By Calvin Palmer
Police in New Mexico said today they are linking the remains of an adult and three children found in a car submerged in a lake to a man accused of abducting his three sons in 2001.
State Police spokesman Lt Eric Garcia said there is a “strong possibility” that the remains discovered yesterday by police divers in a Ford Taurus in Cochiti Lake are linked to Richard Robert Sanchez’s disappearance with his sons.
In August 2001, Sanchez, of Albuquerque, took his sons — 12-year-old Richard, nine-year-old Daniel and two-year-old Christopher — for a weekend custody visit and never returned.
Garcia said the car was the same as the one Sanchez was driving and the “remains had characteristics similar to what occurred on the original day”.
A child’s car seat was found in the back of the car and shoes of the sizes that the boys would have been wearing also were recovered.
The four sets of remains will be sent to the Office of the Medical Investigator to be identified.
“One set of remains was almost completely deteriorated, which is indicative of a small, small child,” Garcia said.
Sanchez and his wife, Susana, were through a divorce at the time the boys went missing, but had an agreement under which Richard Sanchez could take the children for a few days at a time.
The boys’ mother reported them missing after being unable to contact her husband. He failed to report to work the next Monday.
Sanchez and the children disappeared on the eve of an initial trial date for Sanchez, who was facing charges stemming from an unrelated August 2000 kidnapping and rape of a child. Sanchez believed he was to face trial on Aug. 13, 2001.
“The circumstances surrounding his disappearance were not normal,” said Pat Davis, a spokesman with the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office. “The family stated to us that he was facing nine years in jail and he was not going back to jail. All those circumstances led us to believe that he intentionally fled and did so with his children.”
Sanchez was wanted by the U.S. Marshal’s Service for rape, kidnapping and flight to avoid prosecution charges.
Police divers spotted the car while searching for a pickup truck that accidentally went into the lake earlier in the week.
[Based on a report by the Associated Press.]
