LAKESIDE, Calif. — A man suspected of abducting a 16-year-old girl told her he had a crush on her and would date her if they were the same age, a friend of the girl said Wednesday as police searched for the man who is also wanted in the death of the girl’s mother and possibly her 8-year-old brother.
Marissa Chavez, 15, said James Lee DiMaggio explained that he didn’t want the girls to think he was weird in an effort to defend himself. She said he spoke while driving them home from a high school gymnastics meet a couple of months ago.
Hannah Anderson asked Marissa to join her from then on whenever DiMaggio, 40, drove her to meets.
“She was a little creeped out by it,” Marissa said. “She didn’t want to be alone with him.”
DiMaggio was like an uncle to Hannah and 8-year-old Ethan. He was close with their parents for years.
On Sunday night, authorities found the body of 42-year-old Christina Anderson when they extinguished flames at DiMaggio’s rural home. A child’s body was found as they sifted through rubble in Boulevard, a tiny town 65 miles east of San Diego on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The child has not been identified, but it might be Ethan, sheriff’s Lt. Glenn Giannantonio said.
Christina Anderson’s father, Christopher Saincome, said Wednesday that his daughter visited DiMaggio’s home last weekend to say goodbye before he moved to Texas. DiMaggio, who works as a telecommunications technician at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, was a regular presence at the Anderson family apartment in Lakeside, a suburb of 54,000 people.
“He must have had this planned,” Saincome said.
Saincome said nothing seemed amiss when he called his daughter at work Friday to let her know she didn’t call on his birthday. Anderson, a medical assistant, said she would call back that night but never did.
Investigators say DiMaggio might be headed to Texas or Canada with one child or both. They had no evidence that the relationship between DiMaggio and the missing girl was more than friendly.
Brett Anderson, who flew from Tennessee to San Diego on Tuesday, pleaded with DiMaggio to release his daughter, saying, “You’ve taken everything else.”
