Thread: TX: '08 kidnapping haunts Fletcher Corny Dog victim as men's

'08 kidnapping haunts Fletcher Corny Dog victim as men's charges reduced
11:00 PM CDT on Sunday, October 24, 2010
By WENDY HUNDLEY / The Dallas Morning News

It's been almost two years since Amber Fletcher was reported kidnapped from her Double Oak home and held for ransom.

While the day-long abduction ended with the young woman's safe return, she says she still hasn't recovered from the ordeal.

"I find it hard to be happy now," said the 23-year-old member of the family that has sold Fletcher's Corny Dogs at the State Fair of Texas for almost 70 years. "I feel as if I've been crippled, like my life has been stolen."

But the case against the three men charged with the crime recently crumbled amid allegations that Fletcher helped plan the kidnapping to extort money from her family.

Investigators involved in the case don't believe that Fletcher was involved. And the accusations are vehemently denied by her family.

"We feel from Day One she has had to defend herself," said Glenda Fletcher, Amber Fletcher's mother. "She feels like she wasn't treated like a victim."

"I love my family and would never do anything to hurt them," said Amber Fletcher, who has never been charged with the crime.

The three suspects – Adolfo Chavez, Candelario Romero and Placido Porras – originally were charged with aggravated kidnapping, a first-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

But their cases never went to trial, and the charges were reduced to third-degree felonies in plea agreements with the Denton County district attorney's office.

In August, Chavez pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of kidnapping. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and is under review for parole.

Last month, Romero and Porras each pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping. They received 20-month state jail sentences and credit for the time they'd already served in Denton County.

All three men were found to be in this country illegally. Porras has already been deported to Mexico. Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have placed a detainer on Chavez. Romero is in immigration custody, awaiting a deportation hearing.

The Fletchers said the sentences send a message that kidnapping isn't taken seriously in Denton County. "You can get 20 months for DWI," Glenda Fletcher said.


'Issues in the cases'

Jamie Beck, Denton County's first assistant district attorney, declined to discuss specifics of the kidnapping case. But she said the prosecutor's investigation revealed information that was favorable to the defense, and turned it over to the defendants' attorneys.

"Any time we enter into plea bargains it's because there are issues in the cases," Beck said.

Although she knows that the Fletcher family may not be happy with the outcome, she believes the men have been punished for the crime.

"These plea offers resulted in three men having final felony convictions," Beck said. "All served time. And all three will be deported."

Law enforcement officers who investigated the case don't believe Amber Fletcher was involved. They say Chavez, a former neighbor of the Fletchers, planned the kidnapping and hired Porras and Romero to help him extort $100,000 from the family.

"If I had any evidence that she was part of it, I would have arrested her," said Texas Ranger Tracy Murphree, who was called in to assist with the case after Amber Fletcher was reported missing on the morning of Dec. 8, 2008.

That's when she walked into her home and felt a blow to the back of her head and fell to the floor. She said her assailants blindfolded her, bound her hands with duct tape, and drove her away in a pickup.

Later that morning, she placed a phone call to her mother.

Glenda Fletcher knew something was wrong as soon as she heard her daughter's voice. "She said, 'Mom, I'm OK. I've been kidnapped and they want money,' " the mother recalls.

A man grabbed the phone. "If you do what I say, nothing will happen. If you don't, she'll be hurt," said Glenda Fletcher, who didn't recognize the voice of Chavez, a stonemason who once lived next door to the Fletcher family and had done masonry work for them.

That was the first of many phone calls through the long, tortuous day. Glenda Fletcher got the money demanded by the kidnappers but ignored their warnings not to call police.


End of ordeal

The ordeal ended that evening, when Glenda Fletcher, with a sheriff's deputy hiding in the backseat, went to meet Chavez on the pretext of giving him the ransom money in return for her daughter.

Police, who were following her, spotted a green Toyota Tundra trailing her car. They stopped the truck and arrested Chavez. He told them how to find Romero and Porras, who were holding Amber Fletcher.

But Chavez also blurted out something else when he was taken into custody.

"The first thing he said was that Amber was involved in this," Glenda Fletcher said.

At that point, law enforcement officials – not knowing what they were facing – took every precaution. When they found Amber Fletcher, they handcuffed her, along with her captors.

Police say that's standard procedure in those circumstances.

"It's common practice for us in any kidnapping or hostage situation," said Capt. Jeff Wawro, of the Denton County sheriff's office. "In those first few minutes, you're not sure who's the good guy and who's the bad guy."

He said Amber Fletcher was released after being interviewed. Wawro found no evidence to support Chavez's claim that she was an accomplice to the crime.

"We saw no credence to his outcry that she was involved," Wawro said. "If you're caught in aggravated kidnapping and you've got her cellphone and evidence in the vehicle, that's probably the only card you can play."

He said all the officers involved in the case felt blessed that the abduction ended with Amber Fletcher found alive and unharmed. "The odds were not in our favor," Wawro said. "We believe the good Lord stepped in."

When asked how he felt about the outcome of the case, he replied: "I don't think anyone who wore a badge that night went home with the warm-and-fuzzies once they found out results of the plea bargain."


Plea deal trend

So why didn't these cases go to trial?

Nationally, the majority of criminal cases end in plea deals. In this case, Denton County prosecutors may have felt that a jury would have been influenced by testimony that lent credibility to Chavez's allegations, such as statements about Amber Fletcher being handcuffed.

The timing of the December kidnapping may have been a problem, Murphree speculated. He said the Fletchers get paid late in the year for their State Fair concessions; jurors might have felt that only a family member would be privy to that information.

"I don't think it was a matter of the DA not believing Amber," the Texas ranger said. "They might have been worried that fact would have been a problem at trial."

The timing issue didn't concern Murphree, who felt Chavez, as a former neighbor of the Fletchers, "might have known when they got that money."

Murphree is convinced that Chavez alone planned the crime, noting that neither Romero nor Porras ever indicated that Amber Fletcher was an accomplice. "Why bring in two guys and not tell them that Amber is in on it?" Murphree asks.

Her own behavior during her captivity might have concerned prosecutors.

During those long hours, Amber Fletcher said her captors threatened to kill her numerous times, and she prayed that God would send angels to protect her. Her emotions ran the gamut from calm to terror.

In her calm moments, she tried to elicit sympathy from her captors. "I had an instinct to talk to them," she said. "I felt if I could talk to them they would see that I was human. It was soothing to hear a human voice and try to find a connection."

But at one point, "I was so scared and shaking that I grabbed one of their hands," she said. "He let me hold his hand and said this was all going to be over soon and they just wanted the money."

Under such circumstances, Murphree said her behavior was understandable.

"If you've got a young girl abducted by strangers, that's not out of the ordinary," he said. "It's a survival mechanism."


Haunting memory

Amber Fletcher said the trauma of the daylong-ordeal has left her depressed, anxious and estranged from her friends, yet afraid to be alone.

These are typical emotions suffered by crime victims, said Denise Paquette Boots, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas.

"If you can't find healthy coping mechanisms, you continue to be a victim and you can't reclaim your life," the criminologist said.

Amber Fletcher said she wants to put this behind her, continue her education and pursue a career in health or fitness.

But the memory of that December day still haunts her.

"Every time I come in my door," she said, "I'm bracing myself for an attack."

www.dallasnews.com

They say Chavez, a former neighbor of the Fletchers, planned the kidnapping and hired Porras and Romero to help him extort $100,000 from the family.

But for someone renting or selling this POS a home, someone giving him a job that allowed him to pay rent or buy a home and a truck, and an entire community looking the other way while illegals populate our towns, neighborhoods and schools so that they no longer stand out and are accepted, this would not have happened.

For the most part, once illegals get here they have little compulsion to avoid committing other crimes. We continue to allow importing uneducated, over-populating common criminals with groups that complain there is something wrong with those of us who object.