How Could This Happen?

Thursday May 23, 2002 11:18 AM EDT

Rousted from bed at 7 a.m. after oversleeping, Ashley Pond threw on Tommy Hilfiger jeans, a spaghetti-strap shirt and a sweatshirt. Yelling, "Bye, Mom, I love you," she dashed out the door of their Oregon City apartment to walk a quarter mile to the bus stop. It would be late afternoon before her mother realized that Ashley, a 12-year-old seventh grader, never made it to school.

In coming days news of the disappearance shook the working-class town of Oregon City. Parents urged their children to travel in pairs. Police distributed flyers about Ashley and posted signs encouraging residents to phone a hot line with tips. But as the weeks passed, calls to the hot line dwindled, and most precautions fell by the wayside. Life for everyone but the Pond family began to return to normal.

Two months later, on March 8, Miranda Gaddis, 13, another seventh grader who lived in the same apartment complex, hurried to get ready for school. Tossing on rhinestone jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, she exchanged "love ya's," with her mother before heading for the bus stop. She never got there. Somehow, just like Ashley, on an ordinary morning in broad daylight, within 500 yards of her home, Miranda Gaddis vanished.

Despite the efforts of a joint task force of up to 40 FBI agents and local officers, authorities can as yet do little more than speculate that the two girls were kidnapped by the same person -- and marvel at the brazenness of the crime. "Two girls, two times, in broad daylight," says Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI profiler. "Either the perpetrator is awful damn lucky or he's done this before."