Flour Child Missing Students In Garry Middle School’s Life Skills Class Search For Kidnapped ‘Baby’

The evidence of irresponsible parenting was all over teacher Eric Johnson’s life skills classroom at Garry Middle School.

A trail of white flour, marked off with police tape, led from the counter where Johnson left his flour-bag baby and disappeared around a corner.

“We only have nine days to find it, or the baby’s probably dead,” said seventh-grader Trevor Rendall, who was a member of a team investigating the kidnapping of baby Kimberly. “We think the teachers are involved somehow.”

Kimberly was the prototype baby for the parenting unit of the eighth-grade life skills class. Her 5-pound flour bag body was swaddled in a disposable diaper and pink baby clothes. Her paper-plate head was fringed with wavy white hair and dominated by a pacifier.

While Johnson insisted his students stick by their own flour babies 24 hours a day for four days to learn just how difficult parenting is, he admitted he regularly left Kimberly unattended and even failed to take her home over the weekend.

When he returned to class on Monday last week, Kimberly was gone. A note left on his desk read, “Johnson, History lesson. Ha ha. Remember the Lindberghs.”

Johnson was genuinely surprised, and soon found members of Jim Kappelman’s seventh-grade life science classes, who do not have flour babies, coming into his classroom to investigate.

Other notes turned up on Johnson’s desk in the days after the disappearance.

Kappelman appointed himself police chief, and turned each of his classes into separate precincts. He sent some students into Johnson’s class under cover, disguised as new students.

Johnson, who teaches culinary skills in addition to effective parenting, offered to bake a 5-pound chocolate cake for the precinct that finds baby Kimberly.

During third period Friday, Kappelman interrupted Johnson’s class with a team bearing fingerprinting supplies.

“We need to print you,” Kappelman announced.

“Print me!” Johnson said, a tad defensively.

“You’ve been handling the evidence,” Kappelman explained. The fingerprinting crew scribbled a lead pencil onto paper, rolled Johnson’s fingers onto the lead, then transferred the prints by using scotch tape.

Meanwhile, Johnson continued to question his class about their experiences as flour-bag parents. The novelty quickly wore off for the students, who were tired of lugging flour sacks everywhere.

Parents and other teachers were asked to monitor the students and make sure they didn’t neglect the flour children.

“I hate that thing,” said Grace Fetters, who had only been carrying her sack around for two days. “It’s annoying.”

Meanwhile, their peers in Ron Jones’ history class were reading articles on the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby, five years after his historic solo flight across the Atlantic. Jones assigned the reading after hearing the buzz around school about the flour-napping.

Seventh-graders in the life science class were analyzing the kidnapper’s notes, among other clues, and pursuing possible leads.

Student April Wilwert was intrigued with the date of the Lindbergh kidnapping, March 1, 1932, and spent time playing around with the numerals in the date.

She came up with some combinations that could be room numbers, including one to a storage area in Kappelman’s room. When Wilwert peeked in, she thought she saw incriminating evidence.

“It looked like a (baby) blanket, I wasn’t sure,” she said.

Suddenly, Kappelman became a prime suspect and students were trying to find probable cause to justify obtaining a search warrant to go through his storage room.

“I don’t know why,” he said. “I’m the chief of police, for crying out loud! I should be beyond reproach.”

Wilwert said she suspects the blanket was a plant to discredit Kappelman, reasoning, “Why would he do all this work for nothing?”

Other teachers were also implicated. A note anonymously appeared in Kappelman’s mailbox signed by a teacher named Sue. The note asked a third teacher to have her class cut block letters to spell the word “neglect.”

“Fingerprint her!” cried the fingerprinting team.

Kappelman noted that life skills teacher Sue Beck recently had a guest speaker from a child abuse and neglect prevention organization.

“That’s a lead,” said student investigator Joe Brownlee.

“It’s probably worth chasing,” Kappelman agreed.

The students have until Friday to find the baby. Then, Kappelman said, they’ll decide whether Johnson’s a fit father or whether the sack of flour needs a new home.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)