Children's Safety Zone
Mikelle Biggs Story Index
Contact The Mesa Police Department immediately with any new information!
Mesa Police, Criminal Investigations 480-644-4078, Sgt. Steven Stahl, steven_stahl@mesa.ci.mesa.az.us
Mesa police have spent more on the search for 12-year-old Mikelle Biggs than on any other case in the department's history.
Overtime costs alone have totaled more than $45,000 for the four main officers who have been working on the case since the little girl vanished in January 1999 while waiting for an ice cream truck.
Manpower was by far the greatest expense in the search, which has also used lab tests, helicopters and video cameras to track down more than 7,500 leads.
Still, police are no closer to an arrest than the day the missing persons investigation began.
''This is the first of its kind in the city of Mesa, where a kid was abducted off the streets and hasn't been found,'' Sgt. Earle Lloyd said. ''None has lasted this long.
''People say, 'We can't believe how much money you all spend on the case,' but what if it was your daughter?''
The Biggs search and this year's grisly torso murder case have helped put Mesa police $1.5 million over its overtime budget for the fiscal year, and officers were ordered last week to cut back on unnecessary hours.
Because time is so important in a missing persons case, departments initially throw huge amounts of manpower at each investigation to chase leads.
''They look into those as quickly as possible because they don't want those to get old,'' Phoenix police Sgt. Jeff Halstead said.
''There's never a point when we look and say, 'There's a lot of people here, we need to scale back' because their whole focus is, 'Where is the child?' ''
Mesa police could not provide a total spent on the case, but did provide overtime slips for the two main detectives, a sergeant and a public information officer.
Detective Butch Gates, the lead detective, has earned more than $21,800 in overtime from January 1999 to April 2000.
The two lead detectives have chased tips from Pennsylvania to Mexico. They've worked for weeks straight, canceled vacations and risked their lives in unstable mine shafts to look for answers. Scores of other officers have been brought in at times.
''Each investigation takes on its own unique twist,'' Sgt. Steve Stahl said. ''Ours happened to be huge manpower.''
Stahl cited the Tempe investigation into Cookie Jacobson's death. Police spent $300,000 searching a landfill for the homemaker's body.
In the Biggs case, the community has cut costs tremendously with donations of about 600,000 fliers in the first two weeks of the investigation, and free use of cell phones. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office even loaned equipment for searches of remote mountain mine shafts.
''Mikelle Biggs is the largest effort I have ever seen in Arizona,'' said Kym Pasqualini, head of the Nation's Missing Children's Organization.
Her group alone has spent more than $40,000 on fliers, rewards and events.
Mikelle's family has worked non-stop to keep her case on everybody's minds.
''We've worried a few times that at one point, it would become a dollars and cents issue,'' said Mikelle's father, Darien Biggs.
But he was reassured in December, when Mesa Chief Jan Strauss promised them that detectives will never stop working until all leads are exhausted.
However, Biggs said he's had problems getting weekly updates from police, and he's been especially concerned that Gates also has been working on the high-profile case of Valerie Pape, who is accused to killing her husband and dumping his torso in a trash bin.
''My daughter's case should still take precedence.''
Stahl said police are still investigating every tip, even though most now come from psychics and drug addicts.
Biggs said he doesn't care about the cost.
''I appreciate the effort, time . . . and everything,'' Biggs said. ''But guess what? It's not over with yet.''
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Reproduced with permission from: The Arizona Republic Byline: By Christina Leonard ©Copyright 2000 Arizona Republic |
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