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The mother of a 7-year-old Florida girl who was kidnapped and murdered thinks she knows what happened to the little girl who trusted everyone too much, no matter how often she was told about “stranger danger.”
“She just loved everyone. She was very trusting. She just trusted everyone and she just assumed that they wouldn’t hurt her,” Diena Thompson told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Thursday from Jacksonville, Fla.
Thompson was speaking of her daughter, Somer, whose killer is still on the loose nearly a month after the girl was abducted while walking home from school.
“I think that’s exactly what happened. They lured her over and did what they did, and she fought back once she realized this was not a nice person,” Thompson continued.
Keeping public aware
Somer disappeared on Oct. 19. Her body was discovered two days later in a landfill in Georgia. Since then, local police and the FBI have received more than 3,000 tips but have not identified a suspect. Saturday on “America’s Most Wanted,” investigators released sketches of the pink tote and lunch box Somer was carrying in hopes that someone may have seen them somewhere.
Since Somer’s death, Thompson has fought to keep the case in the public eye so the killer can be tracked down while also caring for her other three children: Somer’s twin brother, Samuel, her older sister Abby, 10, and older brother, Andrew, 13.
Video: ‘I want justice for Somer,’ mom says “Every day’s a roller coaster,” Thompson told Vieira, fighting back tears. “It’s up and down, up and down. I just try to keep staying strong for my family, for my other children, and let this thing know it has not won — we will.”
She is a private person and would prefer not to be in the public eye, but Thompson said she continues to give interviews to help others and to catch Somer’s killer.
“I hope that maybe it can help one parent not have to feel this pain, because it’s truly unbearable,” Thompson said. “And I don’t want people to forget about Somer until this thing has been caught and justice has been served.”
‘Not their fault’
Somer was walking home from school with Samuel and Abby when she ran on ahead because she was teased by some other children. Her brother and sister expected to catch up with her at their home, which is just under a mile from their school. But when they got home, Somer wasn’t there.
Thompson said it is difficult for her to talk to Samuel and Abby about what happened, but she wants to make sure they know they are not to blame.
“I feel uncomfortable talking to them about that day, because I don’t know the right words to say. We pretty much let the counselors handle that,” Thompson told Vieira. “We do talk some, but I never want them to feel any guilt, because this is not their fault.”
The hunt goes on
Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler and the FBI do not have a suspect and have declined to release whatever information they have, including the results of Somer’s autopsy. But Diena Thompson and her lawyer, Mike Freed, said they are confident that the killer will be caught. FBI investigators have said that they fear that the suspect has done this before and, if not caught, will do it again.
“Rick Beseler and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office are putting a tremendous amount of resources into this,” Freed said. “It’s obviously a long process, much longer than Diena wishes. It’s torture for her to wait, but we do trust that they’re doing everything they can. Not finding this person is not an option.”
Thompson has received thousands of e-mails, more than she can read, from people offering sympathy, prayers and support. But she has also received messages of hate, she told Vieira.
The messages, she said, say “I should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for child abuse for letting my children walk” to and from school.
Thompson said that isn’t a matter of choice where she lives. The local school board does not provide bus service to anyone living less than two miles from school, and the route the Thompson children walk has crossing guards at the intersections along the way.
“If you live closer than two miles to the school you have to walk, and I live point-nine miles from the school,” Thompson explained.
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