Posted on 08/01/2003 7:33:29 PM PDT by BenLurkin
For 12 hours on that hot August morning a year ago today, two Antelope Valley teenagers stared death in the face, prisoners of a convicted felon who kidnapped them from a remote lovers lane in a quiet desert town.
For hours on end, an army of law enforcement men and women scoured the Southland, issuing makeshift Amber Alert broadcasts and tracking down leads. As one emotional hour after another passed, a community feared the worst, but fervently prayed the girls would be found alive and return home safely.
When word finally came just before 1 p.m. that Jacqueline Marris and Tamara Brooks had been saved in a dramatic shootout that left their captor dead, many believed it was nothing short of a miracle.
Their rescue is the quintessential story of good prevailing over evil.
"Something like this is not supposed to happen to your kid," said Marris' mother, Nadine Dyer, on the eve of the troubling anniversary. "You wake up every day, but all of the sudden everything you thought was for sure and solid can be gone."
Dyer awoke in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 1, 2002, to every parent's worst nightmare - a knock on the door by sheriff's deputies.
"I thought, oh, my God, a car accident," she said. "Then the woman deputy told me that Jacque's car had been carjacked. I thought, 'OK, she's at the station, she's OK. Then the deputy came back from the (squad) car and said, 'I'm so sorry, there's been a mistake, she was kidnapped.' "
Numbness and shock set in as Dyer quickly changed, grabbed a few photos of her oldest daughter and left the house for the scene of the kidnapping - a hill overlooking the Valley near the Quartz Hill water tanks.
Jacque Marris, then 17, and Tamara Brooks, then 16, didn't know each other at the time, but both had been on the hill that night with friends. Brooks was in a white Ford Bronco with 18-year-old Eric Brown just after midnight, when Roy Dean Ratliff, a 37-year-old parolee from Rosamond who already was wanted on rape charges, approached the vehicle with a gun. He forced Brown out of the vehicle and bound him before taping Brooks to the armrest. An hour later he went to a Mazda pickup where he found Frank Melero, then 19, and Marris inside. He bound Melero and led Marris to the Bronco.
Ratliff, reeking of beer and whiskey, raped the girls and held them hostage in the Bronco for the next 12 hours as he fled the area. The girls communicated with each other by writing letters into each other's palms to spell out words.
Toward the end of their ordeal, they even plotted and tried to carry out an escape in which Marris stabbed Ratliff in the neck with a Bowie knife and Brooks hit him in the face with a whiskey bottle. They succeeded in getting him out of the vehicle, but Ratliff had a gun and threatened to kill them if they didn't let him back in the truck. Reluctantly, they did so.
Meanwhile, news of the kidnapping was everywhere. National and local media descended upon the Valley to cover the latest in a string of summer kidnappings.
Kern County sheriff's Commander Hal Chealander learned of the kidnapping that morning while watching MSNBC before heading into his office in Kern Valley.
"As I was driving to work I had a feeling inside, that something was going to happen today," he said. Little did he know at that point that the southern Kern area in his charge would be the backdrop for deputies' showdown with Ratliff.
Law enforcement officials issued the state's first - albeit unofficial - Amber Alert, broadcasting the suspect vehicle description and license plate numbers through numerous channels, including highway signs, hoping citizens would call in vehicle sightings.
At 11 a.m. Caltrans worker Milton Walters called authorities to say he had seen the Bronco roll through a construction zone on Highway 178 in rural Kern County where he was working. Walters had heard the Amber Alert repeatedly that morning. With no pen or pencil, he scratched a partial license plate number for the truck into his lunch box. The numbers matched the suspect vehicle description, proving the tip credible and immediately spurring Kern County sheriff's officials into action.
"We scrambled out of our office when that came across the dispatch," Chealander said. "My vehicle became a mobile command post. My primary concern was cutting off his escape routes. We began eliminating possibilities of where he could be."
Helicopter units from the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles and Kern counties' sheriff's departments swept through the air scouring every inch of terrain, while ground units cruised Highway 178 and a number of dirt side roads looking for the Bronco. Being fairly confident the vehicle had not left the area, authorities began to tighten the noose in the search.
Back at the Lancaster Sheriff's Station, friends and family of the girls agonized, awaiting any news.
"Those 12 hours were the worst of my life," Dyer said. "It was the waiting and not knowing. You feel powerless. You're thinking about so much. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't go look for her. It's the worst feeling."
Information was coming in from all directions, according to the Rev. Billy Pricer, the sheriff's chaplain who consoled worried family members at the station. Authorities were beginning to piece together the identity of the suspect, thanks to a tip from one of Ratliff's relatives. And Kern County sheriff's officials were confident they were closing in on the suspect, despite the mountainous surroundings they were searching, which were full of secluded hiding spots.
The final tip came in from Bonnie Hernandez, a Kern County Animal Control officer, who had heard about the kidnapping on a police scanner she carries. She spotted the suspect vehicle in White Blanket Indian Allotment, an extremely remote, wooded area where she had never seen a vehicle before. With no cell phone, Hernandez raced to the nearest town with a sheriff's substation - some 30 miles away. She saw a patrol car on her way and was able to flag the officer down. Her tip was immediately radioed and deputies James Stratton and Larry Thatcher, both very familiar with the area, were dispatched to White Blanket.
"I was about five miles away on the east side, and Jimmy (Stratton) was on the west side. We radioed to the helicopter to get them overhead, and then they guided us in."
From the air, Pilot Berto Penalozas and deputy observer Mike Patrick spotted the Bronco almost immediately from about 400 feet above the ground.
"We went lower to look inside the vehicle to see if anybody was in it, but the windows were dark," Penalozas said. "Then we saw the vehicle move forward so we knew someone was there."
The air unit continued circling and guided the deputies into the area. Thatcher and Stratton could not see the vehicle from the ground and were relying on directions from the air unit.
"They were telling us, 'It's coming up quick, it's coming up quick,' " Thatcher said. It wasn't until they rounded a curve and Thatcher's lead car was about 30 yards away that he spotted the vehicle.
Ratliff saw them and peeled out. Thatcher, who had exited his vehicle, thought Ratliff was going to ram his squad car, so he jumped toward a big rock to take cover. The Bronco veered left, went airborne and almost rolled before getting stuck in a dry creek bed. Without hesitation, the deputies took off on foot after the fleeing vehicle.
"In situations like that, your training kicks in and you turn it into high gear," Stratton said. "We didn't have time to huddle and talk about it. In our minds, it was 'Let's get this guy. We cannot let him get away.' "
Guns drawn, they took positions on the driver's side of the vehicle, Stratton to the rear, Thatcher to the front. Ratliff screamed obscenities when they ordered him to surrender.
"Then I saw probably the scariest thing you'll see as a deputy, and that's the suspect crawling to the back of the car. To me, he's trying to grab a weapon. Nothing was obstructing my view. When he came up I saw his two hands wrapped around a revolver, and he was pointing it at Larry. I can still see it today. That's when you know you've got to pull the trigger."
Thatcher, meanwhile, had a poor vantage point and couldn't see the gun. He heard Stratton's first shot and saw Ratliff rock backward with the gun in his hand. Thatcher started shooting then, moving closer to the vehicle.
"The shooting started, and then that was the first time we heard the girls scream," Thatcher said. Up until that point, deputies were unsure whether the girls were in the vehicle or even still alive.
"They were these blood-curdling screams, and we didn't know if one of the bullets had hit them, or if he had shot one of the kids," Thatcher said. "You get this rush, like you've gotta help them right now. As soon as the last shot was fired, Jimmy was calling, 'Is it over? Is he down?' I said, 'It's over,' and that's when the girls popped up."
Brooks climbed through a shot-out back window; Marris exited through the driver's door. They embraced each other and then the deputies.
"They were hysterical, crying," Thatcher said. "I think one of them said, 'I can't believe we're free.' "
The girls quickly were led to a squad car by one deputy, while the other tended to Ratliff, whose twitching body remained in the truck. An investigation after the shooting showed deputies fired 17 shots at the suspect. Ratliff's gun was missing one round.
"There's just a swirl of emotions," Stratton said, looking back at that day. "You don't really want to take a life, but there's really no guilt. He chose this path. If we had to do it again under the same circumstances, I would do it absolutely the exact same way."
Both deputies received numerous awards for their actions that day, including Medals of Valor.
Meanwhile, euphoria broke out in Lancaster as word of the rescue was radioed to the central command post. The girls were reunited with their parents at Kern County Medical Center in Bakersfield.
"Things could have turned out so differently," Dyer said. "I truly believe that it just wasn't those kids' time to go. And I thank God for everything. I want to say thank you to so many people who prayed for us and helped us. There's a lot of good people here in the Valley."
It has been a year since the traumatic events of that day. Brooks and Marris remain in the community, healing from the horrific ordeal they lived to tell about. Neither girl could be reached for comment, but Dyer said her daughter continues to take things one day at a time.
"She's strong. Even when she was small she had confidence in herself," Dyer said. "We'll have months that are good and then a week that's not good at all."
Marris graduated from Highland High School this June. She plans to attend cosmetology school and take computer graphics and photography classes. Her long-term goal is to open her own photography portrait studio. She will attend a commemoration ceremony today to mark the first anniversary of the Amber Alert. After that, she will go on an outing with friends somewhere outside the Antelope Valley.
Very little information was available about Brooks, but she attended Antelope Valley High School this year as a junior. She and Marris have had little contact in recent months. Calls to what is believed to be Brooks' home went unanswered.
Pricer has remained in contact with Marris and her family. When he looks back on events of a year ago, he marvels at how so many pieces of a puzzle came together to save the lives of the two girls.
"I think a lot of people were guided to save these girls," Pricer said. "I know, without a doubt, that prayer works."
"CELEBRATING LIFE - Kidnap victims Tamara Brooks, left, and Jacqueline Marris embrace during an emotional moment at a "Celebration of Life" program in their honor in August 2002 at the United Community Action Network Center in Lancaster. EVELYN KRISTO/Valley Press files
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