SAN DIEGO – Hannah Anderson says a longtime family friend “tricked” her into visiting his house, tied up her mother and younger brother in his garage and kidnapped her, setting off a massive search that stretched across much of the western U.S.
And when she later learned her mother and brother were found dead in her captor’s burning Southern California house, the 16-year-old said she cried all night.
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“I wish I could go back in time and risk my life to try and save theirs. I will never forgive myself for not trying harder to save them,” she wrote in a harrowing account on a social media site roughly two days after she was rescued and FBI agents killed James Lee DiMaggio in the Idaho wilderness.
Many of the hundreds of the questions she fielded on the social media site were typical teenage fare, including her favorite musical performers, but she also told of how she was kidnapped, how she survived captivity and how she is coping with the deaths of her mother and brother.
The postings, which began Monday night and stopped Tuesday night, appeared on the ask.fm social-networking site account for “Hannahbanana722” of Lakeside, the San Diego suburb where the teen lived with her mother and brother. The account was disabled Wednesday.
DiMaggio, 40, was shot at least five times in the head and chest, said authorities, who were unable to determine a precise number of gunshot wounds. DiMaggio’s body was cremated Tuesday, said family spokesman Andrew Spanswick.
Police have said little about the investigation. A spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said authorities were aware of the online comments but could not confirm the account was Hannah’s.
Dawn MacNabb, whose son, Alan, is one of Hannah’s closest friends, confirmed the postings were by the teen.
Anderson was kidnapped Aug. 4 by DiMaggio, her father’s best friend who was like an uncle to her and her brother, Ethan. DiMaggio had them and their mother, Christina Anderson, 44, to his house in Boulevard, a rural town 65 miles east of San Diego.
“He told us he was losing his house because of money issues so we went up there one last time to support him … but he tricked us,” Hannah wrote.
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