Ekaterina Shcherbakova -- Missing 4/5/98

by Justice4all Sun May 23, 2010 11:37 am

Girl went missing in 1998, two months before abduction and murder of Christina Williams

By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Salinas Bureau

For 12 years she believed that her daughter had run away and made a new life for herself somewhere else.

Then an FBI agent knocked on her door.

Ekaterina Shcherbakova's mother says she still clings to hope that "Katie" is alive, that the FBI is wrong and a report of their investigation will spark her daughter to call or come home.

"Please mention that I'm always thinking about her and whatever happened in the past, I don't care as long as she will come back to us safe," the mother said.

Ekaterina disappeared in 1998, two months before the abduction and murder of Christina Williams. Ekaterina is still listed as an "endangered runaway" on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website. FBI special agent John O'Brien believes she may have died at the hands of Charles Holifield, who is suspected in Christina's killing.

"He didn't really prove to me that my daughter was involved in that case with that criminal," said Ekaterina's mother, a Monterey resident who asked that her name not be used. Her last name is different than her daughter's.

"He didn't really give me proof that she is not alive," she said. "I do want closure to that ... but he cannot give me that proof."

The family immigrated from Russia in 1990. Ekaterina had just turned 5 years old. Her mother remembers her as a happy, strong, kind-hearted girl.

Then she was forced by district boundary lines to enter sixth grade at King Middle School, separating her from her friends
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from Foothill Elementary School, who went to Colton Middle School. Ekaterina, her mother said, reached out to the wrong people, got in trouble and was transferred to a class at Fitch Middle School for children with behavioral issues.

Things went from bad to worse, her mother said. Eventually, Ekaterina made it back to King, but by then the relationship between daughter and mother was so strained that she felt she lost the girl.

"It was so hard because we couldn't connect anymore. It was not the same daughter I knew when she was going to Foothill. I was her enemy and they were her friends," she said of the children Ekaterina hung out with.

On April 5, 1998, the 13-year-old left her Casanova Street home to walk to the corner of San Pablo Avenue and Judson Street in Seaside where one friend lived. The girl later told police Ekaterina stayed until about 8 p.m. She saw her walking toward Fremont Boulevard on her way home.

It was the last time Ekaterina was seen.

Her mother first reported her as a possible kidnap victim, but quickly concluded she was a runaway. There were clothes missing from her room and, after posters were hung around town with Ekaterina's photo, she got several dropped calls. There were unconfirmed reports of sightings by other local kids.

Monterey police, and later the FBI, concluded the girl had run away.

A new look at the case by a special team at the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and O'Brien led them to believe that may not be the case. Bob Lowery, executive director for the missing children's division at the center, said his agency is offering resources to the FBI that will include specially trained teams and cadaver dogs to search for "clandestine gravesites," probably on Fort Ord, where Christina Williams' remains were found.

"All cases of missing children are open until we locate those children," Lowery said. "We always make a presumption that the children are alive."

He said he didn't want to offer "false hope" to Katie's family, but pointed to the case of Jaycee Dugard, who was found last year in Antioch living with the man who kidnapped her in 1991.

"We never abandon hope," he said.

Neither will Ekaterina's mother. She said she and her family continue to celebrate Katie's birthday each year, holding on to the belief that she is out there somewhere.

http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_15145972?nclick_check=1