Dateline: July 31, 2008

Three arrests following kidnapping Monday

Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

A Lelia Lake man was arrested Monday and charged with kidnapping after his victim got loose at a Clarendon supermarket.

James Michael Brinkley, age 37, was booked into the Donley County Jail; and Sheriff Butch Blackburn expected he would be arraigned Tuesday afternoon.

Blackburn could not reveal all the details of the case, saying it originated elsewhere.

“We inherited a mess,” the sheriff said. “Most of this started in Amarillo.”

Blackburn said sometime Monday morning a 52-year-old white man who resides in McLean was kidnapped in Amarillo by two or possibly three subjects.

The man was bound and put in a white van which was later being driven through Clarendon, followed by the victim’s red Lincoln Navigator, which was driven by one of the suspects. The vehicles then pulled off at Lowe’s Family Center.

Doug Kidd, who lives west of the supermarket, and his neighbor, Ed Laney, were on Laney’s porch when the vehicles pulled quickly into the parking lot.

“The van stopped next to Lowe’s, and an SUV pulled up beside it sort of in the ditch there,” Kidd said. “The people in the vehicles were talking, and then we noticed someone running away from the vehicle, and the cars took off north under the railroad tracks.”

Blackburn said the victim had somehow freed himself of the tape binding his hands, found a pocket knife, and stabbed the driver of the van before jumping out of the vehicle.

“A witness saw the victim removing the tape after he got out of the van, and there was tape in the parking lot,” Blackburn said.

Inside Lowe’s, Annette Osburn had just clocked out at 12:08 p.m. and was headed for the front door when the victim came into the store.

“He came running through, screaming, ‘Call the cops! I’ve been kidnapped!’” Osburn said. “Then he went over there (past the checkers) and flopped down started saying he needed a drink of water.”

Osburn and co-worker Karen Wortham said they didn’t know what to think of the man.

“He seemed very upset, very distraught,” Wortham said, noting that he went to the water fountain several times.

Osburn called the sheriff’s office and said, contrary to some rumors going around town, he never went near anybody in the store and didn’t threaten anyone.

Blackburn said when his department questioned the victim, he reported that he had been kidnapped; and he gave officers a description of the white van he had been held in.

“He also reported there was another victim – a white female – being held against her will,” Blackburn said.

Local officers recognized the vehicle description as belonging to a residence near Lelia Lake and soon found the victim’s Lincoln Navigator abandoned on County Road R.

“There were shoe tracks and vehicle tracks indicating another vehicle,” the sheriff said.

That vehicle, the white van, was located at a residence on County Road 19 near Lelia Lake. There Blackburn and Collingsworth County Sheriff Joe Stewart gained consent to search the residence and found 32-year-old Stephanie Boggs of Hereford hidden beneath a large pile of towels in a bedroom.

Boggs told the sheriffs that she was being held against her will; and Brinkley, who had a superficial stab wound, was placed under arrest.

Blackburn said Boggs was brought to his office to be interviewed, and she was subsequently placed under arrest and booked into the Donley County Jail for possession of methamphetamine.

In late breaking news, a third person connected to the case was stopped by a Donley County Deputy for a traffic violation Tuesday morning and arrested. The sheriff’s office was not releasing the details of that arrest as the Enterprise went to press.

Blackburn said the investigation is still ongoing in the case but said county residents are safe.

“All suspects in Donley County are accounted for and have been arrested,” the sheriff said, “and all the victims are safe at this time.”

Blackburn would not go on the record about the motives for the kidnappings, but he did say all of the people involved in the case have criminal histories.

Assisting with the Donley County Sheriff’s Office with this case were the Collingsworth County Sheriff’s Office, the Department of Pubic Safety, the Amarillo Police Department, and Texas Ranger Alvin Smit.