A LOT OF PEOPLE SENSED THERE was something wrong in the life of 10-year-old Katie Beers. No one seemed in a position to do much about it. To the neighbors in West Islip, a Long Island suburb, she was the wide-eyed little girl who roamed the streets at all hours, sometimes coatless in the winter. Child- protection authorities had built up a fat dossier on her makeshift family. They knew that sometimes Katie stayed with her unmarried mother in a filthy, roach-infested house where rusted cars and an old refrigerator decorated the lawn. But sometimes she was in the charge of her godmother, who summoned the girl to run errands by pounding on the floor of the bedroom where she spent much of the day.
Then there was John Esposito, a 43-year-old family friend, who lavished gifts on Katie and her teenage half-brother. On Dec. 28, Esposito reported that Katie had vanished from a video-game arcade where they had gone together. He didn't say he was the one who abducted her. Last week the girl was rescued from a small underground chamber where Esposito had kept her hidden for 16 days. Most of that time, Katie was kept in a coffinlike loft, 2 ft. by 3 ft., that contained a mattress, pillows and a television; often, she was chained by the neck. Every day Esposito brought his prisoner meals. Police suspect that sometimes he stayed to fondle her.
After weeks under a close police watch, a frightened Esposito finally directed investigators to the soundproof bunker. Authorities who later questioned the girl said she told them she was forced into the room after refusing sexual advances from Esposito. Katie "told us she was screaming when she was thrust into this," said Detective Lieut. Dominick Varrone.
An independent contractor, Esposito quietly built the chamber 18 months ago beneath his home, a converted garage behind the house where he grew up. So well concealed that police posted on the property did not suspect it was there, the room could be reached only by using a block and tackle to lift a 200-lb. concrete trapdoor hidden beneath a carpet. Then it was necessary to climb down a 7-ft. ladder to a narrow passage that led to the mini-dungeon. Though it had only a camp toilet, the room was equipped with ventilation and a closed-circuit TV that enabled Esposito to keep an eye on his living quarters upstairs.
While a suburban childhood was never so idyllic as baby-boomer folklore would have it, it was never supposed to be anything like Katie's, in a fractured family with sexual predators circling at the edges. Her mother Marilyn Beers, 43, wasn't married to the girl's father and says she is not even sure who he is. When Katie was two months old, Beers handed her off to Linda Inghilleri, 39, a godmother who became a surrogate parent, though by some reports not much of one. From first grade on, Katie was absent from school much of the time. She spent many days instead doing laundry and shopping. Inghilleri sent her out regularly for candy, takeout food and cigarettes.
In recent years the two women squabbled over custody of the girl. Last year Marilyn Beers took her back for some time after accusing Inghilleri's husband Sal, 39, of sexually molesting the child. With his trial pending, Sal Inghilleri says the allegation is a ploy to prevent his now estranged wife from gaining custody.