TV Crime Show Leads Fbi To Kidnap Suspect

Within three hours after their story was depicted on the television show “America’s Most Wanted,” an 8-year-old Seattle boy and his alleged kidnapper were found by FBI agents in a Manhattan hotel early Sunday, the FBI said.

Jason J. Murphy, 19, who faces charges of kidnapping and child molestation in Snohomish County, Wash., was being held on a federal fugitive warrant. The boy, Nicholas Sullivan, was taken to an unidentified state medical facility in New York City, and a preliminary exam showed him to be in good health, FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette said.

Nicholas’ parents, Laura Stringfellow and David Sullivan, who are divorced, headed to New York to claim their son but got only as far as St. Louis before their flight was canceled by the blizzard hammering the Northeast.

Both were philosophical about being stranded at least overnight.

“He just seems so far away,” Stringfellow said of her son. “There’s nothing that can be done. It’s really frustrating. I’m anxious to give him a big hug.”

Sullivan said Nicholas, in a 10-minute phone conversation, seemed “tired and kind of sad. It kind of came to an abrupt end and I don’t think he really got to say goodbye to Jason,” he said.

The boy and Murphy had been the subjects of a nationwide search since Wednesday, when the child vanished after his mother dropped him off at a school in Lynnwood, Wash., a suburb north of Seattle.

Murphy had been free on $5,000 bail on charges including a previous alleged molestation incident involving the 8-year-old.

Valiquette said the FBI-police raid on the Hotel Grand Union in midtown Manhattan was the “direct result” of Saturday night’s broadcast of “America’s Most Wanted,” a crime show that re-creates unsolved cases.

He said a clerk at the hotel saw the 9 p.m. program and immediately recognized the pair as a man and boy who had been staying in an $86-a-night room since Friday.

“The clerk called the police, the police called ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ ‘America’s Most Wanted’ called the FBI in Seattle and the FBI in Seattle called the FBI here,” Valiquette said.

At 12:45 a.m., officers went to the secondfloor room and found the boy and Murphy. “There was absolutely no problem with the arrest,” he said.