By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press Writer
Kelsey Stelting's picture seemed to be everywhere, on walls, windows and even pickup tailgates, after she called 911 and said she had been kidnapped at gunpoint.
Twenty four hours after Kelsey Stelting resurfaced and recounted how she'd clobbered her abductor and escaped, police said that no one else had corroborated her harrowing story. They said Wednesday that they had not ruled out the possibility that it might have been a hoax.
Authorities continued to withhold details, leaving puzzling questions about the 15 hours the teen went missing Tuesday.
Police and the FBI hadn't released a detailed description or drawing of a suspect, haven't found the white van in which Stelting said she was kept and haven't recovered the cell phone they believed had been taken from her after she made the 911 call.
Authorities were planning to make a final public statement about the case Thursday.
"We've been looking at this as the criminal act. We've also been looking at this, as somebody's mentioned here, as something that possibly didn't happen," police Chief Lee Bynum told reporters.
The FBI interviewed some of Stelting's fellow classmates, although officials said none were suspects or even involved in what happened.
Bynum said authorities wanted to correlate those statements -- as well as rumors he wouldn't discuss -- with what Stelting said during hours of interviews, which ended Wednesday night.
Earlier Wednesday, police released an audio file and transcript of the teenager's 911 call.
Stelting said a man with a gun had approached her from behind in the driveway of her home about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, forced her to run several blocks to a lumber yard as he followed and then forced her into a white van.
Police traced the call to a cellular tower about 10 miles south of Independence. Stelting appeared Tuesday night at a house, near her family's home, and the resident, Pete Dierks, said she told him she hit her abductor with a glass and ran. The Dierks family called police to notify them of her arrival.
Friends and acquaintances described Stelting as a good student who is involved in softball, cheerleading, dance squad and student government. They said they didn't see anything to cause them to doubt that she'd been abducted.
Stelting's mother, Kelly Cox, said authorities were simply being thorough in not dismissing the possibility of a false report. She said she had no doubts.
"Every single one of us will tell you that Kelsey's a very forthright young woman," she said. "If you listen to that 911 call, and I think if you're a mom or a dad, I think you hear in her voice the trauma, that she is afraid."
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