For Carlie

[Michael]

SARASOTA, Fla. — The FBI joined the search Tuesday for an 11-year-old girl whose apparent abduction was videotaped by a car wash surveillance camera, and the youngster's parents pleaded for her safe return.

"Please release Carlie. Please give me my baby," begged Carlie Brucia's mother, Susan Schorpen.

The sixth-grader was seen on videotape being led away by a man as she took a shortcut behind a closed car wash on her way home from a friend's house Sunday night.
The sheriff's department is working with the FBI, state law enforcement authorities and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. More than 100 calls from the public have come in and an unidentified company offered a $25,000 US reward for information.

[Michael]

Carlie Brucia's body found,
murder suspect moved for security reasons

SARASOTA -- The body of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia was found this morning near a chuch a few miles from where she was abducted Sunday, and authorities said they will be charging mechanic Joseph P. Smith in her murder.

Officials said paperwork in the case would be filed soon. Meanwhile, they moved Smith from the Sarasota County Jail to the Manatee County Jail. For security reasons and Smith's safety, he was placed in isolation upon his arrival this morning in Manatee.

"Our sympathy goes out to the entire family of Carlie," an emotional Sheriff Bill Balkwill said at a news conference this morning.

At McIntosh Middle School, where Carlie was in the sixth grade, the principal said the school will be open for the community and grief counseling from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday and 5 to 8 p.m. Monday.

Carlie's body was found between 12:45 a.m. and 1 a.m. Friday near the Central Church of Christ at 6221 Proctor Road, not far from Evie's Car Wash on Bee Ridge Road, where she was abducted.

This morning, crime scene technicians dressed in white coveralls pulled the body from under some think underbrush near the church parking lot. The covered body was placed on a stretcher and taken away by a white van.