Somer Thompson’s Brief Moment on Earth Ended by Child Killer
by 7-year-old girl’s body found less than a week after she disappeared.
It all began so innocently, yet evil would strike like the unerring thrust of a viper. Somer Thompson, her twin brother, and her sister walked the mile home from school on Monday afternoon with some friends. Somer was squabbling with another girl, and her sister told her to stop. Somer got upset and walked ahead of the group, never to be seen again.
Somer Thompson
Part of the Search, Jacksonville.com
It is eerily reminiscent of the Lindsey Baum incident, wherein various circumstances, the stuff of ordinary life, left her alone at a critical moment. Nothing should have come of it except that Somer’s home town of Orange Park, Florida seems like a retirement home for sex offenders. There are 161 registered sex offenders residing within a 6-mile radius of the Thompson home, more than 16 times as many of them as there are McDonald’s franchises, and 90 sex offenders within a 3-mile radius.
Greater Jacksonville Area, Organge Park near Center, refiai.com
If someone witnessed an abduction that night, or heard anything unusual, the Sheriff’s Department is not making that public. As residents formed search parties, one investigator had a good idea. Garbage pick-up was scheduled for Tuesday night in the area where Somer disappeared. Investigators followed the garbage trucks some 50 miles north to a landfill in Folkson, Georgia. There they found the body of a young girl, whom they would later identify as Somer Thompson by a birthmark and the clothes she had on.
The landfill finding allowed a forensics team a fresh opportunity to examine and collect evidence from and near the body, but it also firmly guided the investigators back down south to the neighborhood from which the garbage was taken.
“There is a child killer on the loose,” said Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler. He also told Good Morning America: “We feel very comfortable that we are going to solve this case.” At this writing, more than half of the registered sex offenders had been interviewed.
If you think such a concentration of sex offenders defies the odds, experts say such a cluster is not unusual for an area so close to a big city. Orange Park is a suburb of Jacksonville. But that’s cold comfort for the Thompsons or their friends and neighbors in this cruel case, because it only takes one.
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