Image on Tape Prompts Doubts on Kidnapping

LAS VEGAS — As detectives continued to probe the alleged kidnapping of an Encino stockbroker and Bible study teacher, doubts emerged Monday about the woman’s harrowing tale, sources close to the investigation said.

Chief among investigators’ concerns is an image on a grainy videotape showing Laura Dekkers’ silver BMW convertible pulling into the parking garage next to Whiskey Pete’s in Primm, Nev., just across the state line, where she was later rescued from the trunk of her car.

The tape, according to several sources who have reviewed it, appears to show a woman behind the wheel as the car enters the garage about 7:20 a.m. Sunday. There is no sign of Dekkers’ alleged assailant, whom she described as a slight, 5-foot-7-inch white man. About 10 minutes later, Dekkers, 44, phoned her husband and told him she had been kidnapped at gunpoint and was using her cellular phone to call from the trunk of her car.

Detectives have also been unable to determine the motive of the supposed kidnapper.

Information gleaned from the videotape seems to clash with Dekkers’ version of events, in which she said a masked gunman kidnapped her from outside her Encino church, bound her and forced her into the trunk of her BMW and left her there until she was able to free herself and use her cell phone to call for help.

“I just don’t think it happened the way she said it happened,” said a police source who asked not to be identified. “It’s going to take a while to sort it out.”

The police source said the woman might have made up the kidnapping story to account for her time away from home.

Even as investigators became increasingly skeptical of Dekkers’ account, they said they had not dismissed the possibility that Dekkers was telling the truth. Late Sunday, FBI forensics investigators scoured Dekkers’ car for clues.

“We’re following . . . routine procedure to find out if it’s true and correct,” said Special Agent Aurelio Flores, a spokesman for the FBI in Las Vegas. Another source close to the investigation said even the videotape image is open to interpretation.

“It could be a woman,” he said. “The image is not clear enough to say ‘Bingo! That’s her.’ ”

Michael J. Burke, director of security at Whiskey Pete’s, said he turned over the videotape from the garage to the FBI. A review of numerous tapes taken from the parking garage and nearby casinos showed no sign of Dekkers’ alleged assailant.

The Dekkers were too distraught to talk with a reporter as they embraced late Sunday outside the FBI office in Las Vegas. As tears streamed from his wife’s eyes, Henk Dekkers wrapped his arms around her and whispered: “It’s OK, it’s OK.”

Dekkers told authorities her ordeal began about 10 p.m. Saturday when a masked man kidnapped her from Bel-Air Presbyterian Church, commanded her at gunpoint to drive to a deserted location, forced her into the trunk of her car and bound her hands and feet. He drove for several hours with her in the trunk, she said, eventually going “round and round,” before the car came to a stop. She eventually was able to free her hands and feet.

After using her cell phone to call her husband, she dialed 911. Authorities, with the help of cellular telephone officials, were able to pinpoint the area from which Dekkers was making her call.

The “round and round” Dekkers described led them to a parking garage outside Whiskey Pete’s Casino, just across Interstate 15 from the Primm Valley Resort, formerly the Primadonna Casino, where Jeremy Strohmeyer raped and killed 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson last year.

Burke, the casino security official, said Dekkers was “distraught and elated” when California Highway Patrol officers helped her from the trunk. Authorities arranged for Dekkers to be transported by helicopter to University Medical Center in Las Vegas about 40 miles to the north.

Despite injuries initially described as serious, including severe dehydration, Dekkers was treated and released after several hours. From the hospital, she and her husband were taken to the FBI office, where she was interviewed by agents and detectives from the LAPD’s West Valley homicide unit.

Meanwhile friends and neighbors near the Dekkers’ two-story home on an Encino cul-de-sac near the Ventura Freeway responded to her account with incredulity.

Emily Warren, a friend of Dekkers’ for five years, said, “I can’t imagine for two seconds that what she said is not legitimate . . . that just seems unfathomable to me.”

The Rev. Care Crawford, a pastor at Bel-Air Presbyterian Church, said Dekkers started leading children’s activities during Saturday night services last month.

Crawford said she consoled and prayed with Dekkers’ husband at their home for more than five hours during Sunday’s most tense moments.

“Their family reflects the love of Jesus,” Crawford said.

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Glover reported from Las Vegas, Moore from Encino.