Hannah Anderson, the Amber Alert-identified kidnap victim by the hands of family friend James Lee DiMaggio, was found alive in a campsite deep in the Idaho woods, while Mr. DiMaggio was shot dead after what was called a confrontation with an FBI tactical agent.
So ends a story that has more than a few holes such that filling them in makes it look like a very strange and immoral love story. Here’s the Associated Press’ timeline as provided by The Huffington Post:
Aug. 4: Authorities near San Diego find the burned bodies of 42-year-old Christina Anderson and a child after extinguishing flames at James Lee DiMaggio’s rural home. An Amber Alert is issued for Anderson’s two children, Hannah, 16, and Ethan, 8.
Aug. 7: Oregon state police say there was a possible sighting of DiMaggio’s blue Nissan Versa in northeast California near the city of Alturas.
Aug. 7: Shortly after the sighting near Alturas, Calif., the Nissan is spotted again 50 miles away along the same highway near Lakeview, in south-central Oregon.
Aug. 9: Idaho authorities locate the car belonging to the suspect at a trailhead near Cascade, Idaho. San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore also said that a man on horseback reported seeing two people matching the description of the suspect and girl near Morehead Lake about eight miles inside the boundary of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. The rider reports the girl appeared healthy and was not being held against her will.
Aug. 9: A coalition of local, state and federal law enforcement teams begin combing a 300-square-mile area of the rugged, remote wilderness area. The search is initially done on foot. Explosive teams, initially concerned DiMaggio may have rigged his car with explosives, conclude there is no risk.
Aug. 9: Authorities in California positively identify the child’s body found in the fire as that of the teen’s younger brother, Ethan.
Aug. 10: More law enforcement teams are dispatched to Cascade to help in the search. Police also set up a series of checkpoints at trailheads throughout the area and question other hikers leaving the wilderness area.
Aug. 10: Authorities report that DiMaggio and the teen were spotted from the air at a campsite near Morehead Lake. DiMaggio was killed in the shootout; Anderson was rescued unharmed and taken to a hospital.
Aug. 10: FBI agents release few details of the encounter with DiMaggio, citing policy to investigate all details before, during and after any encounter when an agent fires a weapon. Anderson is expected to be reunited with her father, Brett Anderson, on Sunday.
That timeline in itself is a heavy story, but what appears to have developed before it is even heavier.
Hannah Anderson Went To Hollywood With James Lee DiMaggio
There seems to be a storyline here that’s not being looked at because it’s just too icky, but it’s there. It points to a kind of too-close relationship Hannah and James Lee DiMaggio seemed to have. At 16, Hannah was certainly too young to know that Jim had sexual intentions with her, but what’s vexing is that he alone took her to Hollywood to celebrate her 16th birthday last month, and that her now late mother Christina let DiMaggio do it.
Why that was the case is beyond me, but it does make me think of a friend of mine and a relationship her 15-year-old daughter seemed to have with someone we mutually know, though he’s a friend to her and a distant acquaintance to me. At a football game last year, he and her daughter were really, uh, huggy – he was drunk on beer and she was just having a good time with a trusted friend of her mother. But at points the connection was almost erotic, and to a point that I’d never seen before expressed out in the open. My friend didn’t seem to mind and was apparently used to the relationship. I thought it was uncomfortable.
There’s a boundary that adult men are responsible for setting with teen girls, and the teen girl can’t be expected to know enough to do so. But also the mother and father of the teen girl has to set some ground rules for adult men to engage with their daughter, regardless of the depth of the friendship. In the extreme case of Hannah Anderson and James Lee DiMaggio, it didn’t look like those boundaries were there.
In an interview with an ABC affiliate, family friend Angelina Amati said that Dimaggio had a crush on the Hannah Anderson: “I honestly believe that Jim has snapped and couldn’t handle the infatuation that he had with Hannah.”
And that was behind the back of Brett Anderson, Hannah’s father, who was working in Tennessee and reportedly trusted James Lee DiMaggio to look out for the family. Jim repaid his friend’s trust by taking her to Hollywood for what was to be an entire week – it was cut short because the pair reportedly argued. James Lee DiMaggio was angry that Hannah was not giving him enough attention – that’s what the mainstream media reports say.
Stay tuned.