Important Finding In Zahra Baker’s Case
Police has a new lead in the case of Zahra Baker’s, after finding a prosthetic leg which is believed to belong to the missing girl. Yesterday, search crews exploring a wooded area found the prothesis near a home along Christie Road in Caldwell County and thought it could be Zahra’s. “The prosthetic leg is consistent with what Zahra’s would be like,” explained the Hickory Police Chief. The 10-years-old girl lost her real leg when she was 5, after being diagnosed with bone cancer.
According to Tom Adkins, after finding the prosthetic leg the crews returned to the family’s house, in Hickory, in search for further evidence, as this new find was made just a few miles from a former home of Zahra’s stepmother, Elisa Baker. And they did discover new evidence there, but the police refused to give any details about their findings.
As a result of these new evidence, Zahra’s father, Adam Baker, was released from jail a few hours later. He was arrested four days ago on charges unrelated to his daughter’s disappearance: five counts of worthless checks and five counts of failure to appear in court, but all the deeds were committed prior to Zahraʼs announced missing. Adam Baker was captured at a Charlotte international airport and he told authorities that he had gone there to pick up some relatives. He was asked to come back to Hickory for questioning and was subsequently jailed on a $7,000 bond. Yesterday he left the Catawba County Jail just after 6 pm.
Meanwhile Zahraʼs stepmother, Elisa Baker, remains in police custody, after being charged with obstruction of justice and arrested. The woman admitted she wrote a phony ransom note. But afterwards she started to cooperate with the authorities and was taken from her cell and driven to at least two areas that were later searched by officials for clues about the missing girl.
The discovery of the prosthetic legs yesterday comes after another important finding made by the police on Tuesday: a mattress they say may have belonged to Zahra Baker. The mattress was found by several workers who were grading the Foothills Environmental Landfill in an area that had been searched last week. “This mattress possessed DNA evidence that will be tested in the future to confirm if it is involved with this investigation,” Hickory police said in a statement. Authorities consider the mattress a key piece in the investigation and believe that it could help them establish an accurate timeline for Zahra’s disappearance. The mattress was handed over to the State Bureau of Investigation for testing.
Zahra Baker was reported missing on October the 9th, when her father made a 911 call after he discovered taht his 10-year-old girl was missing, or possibly kidnapped. In the almost 5-minute phone call the man explained that he had been terrorized by a group of kidnappers who allegedly left a ransom note for his bosses’ daughter. He also mentioned his suspcion that the girl was taken during the melee when a fire was set in the back yard at his house, possibly by the mysterious kidnappers he mentioned before. “We checked in there last night about 2:30 a.m. and she was there. I don’t know if they set a fire in the yard to distract us to go out and then they snuck in the door,” Baker explained on the phone. Then he briefly described Zahra and also told the dispatcher that the “kidnappers” took her prosthetic leg.
After the call was made, an extensive search for the girl started, taking law enforcement from her house in Hickory to rural land outside Morganton, from houses the family used to live in near Granite Falls to a Caldwell County landfill and many other sites. And, although her body has not yet been found, the police believe Zahra is dead. And, without any clear evidence, no one has been charged in Zahra’s disappearance.
