BLOOMFIELD, Conn. (AP) – Police seeking clues in the yearlong disappearance of a teenage girl found her Wednesday, pale but alive, locked in a hidden room in a home owned by a 41-year-old acquaintance.
Police went to the West Hartford home with search warrants to collect a swab of the man’s DNA and seek other evidence, but instead found the 15-year-old girl locked inside a tiny room hidden under a staircase and blocked from view by a dresser.
Authorities did not identify the girl, but said she had run away from home several times before she vanished last June.
“She is a child from troubled circumstances and found what she believed to be a friend,” Bloomfield Police Capt. Jeffrey Blatter said.
Police arrested Adam Gault, 41, a self-employed dog trainer, and 40-year-old Ann Murphy, described by police as Gault’s common-law wife. Police said Wednesday night they had also arrested a third woman who lived in the house, but other details were not available.
Gault was charged with second-degree unlawful restraint, second-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree custodial interference, interfering with an officer, risk of injury to a minor and second-degree forgery. He was held on $500,000 bond.
Murphy was charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree reckless endangerment, conspiracy to commit second-degree custodial interference and risk of injury to a minor. She was held on $100,000 bond.
Both were expected to appear Thursday in Hartford Superior Court.
Blatter said it did not appear the girl lived in the hidden room, and that police did not find bedding or other items that would suggest it was used as living space.
Police were unsure how long she was there before they found her Wednesday, but that she could not have opened the locked, barricaded door on her own.
Investigators said she was pale and may have been indoors for some time, and that they found nothing to indicate anyone in the area had seen her outside. Her parents had not seen her or heard anything from over the year she was missing.
The girl was in protective custody Wednesday night and was undergoing medical and psychological examinations.
“I think right off the bat we can assume a 14-year-old under the influence of a 40-year-old has been harmed in some way,” Blatter said of the girl, who was 14 when she disappeared.
Initially, investigators worried she might have been the victim of a homicide. In fact, Blatter said, they already had collected “bits and pieces of evidence that suggested foul play,” all of which were the basis for the search warrants.
Police already had established that Gault knew the girl, and said he and the girl’s parents had some sort of undisclosed business transaction in the year before she disappeared. Officers had questioned Gault several times, but he always denied any involvement in her disappearance.
Without a search warrant, investigators never got past Gault’s front door – until Wednesday morning.
West Hartford officers who served the warrants were searching the home’s disheveled interior when one of the investigators slid a dresser aside and discovered a small door.
He slid open the lock, opened the door and looked inside, then called out: “Lieutenant, you better get in here,” Blatter said.
They found the dark-haired, silent girl sitting inside the small room, which was about 3 feet high and 4 to 5 feet deep. West Hartford Police Capt. Lori Coppinger said the girl was scared and timid, and that she cried when she left the house.
Other people also had been living in the house, including a 15-year-old boy, though it wasn’t clear whose child he was.
The boy’s case has been referred to the Department of Children and Families, which will also decide if the missing girl should be returned to her parents.
She was described as a troubled child who had run away several times and could have been victimized by any one of several people.
“Unfortunately this juvenile was in a lifestyle that was not the greatest,” Blatter said. “This poor child has been through a lot.”
Police said they expect to make additional arrests. They are investigating whether Gault has been involved in any similar incidents.
By Wednesday afternoon, a large media contingent converged near Gault and Murphy’s white two-story home along the West Hartford/Newington line. An empty chain-link dog kennel with two doghouses could be seen in the back yard. A sign on the front door read, “Dogs loose. Do not open front door.”
Neighbor Jim Marshall said Gault and Murphy had lived in the house for five or six years and were quiet and kept to themselves.
Another neighbor, Linda Abel Palakewitz, said she did not know the couple well and had never seen the girl, whose picture she was shown by a detective Wednesday afternoon.
She said signs in the yard advertised puppies for sale, and that the couple held two large tag sales in the past year.
“To think that they can go and do that and have a child captive,” she said. “No one knows what goes on inside closed doors.”
Gwendolyn Wiley, 46, of Hartford worked at a nearby business and caught the bus home every day in front of Gault and Murphy’s home. She said the house was always closed up, even in the summer.
“I knew these people were real, real secretive,” Wiley said. “You never see them outside. I always thought that was strange.”
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Associated Press writer Stephen Singer in West Hartford contributed to this report.
AP-ES-06-06-07 2003EDT
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