Origin Story: Amber Hagerman

Written by: Kenzie Desrosiers

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On the afternoon of January 13, 1996, Amber Hagerman, 9, and her brother, Ricky, 5, left their grandmother’s home in Arlington, Texas, on their bikes. They rode their bikes to the parking lot of an abandoned Winn-Dixie.

A short while later, Ricky decided to head back to their grandmother’s house, about two blocks away.

Minutes later, Jimmie Kevil, 78, witnessed a man force Amber into the bed of his pickup truck from his backyard. “I saw [Amber] riding up and down…She was by herself. I saw this black pickup. He pulled up, jumped out and grabbed her. When she screamed, I figured the police ought to know about it, so I called them,” he said.

Jimmie told police that Amber tried to kick her abductor. He then pulled out of the parking lot and headed west on Abram Street.

According to Kevil, the abductor was a white or hispanic male in his 20s or 30s, under 6 feet tall with a medium build and dark hair.

When Ricky returned alone the family immediately began looking for Amber. When they arrived at the abandoned lot, police officers were already on scene. All that was found was Amber’s pink and white bicycle that she had got for Christmas.

More than 50 police officers and FBI agents participated in the search for Amber. But five day after her disappearance, a man walking his dog discovered Amber’s naked body near a drainage culvert in a creek bed behind an apartment complex.

However, maintenance workers at the apartment complex who were working near the creek bed saw nothing. It is believed that the thunderstorm the night before caused a rapid rise in the creek water, which carried her body down stream.

Amber was found lying facedown on a cement slab where the water drains from the pipe. She was totally nude except for a sock on her left foot. There were several lacerations to her throat, from either a knife or a screwdriver, which had been used to rip her throat out.

According to detectives, Amber was kept alive for at least two days after she was abducted.

According to Detective Randy Lockhart of the Arlington Police Department, “Randy, AMber’s younger brother, turned out to be coached and/or unreliable and Kevil, who allegedly saw the abduction from his backyard, opened the door wearing a Howdy Doody costume.”

Lockhart stated that six people later confessed to the crime. Two were in jail at the time and the rest were cleared. Detectives spent a lot of time believing that Diane Simone’s boyfriend could be involved. “They got back together and, within two weeks, they were getting married during the investigation. About two weeks after that he was… according to the medical examiner, he had a seizure and wrecked on 287 and so now he’s dead.”

In the aftermath of Amber’s death, the America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response alert system, otherwise known as an AMBER Alert was established in honor of Amber. When a child is abducted, law enforcement sends an alert to radio and television stations, lottery systems, the Department of Transportation and the NCMEC.

In 1998, 8-week-old Rae-Leigh Bradbury became the first child rescued as a result of an AMBER Alert. Hagerman’s murder remains unsolved.