Friday, January 29, 1999
Missing man, teen girlfriend found
BY SHEILA McLAUGHLIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
On the run with her 35-year-old boyfriend since September, 16-year-old Bessie Lou McCoy was ready to negotiate her return home to Millville Monday.
In a phone call from a Kroger store in Alvin, Texas, she told an aunt she wouldn't come home unless her parents allowed her to move in with her lover, James H. “Jay” Smith of Trenton, and agreed to drop charges against him.
That phone call touched off a chain of events that led police to Bessie on Wednesday and landed Mr. Smith in a Texas jail on a string of Ohio charges for allegedly taking Bessie from her parents.
Bessie, who is being held in juvenile detention in Engleton, Texas, is expected to return to Ohio next Wednesday, said her mother, Kathy McCoy.
Mr. Smith is jailed in Brazoria County, Texas, on Butler County charges, including one charge of felony corruption of a minor and six misdemeanor charges of contributing to the unruliness of a minor.
Ed and Kathy McCoy learned their daughter had been found when Butler County Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Thacker called at 3 p.m. Wednesday.
Mr. McCoy talked to his daughter Thursday, nearly 24 hours after police found Bessie at the Applewood Mobile Home Park in Alvin.
She and Mr. Smith had lived for the past month in Alvin, a city of 19,220 residents about 25 miles south of Houston.
“I asked how she was doing and she said she wasn't doing very well. She started crying. She said she wanted to come home, that she loved us and missed us very much. She wanted to talk to her mommy,” Mr. McCoy said.
“I told her we loved her and missed her and we want to see her.”
That conversation brought relief to her parents, who have pursued Mr. Smith and persuaded authorities to file charges against him after he left town with Bessie in his brown Ford pickup on Sept. 21.
The McCoys had tried to put a stop to the relationship since February, when they discovered Bessie was dating Mr. Smith. Bessie met Mr. Smith through a friend of hers.
“I thought Bessie was going to be rebellious toward us, that we would take the blame for getting Jay arrested. That's not the case. I'm very, very relieved,” Mr. McCoy said.
Mrs. McCoy said Bessie's aunt, Betty Mafnas of Hamilton, called police after the phone call from Bessie. Sgt. Thacker, with the help of the phone company, tracked Bessie's call to a pay phone at the grocery.
He said phone records indicate Bessie also called a friend the same day from a pay phone in Texas City, near Galveston.
Sgt. Thacker contacted Alvin police and sent pictures of Bessie and Mr. Smith and other case informa tion.
Alvin police set up a stakeout at the Kroger store Tuesday, on a hunch that Bessie might return to make another phone call, Sgt. Thacker said. Nothing happened.
The arrest happened by coincidence.
“On Wednesday, one of the detectives who was on surveillance the day before was going to eat lunch. She recognized the truck. When she saw the Ohio tags on it, she said, "That's him,'” Sgt. Thacker said.
“So she spun around and asked for help. They stopped him and arrested him.”
Mr. Smith, a divorced father of three, was pulled over on Alvin's main street. At first, he refused to tell police where Bessie was, Alvin Police Chief Mike Merkel said.
The officers searched his truck and found a receipt for an appliance repair shop with Mr. Smith's address on it.
“The detectives advised him they were going to go to the location and look through this trailer park and find her anyway, and it would be in his best interest to cooperate. He went ahead and confirmed that was where she was,” Chief Merkel said.
Police surrounded the two-bedroom trailer on Verhalen Road, surprising Bessie when she answered the door. She asked only for time to gather her clothes and find someone to take care of a basset hound, which she and Mr. Smith had adopted after their disappearance, Chief Merkel said.
“She was very quiet,” he said. But he said the look on Bessie's face told him “she was concerned about what was going to happen next.”
Mr. Smith refused to talk to police and asked for a lawyer, he said.
Mr. Smith apparently was working at the mobile home park as a maintenance man, according to Sgt. Thacker.
Mr. McCoy said his daughter, a Ross High School sophomore before her disappearance, was not attending school while she was on the run.
Where and how Bessie and Mr. Smith lived since their September disappearance remains a mystery. Sgt. Thacker hopes that Bessie will answer those questions.
He said police think Mr. Smith had relatives in Texas and that he and Bessie had briefly lived in Pasadena, closer to Houston.
Mr. Smith's mother, Jenny Smith of Trenton, said she has talked to her son twice since his arrest. Mr. Smith had contacted an uncle in October to let the family know he and Bessie were all right, but Mrs. Smith said she had not heard from him since his disappearance.
Mrs. Smith said she and her son talked at length. She broke the news to him that his grandfather had died while he was away.
“He's hoping to get back up here. He said he was doing fine,” Mrs. Smith said.
“I'm relieved. I knew that Bessie would be safe with him. But it was just not knowing where they were. I just hope everything has a happy ending. It's been tough.”
Mrs. McCoy now wonders what's ahead for her family.
She has been unable to reach her daughter and was not home when Bessie called on Thursday. She said detectives plan to fly to Texas on Monday to talk to Bessie and investigate.
“We're glad to have her coming home, but we're not naive people,” Mrs. McCoy said.
“We've got a psychologist lined up. We know there will be a lot of counseling needed, not only for Bessie, but for the whole family.”
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