Boy perhaps foul play victim

Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN)

Dateline: Benton County, Indiana

By Matt Holsapple

Police are seeking the public's help in solving the disappearance of a Benton County boy who has been missing for seven weeks

Nicolas Zavala, 12, of 303 W. Pine St., Oxford, was first reported missing by his grandmother on Aug. 13, and the Benton County Sheriff's Department has run out of leads in attempting to locate him, Deputy Butch Pritchett said Monday.

For more than a month, police were investigating the disappearance as a parental abduction, suspecting the boy's mother. But they have recently broadened the investigation, suspecting foul play.

"We don't feel like we have a kidnapping," Pritchett said. "We just don't know."

When Nicolas's grandmother, Margaret Williams, reported him missing in August, she told police that she had dropped him off at the Oxford Public Library on Aug. 4 to meet a friend's family for a weeklong camping trip.

The family was scheduled to return to Oxford on Aug. 12, the day before Nicolas's classes were to begin at Oxford Elementary School.

Oxford Elementary officials confirmed Monday that Williams registered Nicolas as a sixth-grader for the school year, which began the same day he was reported missing.

Pritchett said Williams told police that she did not know the name or phone number of the friends that her grandson was supposed to meet, nor did she see them after she dropped the boy off.

The only thing she could tell investigators was that he had talked about two boys, named Kevin and "Hiney."

Pritchett, however, said that as police investigated and tried to find the missing family, they determined that Kevin and "Hiney" did not exist.

"Grandma said they went to the same church as Nicolas, but they don't exist at the church. She said Kevin was in his class at school, but there wasn't any Kevin," Pritchett said. "This boy doesn't exist."

Pritchett said that when police discovered the friends didn't exist and that the camping trip hadn't happened, they began to suspect an abduction by Nicolas's mother, Cindy Molina.

Molina is living in Virginia and has not had custody of Nicolas for several years. Most of that time he spent as a ward of the court, moving in and out of foster care in the Joliet, Ill., area, until his grandmother took temporary custody of him in February.

"Grandma came in and saved the day," Pritchett said.

A hearing had been scheduled for Aug. 26 in a Will County, Ill., court, where Williams was expected to become the boy's legal guardian. Nicolas had been living in Oxford with Williams and his uncle, McGill Campos.

But Pritchett said Nicolas was not happy about that. He said Williams told police that Nicolas wanted to move out of his grandmother's house and live with his mother.

Police developed the theory that Nicolas had made arrangements with his mother to pick him up at the library so the two of them could flee the area together. Williams had not been in contact with Molina, her daughter, and did not know her phone number or where she was living, other than that it was somewhere in Virginia.

Pritchett said the Benton County Sheriff's Department spent the past month looking for Molina, getting assistance from several other agencies, including some in Illinois and Virginia.

Mother wanted answers

"Basically everything led to Mom taking the kid," Pritchett said. "He was very streetwise. We suspected he had made arrangements to meet his mother."

That all changed last weekend, however, when Molina arrived in Benton County - without her son.

"She wanted to know where her child was at," Pritchett said. "She wanted to know why we hadn't been to the media to help find him."

On Thursday, Molina took a polygraph about her son's disappearance, one Pritchett said she passed. Williams refused to submit to a similar test.

Pritchett said police also made contact with Nicolas's father in Kankakee, Ill. Nicolas was not with him, and the father told local officers that he knew nothing of his whereabouts.

"The authorities there don't think he had anything to do with it," Pritchett said. "In fact, he hasn't had anything to do with his son in the past 12 years."

Pritchett said the department now is sure of very little in the case. He said they are working under the assumption now that he was never dropped off at the library Aug. 4 and likely disappeared sometime between then and Aug. 13.

He said they don't even have enough information to know what kind of foul play to suspect in the disappearance. He does suspect that information is being withheld by people in the boy's family.

"We don't know if there's a body out there somewhere," Pritchett said. "You can't squeeze information out of someone. You can't give them the rubber hose treatment. I don't think we're getting everything from that house."

How to help

Nicolas Zavala, 12, is described as 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighing 90 pounds. He has hazel eyes and black hair with two distinct white patches near his right temple. He also has a noticeable scar on his right earlobe.

He was first reported missing Aug. 13.

Anyone with any information should contact either Deputy Butch Pritchett or Sheriff Ernie Winchester of the Benton County Sheriff's Department at (765) 884-0080.

PHOTO CAPTION

NICOLAS ZAVALA: Police describe the 12-year-old as `very streetwise'. Photo submitted