Missing 7-Year-Old case solved

The mystery of Amber Swartz-Garcia, a 7-year-old Northern California girl who disappeared after going to jump rope outside her home 21 years ago, has been solved, police said Monday. Curtis Dean Anderson confessed in 2007 — a month before dying in prison — that he kidnapped and killed Amber, Pinole Police Chief Paul Clancy said.

Amber Swartz-Garcia was 7 years old when she went outside to jump rope on June 3, 1988. She never returned. On Monday, 21 years after she disappeared, police in the Northern California town of Pinole said they know what happened to her.

Anderson, 46, died of natural causes in December 2007 while serving a sentence of more than 300 years for kidnapping and sexually assaulting two other young girls. He was sentenced to 251 years for the 2000 abduction and sexual assault of an 8-year-old Vallejo girl and was sentenced to another 50 years to life after pleading guilty to the 1999 kidnapping, molestation and murder of a 7-year-old girl, also from Vallejo.

At a Monday news conference announcing the case was closed, police distributed copies of Anderson's brief handwritten statement that read, "If there is no pursuit of the death penalty, I will freely admit my role in being responsible for the death of Amber Swartz-Garcia." (So much for the claim that criminals are not influenced by the death penalty.) See Chick's KIDNAPPED.