Scott Tyree didn't look the part of a Casanova, said his landlord.
Not quite 6 feet tall and weighing at least 250 pounds, the computer techie had a long blond ponytail that cascaded down his back.
Acquaintances say a 13-year-old girl with aspirations of being a model would hardly have found him attractive.
On Friday, FBI agents from Virginia arrested Tyree, 38, accusing him of snatching Alicia Kozakiewicz, 13, of Crafton Heights, and holding her captive in his townhouse in Herndon. Agents said Tyree drove to Pittsburgh from Virginia to pick up the girl.
"Can you imagine the shock when she saw him?" said Tyree's landlord, Kathleen Murphy. "He was very slovenly looking."
Nearly nine years of marriage — even if four of them were spent separated — offered no indications that Scott Tyree could be capable of kidnapping and assaulting a girl nearly the same age as his own daughter, said his ex-wife, Sarah Tyree.
She said their 12-year-old daughter, Ashley, had just left her father's home early in the morning of New Year's Day — the same day
Alicia left home.
When asked if she thought Scott Tyree could commit such an act, she had no answer. It's troubling for her even to consider it, she said.
"Well, you know, you have to understand the sensitivity of that question, considering I have a 12-year-old daughter," said Sarah Tyree, 34, of Stockton, Calif. "I don't know what leads a person to do something like that."
Sarah met Scott Tyree while she was still a high school student growing up in the coastal city of Half Moon Bay, Calif., and he lived south of San Francisco in Daly City. They married in 1986, separated in '91, and finally divorced in '95, Sarah Tyree said. The couple spent most of their married life in California, except for eight months in St. Louis.
Scott Tyree works as a systems program analyst in the Herndon, Va., branch of Computer Associates, a nationwide computer software company based in Islandia, N.Y. Murphy said he's held several computer jobs since he began renting their home. Sarah Tyree said he had top-secret clearance.
Sarah Tyree also said her ex-husband met a woman after their divorce in 1995 at a conference of people with similar jobs. He flew East to meet the woman on a weekend trip and ended up marrying her the same weekend, she said. He came back to California, packed all his belongings into a truck, and moved East only to find his new bride had taken in someone else, she said.
Murphy said Tyree — who has paid $1,000 a month in rent for the past six years — moved in to the townhouse in December, 1995. At the time, he lived with a woman who had two young daughters under the age of 10. The woman, she said, moved out about a year or two ago.
Murphy said Tyree went to her home on New Year's Eve to drop off his December rent. Murphy said over the last year Tyree bounced four checks, so he had to pay his rent in cash or money orders.
Sarah Tyree said her ex-husband's inability to manage money played a factor in their divorce. "You know young people not responsible with credit," she said. "He just got into a lot of debt and he liked to buy things."
She said Scott Tyree showed no signs of harming anyone and has no criminal record she can think of. "He's a pretty straight-up guy," Sarah Tyree said. "He looks like your average computer-nerd type of person."
He and his daughter got along so well, and had so many similar interests, Sarah Tyree calls them "kindred spirits." They collect comic books, read science fiction, play computer games together through the Internet, and talk regularly on the phone. He built her a computer and showed her how to build them.
"That's part of why she really misses her dad. Those little things she likes to do. It's his stuff," Sarah Tyree said. "His daughter idolized him. She wanted to go and move back with him."
