St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 8

JUL 1 0 2001 A8 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH NEWS TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2001 Girl Kansas City detectives and St Louis Detective Sgt Joe Burgoon, who worked extensively on St Louis "Jane Doe" case, have compared notes, and they don't think the murders are linked. "There's too many years between the cases," Burgoon said Monday. "Also, Kansas City's victim is much younger, and she was a victim of prior physical abuse, while ours wasn't" Bill Bryan of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this article. St Louis case St Louis police had a similar case of an unidentified, decapitated girl in February 1983.

The body of the girl, about 8-10 years old, was discovered in a vacant building in the 5600 block of Clemens Avenue. The head was never found. The case is still unsolved, and the girl's identity is still unknown. to hold her precious. Mourners by the dozens attend vigils every Saturday to pray for justice on her behalf.

They write poems and send her sympathy cards: "May your voice outshine the other angels that surround you." "All our prayers and thoughts will be with you as we watch our children grow." Carol Coe, a local attorney, has spent hours answering a tip hotline and distributing Precious Doe's picture. "If like she is a member of the family," Coe explained. Added City Councilman Alvin Brooks: "It's become an obsession with some of us." Volunteers say the tragedy has unified the city: black or white, rich or poor, urban or suburban, the outrage is universal "I still wake up at night, thinking about her," Brown said, tears spilling down her cheeks. "My heart's desire is to find out who this child is, and who did this to her." dusk for an elderly man who had wandered from his home. As they walked a gravel path inside the wooded lot, they saw the girL She was lying, uncovered, on her stomach just a foot or two off the path.

Her head was gone. Police searched the woods several blocks north of Swope Park with dogs until after midnight but could not find her head. The next day, and the next, they hunted. Volunteers began to comb the woods, too. On May 1, one found the garbage bag.

Police will not say how the child was killed. They focus instead on the reconstructed sketch of the girl as her relatives would have known her a wide-eyed tot in cornrows. That sketch is all over Kansas City. It's on T-shirts. If on billboards.

Even the porn shop around the corner from the wooded lot has it posted in the window. Community activist Betty Brown named the girl Precious Doe. And Kansas City does seem will remain unclaimed.They will not rest until that someone comes forward with her name. Across the street from the woods where she was found, a memorial grows more elaborate by the day. There are hundreds of stuffed animals under a metal awning, balloons, baby dolls, a little red drum, the picture book "Harry Goes to Day Camp." It's all for her, if only she could know it For the girl they call Precious Doe.

"I've been here 11 years, and this is the biggest community outpouring I can remember," said Sgt David Bernard, the lead detective on the case. "The fact that someone could not only take her life but her identity that really rings a chord." Indeed, from the day the news broke, this case has stirred uncommon passion. Detectives accidentally stumbled across her body April 28. They had been searching an east Kansas City neighborhood at VETERAN EX-IRS AGENTS Frsa Tax Satttamant Analysis: Confidential krtarvlaw in Our Local Offica 800-925-9609 www.ikharris.com "mSttt ftlotlon) most iuoqomM tixm nhitfoo oompsny. -Tho Wtafl Slnot JourmI JK Harris Company- St 5 i i i get DSL Internet any easier have someone else read this ad for you DSL And To Mystery surrounds case of dead youngster in K.C.

Continued from Al She was someone's daughter, perhaps someone's niece? About 3 feet tall, 41 pounds. Someone might remember her giggle. Doesnt anybody know her name? 1 Investigators have tried all the obvious leads. They have canvassed local schools, pediatricians and day-care centersj They have knocked on doors in the neighborhood where she was found. The case has been featured twice on "America's Most Wanted." Scouring national missing-person reports, the FBI has identified two dozen families looking for a daughter about the same age.

They have taken blood samples to compare with the Kansas City girl's DNA. Results are still coming in, but so far there have been no matches. And every one of the hundreds of tips that have poured in from around the country has so far checked out false. The little girl remains anonymous. There are plenty of theories about why no one has claimed her.

She could have been abducted from another state, far from the publicity blitz that has saturated Kansas City. Her parents could have been killed, too. Or they could have been the killers. The theories make sense. But detectives and ordinary folks in Kansas City refuse to accept them as the final word.

They simply will not believe that the girl Arms US takes stand at UM meeting Continued from Al JN. officials insist that this conference is not about taking guns away from Americans, but about keeping hundreds of millions of weapons out of the hands of child soldiers and pick-up armies, often in the poorest countries. But the meeting has set off a reaction in the United States among those opposed to gun control. The United Nations has received scores of angry letters and faxes, and has collected some strongly worded press releases and posters from groups concerned about the issue. Last week, Jayantha Dhanapa-la, the undersecretary-general for disarmament, announced the publication of a booklet called "Setting the Record Straight," which was intended to allay American fears.

i But a widening gap between Europe and the United States over how broad an agreement is needed to combat the spread of weapons along with charges from officials and private groups represented at the conference that plenty of legal American guns are finding their way into crime and combat around the world has heightened American sensitivity. Rep. Bob Barr, rejected U.N. efforts to calm the gun lobby. Barr is on the House Judiciary Committee and the board of directors of the National Rifle Association.

He is attending the conference as an official observer. "You look at this," Barr said, holding up a working paper at a news conference, "and there are a number of areas that (are) very explicitly set forth that could very well be used to directly involve the United Nations in domestic firearms policy." The United Nations estimates that there are more than 500 million small arms in the world. It says 40 percent to 60 percent of them have been acquired illegally r- on the black market, by bartering commodities like diamonds or through deals that obscure or falsify the weapons' source or destination, or both. There is no legally accepted definition of small arms or light weapons, though the United Nations tried in 1997 to describe them collectively as "any weapon that can be fired, maintained and transported by one person." 1 Such arms include pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars and some missiles. The Associated Press provided information for this report V.

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