The abductions have resulted in "the biggest criminal investigation this city has ever seen," says Oregon City Police Chief Gordon Huiras. Yet that has done little to calm the fears of this Portland suburb's 26,000 residents. "People are being told it could be someone nearby," says Michele Knoph, 46, who lives in the same complex with her 12-year-old son Patrick.

On the mornings both girls disappeared, residents in the 125-unit Newell Creek Village apartments reported nothing amiss. They heard no shouts, noticed no signs of a scuffle. Yet the girls' loved ones insist that neither teen would have gotten into an unfamiliar car or surrendered to a stranger without a struggle. "Miranda is a tough little girl," says her youth pastor Ken Swatman. "Miranda would have fought." And Ashley? "She would have put up a tremendous fight," says her mother, Lori Pond, 29.

Such certainty has convinced Oregon City residents that the girls knew the kidnapper -- and that the perpetrator is still living in their midst. That fear has put local residents in the uncomfortable position of eyeing each other warily, even as they reach out to comfort and reassure one another. "It's scary to talk with anyone," says Katrina Ellicott, 12, who is on the dance team at Gardiner Middle School with both girls. "Someone says hi, and you just want to run."

Investigators concede that they've made no headway on the case. After fielding some 3,200 tips and interviewing thousands of people, including 90 percent of the registered sex offenders in the Portland metro area, Charles Mathews, who heads the FBI field office in Oregon, says, "We have no information as to where they are or what happened to them." Absent a body, a crime scene or any forensic evidence, investigators and profilers from FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va., are focusing on the brashest aspects of the case: the repetition of a crime at the same time of day in the same place. "It is something that even to our behavioral scientists is unique in their experience," he says.