California Mother, Son Were Tortured, Killed Before Teen Kidnapped

Wednesday, 14 August 2013 03:46 PM EDT ET

Search warrants say a family friend tortured and killed a mother and her 8-year old son before setting his San Diego-area home on fire and fleeing with the woman's 16-year-old daughter.

 

The warrants unsealed Wednesday say James Lee DiMaggio and Hannah Anderson exchanged about 13 calls before Hannah was picked up from cheerleading practice on Aug. 4.

Both phones were turned off, and the home burned several hours later.

The warrants do not describe the torture but say the body of 44-year-old Christina Anderson was found in the garage near a crowbar and what appeared to be blood next to her head. The body of Ethan Anderson was found as investigators sifted through rubble.

Hannah Anderson was later rescued when the FBI killed DiMaggio in the Idaho wilderness.

Hannah, 16 says Dimaggio threatened to kill her if she tried to escape, and he got what he deserved when he died in a shootout with authorities in the Idaho wilderness.

 

She went online barely 48 hours after her rescue Saturday and started fielding hundreds of questions through a social media site. Many were typical teenage fare — she likes singer Justin Bieber and her favorite color is pink — but she also answered queries about how she was kidnapped, how she survived captivity and how she is dealing with the deaths of her mother and brother.

The postings started Monday night, hours after her father publicly requested that the family be allowed to grieve and heal in private. Brett Anderson didn't respond to a text message seeking comment about his daughter's postings, which continued into Tuesday evening.

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San Diego County Sheriff's Department authorities sai they are aware of the online comments but couldn't confirm the account is Hannah's.

The postings appear on the ask.fm social-networking site account for "Hannahbanana722" of Lakeside, the San Diego County community where the teen lived with her mother and brother. At one point during the lengthy series of posts, a questioner asked Hannah to post a photo and she complied. The image shows her with a wide smile.

Dawn MacNabb, whose son, Alan, is one of Hannah's closest friends, confirmed the postings were by the teen. Alan spoke on the phone with Hannah on Tuesday and urged her to delete some of the postings, MacNabb said.

"He said she was going to, but I don't know if she will," she said.

Hannah declined interview requests from news organizations that posted to her account.

"He told us he was losing his house because of money issues so we went up there one last time to support him, and to have fun riding go karts up there but he tricked us," Hannah wrote.

"I wish I could go back in time and risk my life to try and save theirs. I will never forgive myself for not trying harder to save them," she wrote.

She said she "basically" stayed awake for six straight days and DiMaggio ignored her requests for food. She couldn't try to escape because DiMaggio had a gun and "threatened to kill me and anyone who tried to help."

Hannah said she was too frightened to ask for help when four horseback riders encountered the pair in the remote wilderness on Wednesday. The riders didn't report the sightings to police until the next day, after returning home and learning about the massive search spanning much of the western United States and parts of Canada and Mexico.

"I had to act calm I didn't want them to get hurt. I was scared that he would kill them," she wrote.

The girl said DiMaggio threatened to kill her if she didn't help hide his blue Nissan Versa with tree branches. Authorities discovered the car Friday, leading to her rescue the following day.

Asked if she would have preferred DiMaggio got a lifetime prison sentence instead of being killed by FBI agents, she said, "He deserved what he got."

Hannah acknowledged being uncomfortable around DiMaggio even before the ordeal, saying he once told her that he was drawn to her.

"He said it was more like a family crush like he had feelings as in he wanted nothing bad to happen to me," she wrote.

She said she didn't tell her parents because DiMaggio was his father's best friend "and I didn't want to ruin anything between them."

On Monday, Hannah had her nails done — pink for her mother and blue for her brother. She said she anticipates returning to El Capitan High School in the east San Diego suburb of Lakeside for her junior year.

She said she was still in shock. When one commenter said her responses appeared to lack emotion, she wrote, "I'm trying to stay strong. You don't know I could be crying answering these questions at the moment."

Therapists say Hannah faces a long recovery, but support from family and friends can help her lead a happy, productive life. Counselors may focus on acknowledging her trauma but not letting it control decisions.

Her father has told at least two people that he planned to move with Hannah to Tennessee, where he lives.

Moving would be a father's "very normal reaction," said Jessica Donohue-Dioh, a social work instructor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. She cautioned, however, that it shouldn't be an attempt to bury the past.

 

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Search warrants say a family friend tortured and killed a mother and her 8-year old son before setting his San Diego-area home on fire and fleeing with the woman's 16-year-old daughter.
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Wednesday, 14 August 2013 03:46 PM
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