A five-year-old girl swimming at the community pool in Milton-Freewater was kidnapped in July 1985 by an ex-con and transported to Utah, where she was abandoned in a city park playground the following day.
Amanda Sargent was swimming with her older sisters at the pool in Yantis Park in downtown Milton-Freewater on July 9, 1985. She was last seen around 3 p.m. talking to an older man, who was reported to be driving a 1960s green Chrysler 2-door car. The girl’s parents, Harvey and Phyllis Sargent, and the Milton-Freewater police had no leads in her disappearance.
The following day, Amanda approached a truck driver at a Salt Lake City park saying she had been kidnapped. She told police officers that her abductor dropped her at the park and told her to play while he went to get hamburgers. He never returned. She was placed in foster care until her parents could fly to Utah to pick her up.
Phyllis Sargent said her daughter had been taught how to deal with strangers. “We’ve taught her not to be rude, but cautious, too,” Phyllis said. But Amanda was lured away by her weakness: chocolate ice cream.
Through the description of a witness and a license plate number, Milton-Freewater police were able to identify Patrick Thomas Redmond, 51, who had stayed at a local motel the night before the kidnapping. Redmond had been released from the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla the previous October after serving time for robbery, and had been wanted on probation violations since February. His home address was located in Ogden, Utah.
FBI agents arrested Redmond on a federal fugitive warrant July 11 at his home, and his wife Ruth was arrested on suspicion of police interference. She was later released on her own recognizance, but Redmond was booked into the Weber County Jail on a kidnapping charge, a federal offense.
During Redmond’s trial, jurors learned that Amanda had also been molested during the kidnapping, and were further outraged by his defense lawyer’s attempts to intimidate the girl on the witness stand. The jury returned a guilty verdict after just 40 minutes’ deliberation, and Redmond was sentenced to life in federal prison.
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