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
Authorities have interviewed 500 psychics, tracked every known ice cream vendor in the state and dug through 35 mine shafts in the Santan Mountains.
Seven thousand leads.
And Mesa police are still no closer to an arrest in the Mikelle Biggs case than they were the day last year when the 12-year-old vanished from her neighborhood.
On Monday, detectives spoke publicly about the case for the first time.
"There is no answer to this one yet," Sgt. Steve Stahl said. "There's no closure. There's no body. And obviously, there's no suspect yet."
But the two lead investigators and their sergeant say they won't give up until all leads are exhausted.
"I don't think we'll ever drop the case until it's solved, but there may be a time where we scale back," Stahl said.
Mikelle's Jan. 2 disappearance attracted worldwide attention and has since sent detectives chasing tips from Pennsylvania to Mexico.
The two lead detectives on the case - Butch Gates and Jerry Gissel - have worked for weeks straight, canceled their vacations and risked their lives for answers to the mystery: What happened to Mikelle Biggs?
Theories have run the gamut, from drug smugglers taking her to Mexico, to an ice cream truck hitting her, to a sexual predator snatching her from the street.
It has become an obsession.
"You just can't get it off your mind," Gissel said. "You see photos of her at the grocery store and think about what else you can do. It just totally consumes you."
"We'll feel like failures until we solve this thing," Gates added.
Although Darien Biggs, Mikelle's father, said he has been at odds with police at times, he is thankful they haven't given up.
"Of course, I expected the world," he said. "And that's almost what I've gotten. It seems like they'll go to the ends of the Earth if they get a lead, no matter how hokey it sounds."
Mikelle disappeared shortly before 6 p.m. on Jan. 2 at Toltec Street and El Moro Avenue as she waited for an ice-cream truck. She had been alone for only a few minutes.
Her little sister, Kimber, had gone home because she was cold, but Mikelle lingered, waiting for the ice cream truck that no one else in the middle-class neighborhood reported hearing. Clutched in her hand were two quarters her mother had given her.
Mikelle was last seen wearing bell-bottom jeans and a red shirt printed with the name of the school where she was an honor student, Lindbergh Elementary.
Police found only Kimber's bicycle, which Mikelle had been riding, and the quarters she left behind.
Since the news broke, leads have flooded the Police Department. Two people have spend countless hours prioritizing them and passing the most urgent ones along to the detectives, Stahl said.
Agencies across the Valley have helped in the investigation, and detectives throughout the Mesa department have stepped in or picked up extra cases the lead detectives couldn't handle.
A "missing juvenile" report hangs onto glass outside Room 239, which detectives call the Mikelle Biggs Room. Inside the cramped space sits a telephone, computer and thousands of pieces of paper. Maps hang on the wall, binders are stacked around the room.
"Every lead was looked into or is still being looked into," Stahl said. "Each lead takes on its whole new life.
"Just when you think you've whittled it down to maybe five viable areas where you can send five people . . . one of those leads mushrooms into an 80-person lead or something."
They've thought they've been close.
Shortly after the disappearance, police were monitoring Mikelle's personal Web page when a message for Darien Biggs came over.
The author claimed he had Mikelle, and he would exchange her at a certain time and location.
"The man-hours devoted to that one lead were astronomical," Stahl said. "It was almost like the Delta Force in scramble mode."
Investigators tracked the message to a Phoenix home, conducted airplane surveillance and sent out a SWAT team.
But the note was a prank sent by a 12-year-old boy.
Mikelle's family members say they've learned not to get too excited when a new lead comes in.
"It's happened a couple times," Tracy Biggs said. "They say, 'We think this one just might be it, but don't get your hopes up.'
"I haven't let myself get my hopes up on any of it. . . . If I did, it would just be an up-and-down roller-coaster ride."
Investigators have hypnotized people, used polygraph and voice-stress analyzers and even used FBI profilers. They've contacted sex offenders known to hang out at a nearby park, which Mikelle passed about an hour before she disappeared.
Investigators have spent days trooping through unstable caverns and mine shafts across the state, using sophisticated equipment to detect whether a body is in the pitch-black pools.
Many of the leads are bogus - those sent by revenge-seeking drug dealers trying to attract police attention and psychics who have visions as vague as "a green car next to the light pole," Gates said.
"Although there's no closing lead, they've gone above and beyond everyone's expectations," said Kym Pasqualini, director of the Nation's Missing Children's Organization.
Tracy Biggs said she misses the little things about her daughter - reading Christmas stories every night in December, playing 21 questions at the dinner table, getting an unexpected hug while washing dishes.
And although she tries to focus on the positive, "it gets frustrating, depressing."
"Sometimes I get so full of anger I want to put my fist through the wall," she said.
The hardest part, she said, is not knowing whether her little girl is dead or alive.
"Whether she's found alive or not, we just want to have her found," Biggs said. "We need some closure just so we know.
"But there's no way you can give up hoping that she's alive and well."
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Reproduced with permission from: The Arizona Republic Written by: Christina Leonard ©Copyright 1999 Arizona Republic |
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