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Allen's group, founded in the early '80s, culls data from 30 federal agencies, 44 state-level missing-children clearinghouses and more than 60 private organizations. When a minor is confirmed missing, NCMEC transmits a photo and a biography to 17,000 law-enforcement groups. "The reality is that most missing kids are going to be recovered," says Allen.
FBI experts hope to complete a psychological profile of the typical snatch- and-slay perpetrator next year. In the one recent case where the murderer was caught, however -- the killing of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma, California, by Richard Allen Davis, 39 -- there was less interest in Davis' psyche than in his rap sheet. First booked at age 12 for stealing checks, he escaped charges in the shotgun death of a girlfriend seven years later but served a total of eight years for a burglary and two assaults on other women, one involving kidnapping. Free again in 1985, he abducted a female acquaintance and forced her at knifepoint to withdraw $6,000 from the bank. He got 16 years for that, but thanks to California's rules mandating early release for good behavior, Davis served only half; emerging just in time, if his confession is to be believed, to relax at a bucolic, vine-decorated "transitional living" facility in San Mateo County before arriving in Polly Klaas' bedroom with his knife.
The details of his second parole, which became widely known after Davis was charged with Klaas' murder two weeks ago, have helped fuel the petition campaign for a measure titled "Three Strikes and You're Out." The California initiative, whose language is similar to a bill recently adopted in Washington State, triples the sentence of a violent felon convicted for the third time, effectively jailing him for a minimum of 25 years. Says its coordinator, Chuck Cavalier: "We had tremendous support before the Klaas case, but ((since Davis was captured)) our 800 number has got so many calls we blew out the voice-mail systems." (Not everybody is signing up, however. State assemblyman John Burton notes, "I don't think it's a good idea to load up the wagon with criminals that are felons . . . but who are not grave threats to individual safety.")
Kenneth Lanning, special supervisory agent at the FBI Academy's Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, stresses that parents should not obsess on murder-kidnappers. Concentrating too hard on "stranger-danger," he says, "is like putting a lightning rod on your home and canceling your homeowner's insurance. You're prepared for one terrible but highly unlikely event and unprepared for a host of things that are far more likely." Although Lanning understands the horror that a Klaas case generates, he points out that family violence exacts a much higher toll. "In the two months that you put all this energy and these resources into one child who's been abducted," he says, "200 kids are murdered by their mother or father."