Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 8

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UK I Andersons' home Continued from page 1A in their 60s of abducting the boy, although the Andersons can point to 'no specific evidence that the neighbors have any involvement. The Andersons posted a sign on the lawn demanding that the neighbors "Bring Aaron Back The neighbors, feeling harassed and threatened, moved out of their retirement home and back to the Twin Cities. 4i 5D iMfn .1 xr mi 4 miles Star Tribune map 8A. Ik JT; 1 1 i i ja Pine City wJf)S I Area. I1-35 I shown ft, cr.r.J I Twin I Cities 1 Reupholstery Done in i uayw Sparkle up your holidays with stunning done and delivered before Santa comes down the chimney.

Select from hundreds of beautiful in-stock patterns 1 I -J I for a complete reupnoisteryjoD ai aDoui new me price of comparable new furniture. Chairs can start at only S129 and sofas at just $259, fabric and labor included. Shop in our showroom Staff Photo by Richard Sermon and save 5 on everything, or call now for a no-obligation home appointment. Steve and Paulette Anderson say they are certain their son, Aaron, was 822-3157 Visa MasterCard Accepted kidnapped by neighbors. am absolutely certain these people and their daughter kidnapped Aaron," Steve said recently, pointing to the empty house next door.

"That's just a figment of his imagination," said Lt Robert Johnson of the Pine County Sheriffs Department and the chief investigator in the case. Except for the recent discovery of a boy in Oklahoma who resembles Aaron, there has been no solid supporting abduction theories. Nevertheless, the notion that someone snatched Aaron on April 7, 1989, gained credibility after Steve Anderson talked to state and national advocacy groups for missing children. Yielding to pressure from the parents, Missing Children Minnesota issued posters two months after the boy vanished saying foul play was suspected. However, officials of the group never talked to law enforcement officers about the probabilities of foul play vs.

drowning. The group also disregarded a private investigator it retained who concluded that Aaron had most likely drowned. The missing-child posters reinforced the claim of Steve Anderson that Aaron was alive somewhere. "We deal in hope," said Carol Watson, executive director of the group. Watson conceded last week that the on for more than 3 minutes, and last saw him playing on a snowmobile a few feet from the house near his dog.

Searchers found the dog when they arrived to look for the boy. Police said they have no reason to doubt her story and don't suspect the Andersons or anyone else of foul play. The police bloodhound was allowed to smell some of the boy's clothing and tracked his scent in a straight path toward the river. "He sniffed and sniffed the snowmobile and then went right to the river," said Sgt. John Mattson of nearby Chisago County, the dog-handler.

The bloodhound stopped about 25 feet from the water, probably because it was distracted by about two dozen people searching there, Mattson said. "I would still say the dog was telling me that the track went to the river," said Mattson, an officer with 17 years of experience. "We went elsewhere to see if the dog picked up something, but it never showed the same degree of excitement. I would bet the boy went in the river. I guess the kid either stumbled, or his dog bumped him, or the kid just fell in.

The river was really raging. It's normally placid. "I can't see calling it an abduction unless you have some shred of evidence," Mattson said. Investigator Johnson has drawn the same conclusion. on have moved back to a condo in Serving the Twin Cities Since 1951 2909 BRYANT AVE.

MPLS the Twin Cities and abandoned plans to retire in their home along the Snake River. "They are just given to total harassment of us," the woman FURNITURE MANUFACTURING 2 said of the Andersons. The Ander sons sometimes stared at the neigh bors when they came outside. Then Steve posted the sign with red letters facing the neighbors' back yard. The Otowft (3M0 EKittSi S8 neighbors also found it unnerving that Meve sometimes would begin target shooting in his back yard when they came outside.

"I'd shoot to intimidate these people because they kidnapped my son. said Steve, who is trying to build a case against them. The Andersons' Anne Cohn National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse "The Changing Face of Child Abuse" Thursday, December 6 Noon suspicions are based partly on their belief that the neighbors didn't like them. Meve said it he werent a David Rogers, the private detective retained by Missing Children Minnesota, agreed. "I don't think he was abducted by a stranger from an area like that," said Rogers, who specializes in missing children cases.

"It's much different than the (Jacob) Wet-terling case, where someone apparently followed the boys from a store. My primary theory is he drowned." Rogers and police also rejected the accusation that the older couple and their daughter, or more distant neighbors, were somehow involved. None had motives or means to take the boy. Moreover, authorities questioned other people associated with the Andersons but came up with nothing. The next door neighbors were home that afternoon and visiting with their daughter, who lives down the road.

They didn't see the boy, police said. The daughter and Paulette both passed polygraph tests. While Paulette looked for Aaron she saw the neighbors and approached them for help. "The river was surging that day," recalled the 62-year-old former neighbor woman. "The ice had just gone out." Paulette said she hadn't considered the river.

"I didn't even think he was anyplace near the river. I didn't think he went down there." Paulette said she searched around the house and driveway for 15 minutes before going down to the river. The couple accused of snatching Aar Christian, they "wouldn't be walking "The highest probability goes to the boy in the river," he said. and talking and breathing. Watson of Missing Children Minne sota said Anderson accusation against his neighbors "is very unfor tunate.

I think any family under Co-sponsor The McKnight Foundation Moderator Donald M. Meisel stress can become tixated on things. The neighbor woman said, "I felt nothing but compassion for the family. They are positive that baby has Carried over Minnesota Public Radio Network In the Twin Cities, KNOW AM 1330 and KSJN FM 91.1 been abducted. They are just grief-stricken people.

They have not accepted (the possibility of drowning) and choose us as the scapegoat. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC This Forum will be interpreted for hearing impaired people. WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Nicollet Mall at Twelfth Street, Minneapolis Steve Anderson said, "There isn't any way I can tell you what that little boy means to me. I will find him no matter who tries to stand in the 'pji eOCBiociGQM "ft 'Raff. I way." Germany Continued from page 1A environmental issues remain their uppermost concern, the Greens, who most plausible explanation is that Aaron drowned.

But she defended printing "Foul Play on his missing-person poster. She hoped the wording would "encourage people to take (the case) seriously. 'A slight possibility of foul play' doesn't fit well on a poster." Soon after Aaron disappeared, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington, D.C., included him on its list of nearly 400 "stranger abductions." The childrens' pictures are mailed to SS million households. But officials of the organization were unfamiliar with details of the police investigation and relied primarily on Steve Anderson's account. "We don't do investigation," said Ben Ermini, director of case management for the National Center.

"We don't go into it as thoroughly as the local authorities." Abduction theories have lingered partly because county and state investigators cannot prove Aaron drowned or otherwise died accidentally. None of Aaron's clothing, including a hat and boots, was recovered during extensive searches of the Snake River and its banks 6 miles to the St. Croix River. More than a hundred people over several days participated in the searches, which included checking a square mile of farm fields and woods. A helicopter, divers and dredging equipment were used.

Authorities even tossed in a dummy the same size and weight of Aaron to test the currents. They recovered it about 200 yards downstream, but found no evidence of Aaron there. The belief that he drowned is based on a bloodhound tracking his scent toward the river, which was swollen and fast-moving with spring runoff. It had risen to the level of the back yard and was about ISO feet from where Aaron was last seen playing. Steve, 35, a carpenter, was working at a construction job in the Twin Cities the day his son disappeared.

Paulette, 27, put Aaron outside around 4 p.m. and prepared dinner. She said that the boy was outside for a short time and that she looked out the window four times to check on him. Paulette said she never took her eyes off Aar- early this year fought against unification, lost nearly half their support in many areas of the country. "We were left behind by the euphoria," said Pine County Sheriff John Kozisek agreed, but added, "What's puzzling is why we haven't come up with some piece of clothing or something.

I've spent hundreds of hours on this. You wake up in the middle of the night thinking of the little guy. We can't rule out anything due to the fact that we came up with nothing." There have been hundreds of reported sightings of boys resembling Aaron. The most promising occurred in September when the Oklahoma boy with a striking resemblance to Aaron was reported to authorities by his foster parent, who saw a flyer with Aaron's picture. The boy is in the custody of Tulsa social services, which received him abandoned and underweight.

They cannot find a birth certificate or other evidence to support a claim that he's the son of a Tulsa woman. The youngster is about the right age for Aaron, 3'j years. He also has birthmarks and other physical characteristics of the Minnesota boy. After viewing videotape of the youngster, Johnson flew to Tulsa in September. Steve and Paulette, who have been at odds with Pine County investigators, drove down.

They viewed the boy through one-way glass. Paulette said she thought he was Aaron; Steve has doubts. Authorities are conducting DNA tests on the boy to determine if he belongs to the Andersons. Results could be available this week. In the unlikely event that the boy is Aaron, he probably wasn't abducted by strangers because of the remote location of the Anderson home, investigators said.

It's off a curve in a gravel road about 7 miles from Pine City and not easily seen. Kitchen windows gave Paulette views of the driveway and the road about 175 feet away, as well as Aaron. "If it's an abduction, it darn well would have to be someone who knew the family because of the location," Johnson said. "It just wouldn't be someone sneaking through the woods and stealing the kid." Greens leader Hans-Christian Stoe-bele. "The voters didn't accept our issues, but these issues won't go Celebrate This Holiday Season With Save On Two Pound Pre-Packed Boxes Of ASSORTED away.

The Christian Democrats also won municipal elections in the new capi tal city of Berlin, ousting a coalition CHOCOLATES or of Social Democrats and Greens. But no party came close to a majority, and the two largest parties eventually come clean on the soaring costs of unification. After congratulating the winner, Lafontaine said: "We will see very soon that ours was the right course. In the long run, we had the right issues. This was a generational election, and we won the support of the youth." Kohl's coalition will control 394 of the 656 seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament, which has been expanded by 144 members to accommodate eastern Germany.

The Social Democrats will hold 240 seats; the former East German Communists 14; and Alliance '90, the coalition of grass-roots groups that organized last year's East German revolution, seven. The environmentalist Greens, who had 42 seats in the last parliament but fell into internal bickering over German unification, suffered a crushing blow in western Germany, failing to receive 5 percent of the vote, the minimum necessary to win seats in the Bundestag. Greens candidates who ran separately in eastern Germany did surpass the percent thresh-hold, meaning the party will have seven seats in the new Bundestag, all from the east. may have to form a "grand coalition" to govern the city. Although the German unification treaty granted CREAMS $12.95 Berlin the title ot capital, Bonn re mains the seat of government until the new parliament considers the On Sale Monday, December 3 Sunday.

December 9 question next year. The turnout on a wet, wintry day was the lowest in postwar German histo ry only 77 percent, compared to Ten Shops To Serve You 84 percent in West Germany three years ago and 93 percent in the first free vote in East Germany this March. Leaders of most parties To send amdy to someone special or to receive free catalog Call 1-800-323-FMAY blamed the low turnout on Kohl's vast lead in opinion polls and the Although Germans tell pollsters that Germany continued on page 14A fig Dazzle, With A Gift From The Sea. Mikimoto pearls. The world's finest cultured pearl jewelry includes lustrous strands, bracelets, earrings and rings.

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