Arrest made in
child’s killingThe 7-year-old girl had lived i
n Hawaii before her abduction
in 1999 in Vallejo, Calif.
SAN JOSE, Calif. >> An imprisoned kidnapper was reportedly arrested yesterday in the murder of 7-year-old Xiana Fairchild more than four years after she went missing and over three years after the former Hawaii girl's skull was found in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Xiana Fairchild: Her accused killer, already in jail, allegedly admitted to kidnapping
Curtis Dean Anderson, a prime suspect in the case after admitting in jailhouse interviews that he kidnapped the Vallejo girl, will be charged with murder, kidnapping and child molestation, the San Jose Mercury News reported today.
"They believe at this time they have sufficient evidence -- physical -- and through interviews to ... arrest and charge Mr. Anderson," Santa Clara County sheriff's Capt. John Hirokawa told the paper. The Santa Clara County district attorney's office announced the arrest yesterday and planned to reveal more details at a news conference today.
Fairchild was reported missing on Dec. 9, 1999, by her mother, Antoinette Robinson. Her skull was found Jan. 19, 2001, in mountains south of their Vallejo home.
Stephanie Kahalekulu, a great-aunt who helped raise Fairchild in Hawaii and Colorado until the girl went to Vallejo six months before her disappearance, helped mount an extensive search for the girl. Kahalekulu has since moved to California.
Fairchild's great uncle, Sisto Domingo of Honolulu, told KHNL-TV last night that people have suggested the family may find closure for their grief if the killer is identified and convicted. But, he said, for people who loved Fairchild "we will never be able to put it aside." Domingo, a cameraman for the station, helped launch a campaign to bring national attention to her disappearance.
Robinson's live-in boyfriend, Robert Turnbough, told police he last saw the girl when he dropped her off at a school bus stop on her way to school.
Turnbough would later say that Fairchild left the house by herself. He said he lied because he was afraid he would become a suspect since he had once been convicted of scalding a 9-month-old. A few days later, the gray sweat pants Turnbough had said Fairchild was wearing when she disappeared turned up in the laundry. Turnbough said he had assumed that's what the girl was wearing. Both Turnbough and Robinson denied having anything to do with Fairchild's disappearance.
The case took an unusual turn in the summer of 2000 when another girl was kidnapped from the streets of Vallejo -- and escaped.
Anderson, the man convicted in the 8-year-old's kidnapping, turned out to have a long history of abusing women. He also had lived in Vallejo at the time Fairchild disappeared and had worked for the same cab company for which Robinson and Turnbough had once worked, although not at the same time.
From jail, Anderson made a number of statements, including telling Kahalekulu and reporters that he kidnapped Fairchild and kept her for two weeks and then gave her, alive, to someone else. He was sentenced to 251 years in prison.
Star-Bulletin reporter Mary Adamski contributed to this report.
