closed cases > Sierra Lillie-found (closed case)

Girl who left home found in Arkansas

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goinsfl:
BY ROBB FREDERICK
Published: April 17. 2009 1:15AM



The 14-year-old Erie girl who left home Sunday with a man she met on the Internet was found safe in Arkansas Thursday night, the FBI said.


Sierra Lillie was with Donald Ray Cates, 21, a Montana man she had corresponded with for two years. Police in Clarksville, Ark., found them hitchhiking along a highway at 7:40 p.m.

Lillie did not appear to have been harmed, said Andrew Wilson, a supervisor in the FBI's Erie office.

The agency had been searching for Lillie since Tuesday, when Erie police reported that the girl, an eighth-grader at Diehl Elementary School, had left her home in the 1400 block of Buffalo Road. Her parents thought she had spent the night at a friend's house.

An FBI agent called them a few minutes before 11 p.m. Thursday.

"It feels like the world has been lifted off my shoulders," Michelle Lillie said.

For days, she and her husband had worried about their daughter, who left with the $20 they had placed in her Easter basket.

"We were going crazy," Michelle Lillie said. "We searched everywhere we could think of and talked to everyone we could."

She said she had not heard from her daughter since Sunday night, when she called to ask if she could sleep at a friend's house.

The FBI believes she already was with Cates, a Montana native who sometimes uses the name Max. His background raised a red flag: Cates is facing trial on charges that he forced sex on five underage girls in 2005, according to court records filed in Fergus County, Mont.

A first trial on those charges ended in a mistrial, in part because police questioned Cates without his parents being present, records show.

On March 31, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that the case could again proceed.

Twelve days later, Cates was in Erie, traveling with little more than a backpack and somehow convincing Lillie to go with him, the FBI said.


http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090417/NEWS02/304169832/-1/ETN



At least this one turn out ok.

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