Investigators have discovered the blood of a missing 15-year-old Iowa girl on the truck of a registered sex offender suspected of kidnapping her Monday, diminishing the chances of finding her alive, a lead investigator said Thursday.

DNA testing confirmed that the blood found on the tailgate of the truck and in a hog confinement facility where 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard was taken after she was abducted belonged to the girl, said Bill Kietzman, special agent in charge of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

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Kietzman said the amount of blood found was enough to show that she suffered some injuries, and with three days having passed since she disappeared, those developments do not work “in our favor.”

“We are not giving up hope that we can find Kathlynn. Our intent is to find her and bring her home to her family. Clearly this evidence diminishes our hopes that we’re going to find her in a safe manner,” he said at a news conference.

Kathlynn and her 12-year-old friend were kidnapped while walking home from school in Dayton, a rural area about 60 miles north of Des Moines. The two had just stepped off their school bus when the suspect, Michael Klunder, lured them into his truck by offering to pay them for mowing lawns and to give them a ride home so they could ask their parents, Kietzman said.
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Instead, he took them to a hog confinement building where he worked and tied the girls’ hands with zip ties at an office inside the building. During the kidnapping, Klunder displayed what appeared to be a gun but was actually a “lethal weapon” used to euthanize livestock, Kietzman said.

The investigator said Klunder took Kathlynn to a different part of the building, and the 12-year-old girl was able to free her hands and escape. The younger girl grabbed the weapon that Klunder had left behind and ran through the woods, eventually finding a farmer and calling 911. Police then started looking for Kathlynn, a high school freshman.

Klunder, 42, was found dead hours later at another rural property, where his truck was also found. Authorities said he committed suicide; an autopsy completed Wednesday determined the cause of death was hanging.

Klunder was released from the state prison system in 2011 after serving 20 years for two kidnapping convictions in Iowa dating back to 1991.

Police said he persuaded a 21-year-old woman to pull over on the side of a highway near Mason City by flashing his lights and telling her one of her taillights was broken. When she got out, he used force to get her inside his vehicle, drove down a rural road and tried to assault her.

The next day, authorities said, he snatched two 3-year-old girls from a day care at an apartment complex in Charles City, put them in a trunk, and dumped them in a garbage bin 50 miles away, where they were found alive hours later. Klunder was arrested after fleeing to Texas.

Now, police are looking into whether Klunder had any connection to the slayings of two cousins who disappeared while riding their bikes last July in Evansdale, about 90 miles from Dayton. The bodies of the girls, 10-year-old Lyric Cook and 8-year-old Elizabeth Collins, were found in a wooded area in December.

“I really hope that it’s him. My fear all along was that this person was out there and could harm another child. Now we have another missing little girl, and I really do hope that it’s him,” said the cousins’ aunt, Tammy Brousseau.

Klunder got married last year to Lisa Flygstad, 33, and the two recently purchased a house in Stratford, near Dayton. Kietzman said Klunder’s wife has been cooperating with investigators and had no involvement in the kidnapping.

The Iowa Department of Corrections said Klunder completed sex offender treatment, and authorities declined to seek his continued confinement when his term expired because they did not have enough evidence to consider him a sexually violent predator. His 41-year prison term was cut short under Iowa law, which gives inmates an additional 1.2 days credit for every day served.

“It seems that he chooses females, but the age range doesn’t seem to matter. The little toddlers were only 3. The other woman was 21. These girls were 15 and 12,” Brousseau said. “Our girls were 8 and 10.”
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But the kidnapping allegations and suicide have stunned Klunder’s family, said Ron Ohotto Sr. of Mason City, whose son is married to Klunder’s sister. Ohotto said he met Klunder last year at a child’s birthday party and “he seemed like a pretty nice guy to me.” He said relatives thought Klunder was turning his life around after prison.

Kietzman said police were still trying to track Klunder’s movements after the kidnapping, and asked anyone who may have seen his pickup truck to come forward. He said the area being searched has expanded to 10 miles west and northwest of where Klunder’s body was found because new information showed he may have been there. He asked farmers in the area to search their own sheds, barns and other buildings for Kathlynn.

Thursday’s search involved 140 law enforcement officials and an additional 100 volunteers and more people would be needed Friday, Kietzman said, adding that investigators remained in close contact with Kathlynn’s family.

“They are still hopeful. They are still in prayer and hope that things work out the best,” he said. “But they understand that these are very important facts that we’ve given them.”

Search crews recovered the body of a missing fourth grader Thursday, a day after a gravel slide at a St. Paul park.

The child, identified by family members as 10-year-old Mohamed Fofana, was among four youngsters from a St. Louis Park, Minn., elementary school who plunged off a 30-foot bluff at Lilydale Regional Park after the ground gave way during a school field trip Wednesday.

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On Wednesday, officials found the body of 9-year-old Haysem Sani. Two other students from Peter Hobart Elementary School were injured in the slide. One boy is recovering at home, while the other is hospitalized in serious condition.

St. Paul Assistant Fire Chief Jim Smith said crews were able to recover Mohamed’s body in a short period of time Thursday because of improved weather conditions, more daylight and the fact that the fire hoses used Wednesday night cleared much of the mud and sediment away from the recovery site.

At a news conference Thursday, fire officials said the bodies of the two boys who died were found just four feet from each other. Both victims were buried under 4 to 5 feet of soil and rock, a tremendous amount of weight that would make it difficult if not impossible to escape from.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said the fossil area of the park is closed indefinitely and that no permits will be issued for fossil hunting.

Coleman said Thursday that “our hearts, our minds, our prayers and our thoughts go out to the families” of the victims, calling it “a tragic day for St. Paul.”

Bailey Bergman wrung the water from her socks Wednesday afternoon after spending three hours searching for a missing teenager, who with another girl was abducted after getting off of a school bus Monday afternoon.

Bergman, 21, didn’t mind soaked cowboy boots, wet from trudging through waist-high grass.

Her efforts came the same day as an announcement of a possible breakthrough: An official said backpacks and a purse belonging to the two abducted girls were discovered late Tuesday.

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The items boosted the hopes of officials and the family of the missing teen, Kathlynn Shepard, as the search for her entered a third day. The clues also helped narrow the search area, officials said.

Some of the 134 volunteers who pushed through a steady mist of rain Wednesday said they grew more determined knowing that with each passing hour Shepard faces increasingly long odds of being found alive.

It’s possible for Shepard to survive without food or water after three days and this week’s mild temperatures also helps her chances, said Bill Kietzman, special agent for the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. “Our concern grows, but we’re still trying to be optimistic and positive that we’re going to be able to find her.”

Shepard’s picture and description is now being broadcast on billboards across Iowa and elsewhere.

Law enforcement authorities know that the odds are stacked against the search.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the first three hours after an abduction are the most critical when trying to locate a missing child. A 2006 study indicated that of abducted children who are killed, 76.2 percent are slain within three hours of the abduction.

Shepard, 15, and a 12-year-old girl were abducted several blocks from an elementary school in Dayton. The suspect, Michael J. Klunder, 42, committed suicide about four hours after the kidnapping. He was a registered sex offender from the neighboring town of Stratford, where Bergman is from.

“We’re from a small community, and it’s crazy that something like this would happen,” Bergman said. “Definitely the hours are counting down. (Shepard) has been gone already awhile, so it’s pretty sad.”

Bergman’s father said he trudged with his daughter through stretches of land he grew up on. The happy memories of his childhood clashed with the reality of the abductions, he said.

“It’s not right,” said Tim Bergman, 48, of Stratford. “It’s kind of an uncomfortable feeling. But you gotta do what you do.”

Hundreds of people sprayed mosquito repellant on each other, then combed through ditches and woods near where the backpacks and purse were spotted. The bags were discarded in a ditch in Fraser, a town along the Des Moines River next to a wooded state park, an official said.

Fraser is about 15 miles south of where the girls were taken, and about 8 miles south of a hog confinement facility where the 12-year-old girl escaped shortly after her abduction.

Many wooded areas, deep ravines and overgrowth make the area near the river hard to reaches. ATVs are sometimes walked in, while other areas are only accessible by air, officials said.

“The fact that it could take a while is obviously true,” said Webster County Sheriff James Stubbs. “It’ll take until we’re done; until we find her.”

Even though Shepard is still missing, officials said they and her family remained optimistic she would be found alive and well.

In a statement, the Shepard’s family thanked everyone who has helped in the search. The family also asked for privacy.

“To see so much love in our community and surrounding areas is amazing. Thank you for all your prayers. We hope to have Kathlynn home soon,” the statement said.

The father of a 14-year-old boy who has been missing for six months is criticizing how missing children’s cases are handled by authorities in a written statement.

In an interview with The Durango Herald, Mark Redwine said that no Amber Alert was issued when his son Dylan first went missing on Nov. 19 because the case didn’t meet the criteria for an alert.

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“I am asking that we stop and evaluate the process as a community, to come up with a more productive approach in the search for Dylan and missing children across the country. No child who is missing should have to wait for certain criteria to be met before the public is notified and an alert be sent out,” Redwine wrote. “I am asking that we stop and evaluate the process as a community, to come up with a more productive approach in the search for Dylan and missing children across the country. I feel more should be done anytime a child goes missing.”

According to the U.S. Department of Justice Amber Alert site, law enforcement are required to confirm an abduction before they can issue an alert. The Amber Alert focuses on stranger abductions and requires that law enforcement take a “best judgement” approach as to whether issuing an alert is appropriate or necessary.

Dylan had been spending a court-ordered Thanksgiving visit with his father Mark Redwine when his father reported him missing from the home. Mark Redwine contacted the Bayfield Marshal’s Office that day to ask for help finding Dylan, and the teen’s mother contacted the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office to report the disappearance. Dylan’s parents are divorced.

Authorities have said that they do not believe Dylan ran away, in part because he has his cellphone and has not contacted any of his friends.

A week after the disappearance, investigators served a search warrant on Mark Redwine’s home that hasn’t turned up anything, while search teams have been using cadaver dogs and divers who have searched the Vallecito Lake-area numerous times.

“Mark’s and Dylan’s interactions and activities within the community on November 18th and 19th, as well as tips related to persons, locations and sightings remain under investigation,” the sheriff’s office told The Denver Post.

In February, Dylan’s parents taped a heated segment on Dr. Phil.

“I didn’t lose Dylan,” Mark Redwine said on the taped segment.

“Then why is he gone?” Dylan’s mother Elaine Redwine asks. “You have to answer that question. You had him, where is he?”

Elaine Redwine and son Cory have both accused Mark Redwine of being involved in Dylan’s disappearance, a charge that he has denied again and again.

“I feel the same pain, hurt and feeling of helplessness you and your mother feel,” Mark Redwine wrote to his son Cory in the letter. “I can’t make this any more clear, I don’t have Dylan, I have never had Dylan and I absolutely do not know where Dylan is.”

Anyone with information about the disappearance of Dylan Redwine is being asked to call La Plata County Sheriff’s Office Investigators Dan Patterson 970-382-7015 or Tom Cowing 970-382-7045. There is also a tip line at 970-382-7511 that is being checked regularly by investigators. There is a reward of more than $50,000.