“I grabbed my gun and went to the hog confinement,” said Moyle, who didn’t see anyone there. “There were just tracks where (Klunder) had driven.”
www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130522/NEWS/305220071/Dayton-area-combed-for-missing-Iowa-teen?News&gcheck=1

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Kathlynn Shepard's backpack found

DAYTON, Ia. -- Law enforcement on Tuesday found two backpacks and a purse belonging to the two girls kidnapped this week after they stepped off of a school bus, an official said.

Police are expected to release later this morning the location of where the items were found, and a picture of missing teen Kathlynn Shepard on the school bus, said Bill Kietzman, an Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation special agent.

Police initially intended to search through the night into today, but an official said the search was suspended when it got dark. Officers have been combing several areas within 20 miles of Dayton on foot, with the assistance from an Iowa State Patrol airplane equipped with a heat sensor, Kietzman said.
www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130522/NEWS/130522012/Missing-girl-Kathlynn-Shepard-s-backpack-found?sf13096503=1

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JannayTowne Jannay Towne 2hDitch where Fraser man says he saw investigators find items of missing girls pic.twitter.com/52cAg3mXF2

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www.dps.state.ia.us/commis/pib/Releases/2013/Dayton_SearchMap.jpg

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Missing Iowa girl's blood found

Investigators have discovered the blood of a missing 15-year-old Iowa girl on the truck of a registered sex offender suspected of kidnapping her Monday, diminishing the chances of finding her alive, a lead investigator said Thursday.

DNA testing confirmed that the blood found on the tailgate of the truck and in a hog confinement facility where 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard was taken after she was abducted belonged to the girl, said Bill Kietzman, special agent in charge of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

Kietzman said the amount of blood found was enough to show that she suffered some injuries, and with three days having passed since she disappeared, those developments do not work "in our favor."

"We are not giving up hope that we can find Kathlynn. Our intent is to find her and bring her home to her family. Clearly this evidence diminishes our hopes that we're going to find her in a safe manner," he said at a news conference.
news.yahoo.com/investigator-missing-iowa-girls-blood-found-213309287.html

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Authorities: Kathlynn Shepard found dead Friday night

Investigators said fishermen found a body in the Des Moines River Friday.

Authorities said clothing and zip ties found with the body lead them to believe it is Kathlynn Shepard.

"It's absolutely heartbreaking," Dayton Police Chief Nick Dubar said. "We were able to bring her home but not as we had hoped."

An autopsy is planned to confirm the identity and identify a cause of death.

The body was found near Ogden under the Kate Shelley Bridge on the Des Moines River in some debris in the water. The location is about 13 miles south of where the girls backpacks were found days after the search started. Several law enforcement agencies were on the scene Friday night.

Authorities said the area was not part of the search area. A search of the river planned for Saturday has now been called off, officials said.

Shepard's family was notified of the development Friday night.

"We were robbed of some innocence in this whole thing and it will never be quite the same," Webster county Sheriff James Stubbs said. "Hopefully time will heal some of these wounds but the awareness is definitely a lot higher."

"This is about Kathlynn Shepard right now," Boone County Sheriff Gregg Elsberry said. "If I may, let's not forget Desiree."
www.kcci.com/news/central-iowa/breaking-news-in-search-for-kathlynn-shepard/-/9357080/20479094/-/t0pwhh/-/index.html#ixzz2VbEK5ab5