Police say father sent for fourth daughter in Indiana before kidnapping

By JEFF BARNARD
The Associated Press
8/3/01 7:38 PM

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) -- Four days before allegedly kidnapping three of his daughters at gunpoint from child
welfare workers, Brian Christine sent a friend to his hometown in Indiana to pick up a fourth daughter living with
his mother, police said Friday.

Contacted by Oregon State Police after the Wednesday kidnapping, police in Noblesville, Ind., went to the home of
his mother, Terri Christine, and learned that she no longer had 1-year-old Olivia, who had been put under her
guardianship by a local judge after her sisters were taken into state custody in Oregon on grounds of neglect.

Terri Christine told Noblesville police Detective David Underwood that she received a call from her son July 27,
saying he was sending a friend to pick up Olivia, and released the child to the man on Saturday, the next day.

She could offer little description of the man, other than that he was wearing a ballcap, stood about 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed about 185 pounds, Underwood said.

Calls to the grandmother in Noblesville were not answered.

According to court records, Josephine County Circuit Judge Allan Coon signed an order late Thursday placing
Olivia Christine in protective custody. Meanwhile, the FBI joined the search for Brian Christine on a possible federal carjacking charge and assisted state police in a nationwide search, FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said.

And Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel reported that early Friday morning someone broke into a fenced lot where the Christine's bus was impounded and took a child safety seat and some clothes from it.

After the kidnapping at an Interstate 5 rest stop near Roseburg, a witness saw a man drive up to a lumberyard about a mile away in a white Ford SUV with California plates and Brian Christine and his wife, Ruth, leave behind the cars they were driving and get the SUV in with the girls, state police said.

The SUV driver's name was not released, but investigators said they had an idea who he was.

The kidnapping came as a Josephine County circuit judge was considering whether to permanently terminate the parental rights of the Christines and turn over their three daughters to Ruth Christine's parents for adoption.

The state Services for Children and Families took custody of the three girls -- Miriam, 3 Lydia, 4, and Bethany, 6 -- a year and a day before the kidnapping, while the family was living in a converted city bus parked next to the Josephine County Library. Olivia was born a few days later.

Last summer, the three girls spent four days in a hospital recovering from malnutrition and dehydration before being put into foster care at a home kept secret from their parents.

Bethany also had a 3-inch skull fracture, which allegedly came from her father pushing her down the stairs of the bus. He faces a charge of fourth-degree assault in that case.

Meanwhile, their cause was taken up by a local group of anti-government activists who regularly picket the Josephine County Courthouse. Attorney Pat Wolke, who represents the three girls, said the court was considering awarding custody to Ruth Christine's parents, who are dairy farmers in England.

"They were going to come over in a couple weeks so the children could start to live with them," Wolke said. "They had come over before. The children spent time with them. They got to like them. They were enthusiastic about going to live with them. I was enthusiastic. They seemed like really good people."

Wolke said the girls were recovering physically from being deprived of food, which they tended to hoard and carry around in their pockets during the early days of their foster care.

"It was just kind of a security thing, I guess," he said.