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Police: Evidence doesn't support abduction claim
Search for suspect dropped
Friday, April 2, 2004 Posted: 2102 GMT (0502 HKT)
Audrey Seiler
MADISON, Wisconsin (CNN) -- Police have stopped the search for a suspect in the case of a University of Wisconsin student who said she was abducted, Madison's Assistant Police Chief Noble Wray said at a Friday news conference.
"Due to continuing inconsistences ... and a lack of any evidence to support her allegations ... we do not believe that there is a supect at large, period," Wray said.
Wray cited inconsistencies in 20-year-old Audrey Seiler's story that led police to question her claim.
For example, the honor student told police that after taking her at knifepoint, her captor used duct tape, rope, cold medicine, a gun and a knife to keep her under his control.
Although those items were found in the marsh where she was located, buttressing her account, police obtained videotape Thursday that showed Seiler entering a Madison store and buying those items, he said.
Also, during the time she said she was held captive, two witnesses reported having seen her apparently "walking freely" in different areas of the city, he said.
Someone used her computer during the time she was missing. Also, he said, the computer had been used to look up a five-day weather forecast and search wooded areas in and around Madison.
Asked whether authorities were planning to press charges against her, Wray said, "I think it's a little bit early for us to say that. We still need to talk to all the detectives."
The afternoon news conference followed by two hours another news conference in which Wray told reporters that Seiler had changed her story -- after authorities confronted her with the inconsistencies -- to say she was abducted not from her apartment but from a different part of the city.
A security camera recorded Seiler leaving her apartment early Saturday morning. She left her door open and did not take her coat and purse with her when she left the building, police said.
Over the next four days, hundreds of police, relatives and community members searched for her. Seiler was found Wednesday afternoon after a passerby saw her in a marsh about two miles from campus and called police.
Seiler had said she did not know her abductor, whom she described as a white man in his late 20s or early 30s and about 6 feet tall, wearing a black sweatshirt, black cap and jeans.
Asked whether her actions represented a cry for help, Wray said, "It's difficult for me to speculate, in terms of what was her mental state or intent."
But he said he felt her comment to police, "I just want to be alone," was telling.
In February, Seiler told police she was attacked from behind and knocked unconscious while walking alone outside after midnight. She said she woke up behind a nearby building but wasn't robbed or otherwise hurt, police said. No one was arrested.
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2004-04-02, 04:31 PM
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