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Last year Katie's mother also lodged a complaint with police against John Esposito, saying that she suspected him of molesting her son John, 16, a claim that he now supports. During the investigation into Katie's disappearance, it emerged that in the late 1970s Esposito pleaded guilty to the attempted abduction of a seven-year-old boy from a shopping mall. In 1988 he applied to join the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization, which offers role models to children from single-parent homes. When suspicious officials turned him down, he used a supermarket bulletin board to offer himself as a freelance mentor.
Last week Esposito pleaded not guilty to second-degree kidnapping in Katie's case. Police are searching the area around his home for signs that he may have used his dungeon to imprison other children. After Katie's rescue, child- welfare authorities went to court seeking an order to keep the girl from returning to her mother, who has promised to fight to regain custody. "I love her and can't wait for her to get back home," said Beers. To dramatize her own custody claim, Linda Inghilleri hung yellow ribbons on her house.
Suddenly, the girl whom no one seemed to take responsibility for is much in demand. Listen carefully, and you can hear the clicking of car phones as agents rush to sign up TV-movie rights. The scriptwriters will have a field day with Katie's worst moment, on New Year's Eve, when she sat chained in her dungeon, watching on the closed-circuit television as police searched for her upstairs. "I yelled for them," she reportedly told police after her release. "But they couldn't hear me." That's been her problem all her life.