TACOMA, Wash. — Theresa English only looked away for a minute.
It was Jan. 23, 1999, and English was watching her 2-year-old daughter play in the video arcade of a crowded bowling alley. The mother of five walked over to the lane where her friends and family were bowling, then quickly returned to the video games.
Teekah wasn't there.
English scanned the crowds of children and adults that filled Tacoma's New Frontier Lanes that Saturday night. She checked the spaces between the video games, in case Teekah was playing hide-and-seek. She walked into the women's restroom, where a cousin was changing her baby's diaper.
"Have you seen Teekah?" English asked, checking the stalls.
"No," her cousin replied.
English ran out of the bathroom and found an off-duty police officer, who started searching with her. Over the loudspeaker, a voice announced that a 2-year-old was missing.
People went on bowling, cheering for strikes and groaning for gutter balls. But English knew something was seriously wrong. Teekah was a mama's girl who cried when others tried to hold her. She wouldn't even let uncles or aunts pick her up.
English pushed open a side door near the arcade and stood in the cold night air, the heavy door muffling the clonk and clatter inside the bowling alley. She called her daughter's name again and again, her shouts fading into the woods surrounding the alley. Teekah was scared of the dark.
English felt panic welling up but pushed it back down.
"She's going to come back," she thought.
That night was the last time English saw her daughter.
One year later, investigators say Teekah's disappearance is a rare and baffling case that defies the pattern of most child abductions.
For weeks stretching into months, hundreds of police and volunteers searched the woods and neighborhoods near the bowling alley. Television, newspaper and radio reports carried Teekah's photograph and her description. Twenty-five detectives worked full time for a month on the case.
Tips poured in, but nothing led to Teekah.
Family Not Likely Suspects
At first, English and her family were prime suspects, if only because detectives knew the statistics: In 97% of all child abductions, the child is taken by a relative.
English seemed too calm, some investigators thought. An early police report described how her face remained blank when she picked up a newspaper with Teekah's picture on the front page. She stared at it briefly, then casually leafed through the pages.
