FBI joins search for kidnapped girl in southern Louisiana

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Posted 5:50PM on Friday, March 29, 2002

HATHAWAY, La. - Dozens of FBI agents joined the search Friday for a 12-year-old girl snatched from outside her home in southwestern Louisiana. Holli Thibodeaux was abducted Thursday at the Hathaway Village Trailer Park after the driver of a pickup truck stopped to ask for directions, said Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards. The man grabbed Thibodeaux, threw her into his truck and drove north on Louisiana Highway 26, Edwards said. Another girl who was with Thibodeaux ran and escaped. The FBI released a composite sketch of the suspect -- a blond white man -- and said they were looking for a light blue, full-sized pickup truck with a new silver toolbox and a red-and-yellow ladder in the back. "If it takes weeks, we'll stay weeks. If it takes longer, we'll stay longer," FBI agent Kenneth Kaiser said. Kaiser said agents had several leads and had gathered evidence from the kidnapping site, which was outside the trailer where Holli lived with her mother, Robyn Cormier, and a 16-year-old sister. Her parents are divorced, but her father, Brian Thibodeaux of nearby Lake Arthur, joined the family and talked to reporters. "I have a lot of concern, hope, wondering and a lot of anger, a lot of anger," Thibodeaux said. Family and friends gathered Thursday outside a high school for a prayer vigil with the family. "It's not fair," said Halie Blanchard, a friend of Thibodeaux's in the fifth grade. "Why'd they have to pick her? I mean she didn't do anything wrong or anything." Edwards said investigators also are looking into recent reports of attempted abductions in Eunice, 18 miles east of Hathaway, to see if any are similar to Thibodeaux's kidnapping.