Man Charged With Kidnapping Girl, 11 She Was Released Unharmed, Officials Say, But Suspect Has A History Of Assault

A Marysville, Wash., man was charged Wednesday with first-degree kidnapping in the abduction of an 11-year-old girl last weekend.

Richard W. Haggerty, 36, is accused of grabbing the girl Saturday and forcing her into his car. He released her unharmed about four hours later at a nearby gas station.

The girl had been riding her bike with a friend in the Smokey Point area when the abduction occurred, police said. The younger girl, 9, called police with a description of the vehicle.

Shortly after the 11-year-old’s release, a deputy saw the car on Interstate 5 and arrested Haggerty.

The girl was not sexually assaulted or harmed in any other way, but Haggerty faces a first-degree kidnapping charge because his intent was to rape the girl, Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Mark Roe said.

Haggerty, scheduled for arraignment today, was being held on $1 million bail.

Haggerty was convicted of assault in 1982 for grabbing a girl at a park and holding her at knife point for two hours. He was treated as a sexual psychopath and spent time in prison, according to court papers.

His criminal history also includes a first-degree arson conviction. In a separate development, investigators from King and Pierce counties decided Haggerty was probably not linked to two previous abduction attempts in Tacoma and Tukwila.

Those incidents included:

A Tacoma woman’s report April 3 that she saw a child walking toward a man in a white car. The motorist sped away when the woman screamed.

A 10-year-old girls reports that a man called her to his car and exposed himself while she was walking to school in Tukwila one day after the Tacoma incident. The girl escaped uninjured.