A man and a woman were nabbed for luring an autistic teen they met online to a secluded cabin over 2,000 miles away, police said.
Ashton Talley, an 18-year-old high school senior from Blytheville, Ark., was found in a rural home near Eatonville, Wash., Thursday after being missing for almost a week.
Mississippi County sheriff’s deputies said a 56-year-old man and 28-year-old woman showed up at the teen’s home, lured her out and drove for three days to take her to their Washington state cabin, with possible sexual motivations, local channel KIRO reported.
Investigators had discovered that the teen received a text from a Washington number at 3:16 a.m. and responded at 3:17 a.m. the day she went missing.
The kidnappers had tried to befriend over 8,000 children on social media, cops said.
When authorities went to the cabin, they found Talley, the man and older woman and the man’s 14-year-old son, who was later taken to a relative’s home.
The girl was flown back to Arkansas by the FBI and reunited with her family Friday.
The teen had told friends at her high school she’d been communicating with a man and a woman on the internet, ABC Action News reported.
“One of her friends said somebody befriended her on the internet and he said he was going to come down and see her,” relative Mary Lynn Nicholson said.
The alleged kidnappers were booked in Pierce County Jail and are awaiting extradition to Arkansas.