FBI finds Crafton Heights girl in Washington, D.C. suburb | TribLIVE.com
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FBI finds Crafton Heights girl in Washington, D.C. suburb

Marc Lukasiak
| Saturday, January 5, 2002 5:00 p.m.
FBI agents Friday afternoon freed a 13-year-old Crafton Heights girl who was bound to a bed in a suburban Washington, D.C., duplex after vanishing from her home on New Year's Day in what investigators suspect was a cyber-spawned abduction. Capping an investigation that depended on high-tech, online sleuthing skills, agents found Alicia Kozakiewicz at the home of Scott Tyree, 38, of Herndon, Va., around 3:30 p.m. and arrested him shortly afterward at or near his office at Computer Associates, where he is a systems program analyst, authorities said. "Not only was the Internet used to commit this crime, it was used to solve this crime as well," said Mary Beth Buchanan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Western District of Pennsylvania charged Tyree with transporting a minor with the intent of engaging in criminal sexual activity. If Alicia is found to have been kidnapped or harmed, Tyree could face additional state and federal charges that carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, Buchanan said. The current charge against him carries a maximum sentence of 15 years. Alicia's disappearance stunned her family, who said she was in the home one minute and gone the next. FBI agents in Washington, D.C., "found Alicia alive and restrained within the residence," said Jack Shea, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Pittsburgh. "The fact that she was being restrained indicates she was being held against her will." Herndon police Sgt. Don Amos said Alicia had been bound to the bed. "My understanding is that it was an upstairs bedroom. She was somehow secured to the bed," said Amos, who was with the FBI at the scene last night as investigators processed the evidence. "It appears to be in disarray on the inside," Amos said. Alicia was being examined at Fairfax Inova Hospital in Virginia late yesterday, said authorities from Virginia and Pittsburgh. A spokeswoman for the hospital said there was no patient registered by that name. "There didn't appear to be any life-threatening injuries," said Shea, who did not know if Alicia had been sexually assaulted. Her parents, Charles and Mary, would be reunited with Alicia by late yesterday or early today, Shea said. "They were very elated," Shea said. Alicia's parents said the family had just finished dinner Tuesday when their daughter went to her room, put on a sweatshirt, then returned to the dinner table. Minutes later, she walked down the hallway of the Lawson Avenue residence and never returned. The family checked her room about 6 p.m. expecting her to be studying, but she wasn't there. Alicia is the granddaughter of retired Allegheny County Jail Warden Charles Kozakiewicz. Investigators said they believe Tyree traveled to Pittsburgh and on New Year's Day drove Alicia to his home in Virginia, though they still don't know whether she was kidnapped or went willingly, said Buchanan. The FBI searched his home and two vehicles, one of which authorities suspect Tyree used to transport Alicia. The Western Pennsylvania Crimes Against Children Task Force, made up of federal, state and local investigators, began investigating Alicia's disappearance Tuesday. Task force investigators said they believe Tyree and Alicia met through the Internet and they are now examining a Pentium-powered desktop computer taken from her home in hopes of finding a connection with Tyree. "We went to Alicia's house and started to process the computer she had been using," Shea said. The big break in the case came at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, when an Internet acquaintance of Tyree's contacted FBI agents in Tampa, Fla. "Scott related to him he had gone to Pittsburgh and had brought a girl back to Virginia," Shea said. "Scott showed him pictures by means of a Web cam of the young girl." Tampa FBI agents contacted agents in Pittsburgh, who began tracking down Tyree's Internet account and Internet service provider through information provided by the Tampa informant. "The caller also identified Yahoo as the Internet Service Provider," Shea said. Yesterday, Yahoo identified Tyree as the holder of the account to investigators in Pittsburgh. "The presumption is that they did meet on the Internet and did have some sort of cyber relationship," said John Wilbur, a Pittsburgh police officer working on the Crimes Against Children Task Force. He is trained in computer forensics and is working with other experts to sort through Alicia's computer to see if she was in contact with Tyree. "You could find remnants of that conversation," Wilbur said. "You search through there to see where a person's been and who've they're talked to." Tyree lived relatively unnoticed in his Hemlock Court neighborhood, where he is believed to have lived for the past four years, police said. None of his neighbors said they knew him, other than to say the occasional hello. But they also said that isn't unusual in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. "He wasn't unfriendly. But living in the D.C. area is not like other areas where you know your neighbors for life. There's a lot of coming and going here," said George Murphy, 52, who has lived in the tiny enclave of townhouses for 10 years. Between 1981 and 1987, Tyree attended the College of San Mateo in California but never earned a degree. Tyree is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan Monday morning at federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. A sealed affidavit with more details of the investigation will be released Monday. He is scheduled to be returned to Pennsylvania. Local cases involving adults luring children over the Internet Bradford S. Davic, then 36, of McCandless pleaded guilty in July 2001 to possessing child pornography and using the Internet to entice a minor to have sex with him. According to the federal indictment, Davic went to Xenia, Ohio, on Jan. 25, 2001, to meet a girl he believed to be 14 and to have sex with her. A statement from the office of then U.S. Attorney Harry Litman did not indicate if Davic actually met the girl or whether she really exists. Christopher M. Zabukover, then 29, was convicted in April 2001 of using the Internet to entice a 14-year-old Ellwood City girl to go with him across the country. The two spent three weeks traveling across the country and stopping for sex in hotels before authorities arrested Zabukover in Montana. He received a sentence of 15 months in prison. In June 2001, a West Virginia man pleaded guilty in federal court to traveling to a West Mifflin hotel to have sex with a 15-year-old girl.Richard V. Napier, then 32, of Huntington, met the girl at a hotel in March 2001 and later bragged about having sex with her. The senior at Marshall University received a 38-month prison sentence. He also enticed a 16-year-old girl from Oregon to visit him in West Virginia, according to court records.


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