Finally after 19 years, another cold case has found new life. A beautiful little girl from Dickinson, outside of Houston suffered a horrible ordeal. Her attacker has been free all these years while the fight for justice continued. Due to new DNA techniques, the search is over, bless this child!
An Arkansas man is back in Dickinson to face charges in the 1990 attack of an 8-year-old girl who was snatched from her bedroom, brutalized and left for dead in a field crawling with fire ants.
Bradford Dennis Earl Bradford, 40, waived extradition and arrived at the Dickinson police station Wednesday night. He was to be transferred to the Galveston County Jail.
He is charged with attempted capital murder in the attack on Jennifer Schuett, now 27and living in League City.
Although 19 years have passed since Schuett's attacker raped her and slit her throat, Dickinson police pursued her case and last month the FBI used new technology to extract DNA from clothes found near the crime scene. This week they announced they found a match in their DNA database and arrested Bradford in Little Rock.
Bradford, it turns out, lived just a quarter of a mile away from Schuett at the time of the attack, and the FBI said since then he's served time for abducting an Arkansas woman.
GALVESTON — Eight-year-old Jennifer Schuett awoke naked on a fire ant mound one August morning 19 years ago.
She didn't have enough strength to get up. The last thing she remembered was being dragged through a field by her feet.
Her throat cut, she lay bleeding in an empty lot for 12 hours before a group of children stumbled upon her. Despite her wound and ant bites that left scars all over her body, she survived the abduction and rape Aug. 10, 1990.
Schuett recalled that as a child she normally slept with her mother because she was afraid of the dark. But the night of the abduction, she had been ordered to her room because she had been kicking and keeping her mother awake.
She remembers reading and counting coins in her piggy bank before falling asleep.
The windows were shut tight, and the curtains drawn over the first-floor window overlooking the parking lot of what was then the Yorktown Apartments in Dickinson.
Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m., she awoke in the arms of a strange man carrying her to his car. He smothered her attempts to scream with his hand.
“I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream,” she said. “I was terrified.”
He told her he was an undercover police officer, which she initially believed.
“At the same time in the back of my head I knew something was wrong because my mother would never let me go off with anyone,” Schuett said.
Her fear mounted as they drove, and she asked to see his gun to prove he was a police officer. He told her it was in the back seat.
They drove several miles through residential areas to Silbernagel Elementary School, where Schuett attended third-grade classes. He offered her candy, but she refused, having been told not to take candy from strangers.
After parking for a few minutes at the school, he drove to a field near the corner of California Avenue and 22nd Street.
She remembers leaning into the back seat to check for his gun, then everything went black. ‘I was bleeding to death'
The next thing she recalls was being awoken by burs scratching her back as he dragged her by her feet into the weed-choked empty lot.
Her throat had already been cut, but she didn't realize it. Schuett said she knew he thought she was dead, so she closed her eyes and remained motionless when he turned his head to look at her.
The next thing she remembers is awaking on the fire ant mound in daylight. “I was bleeding to death,” she said.
She tried to scream but couldn't because the knife had sliced her voice box. She could see passing cars through the weeds, but she wasn't seen.
Hours later, Schuett heard children playing and felt something touch her foot.
Then she recalls a police officer telling her to “stay with me. … Everything is going to be OK.”
A helicopter flew her to University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where doctors labored to save her life. When she was able, she wrote out answers to investigators' questions.
Regaining her voice Doctors said she would never speak again, but several weeks later her voice returned
“I feel like I got my voice back for a reason,” Schuett said.. “I can't live my life in fear,” I’m not a victim but instead Victorious”
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