Amish Sisters' Kidnappers Were On the Prowl

The two Amish sisters who were abducted in northern New York Aug. 13 were taken by a couple who were on the prowl for victims, authorities said.

St. Lawrence County officials said yesterday that the girls had been sexually abused.

Moreover, Stephen Howells Jr. and Nicole Vaisey had plans for more.

“We felt that there was the definite potential that there was going to be other victims,” St. Lawrence County Sheriff Kevin Wells told the news media.

The girls, 7-year-old Delila Miller and 12-year-old Fannie Miller, were wearing Amish blue dresses, blue aprons and black bonnets when they went to wait on a customer who drove up to their family’s vegetable stand at around 7:20 p.m. When the car left the girls were gone.

Hundreds of police, troopers, forest rangers and Border Patrol officers mounted an intensive search. Dive teams were also called in to search the nearby Oswegatchie River, wwnytv.com said.

The search spread out from the St. Lawrence County town of Oswegatchie, including roadblocks in Ogdensburg, Gouverneur, Potsdam and Jefferson counties.

Their efforts were hampered without photos of the girls—the Amish do not use modern technology. A police artist did work with the family to produce a sketch of Fannie, the older sister. The Amish population in New York state is growing, according to amishamerica.com, as families and groups are drawn by lower property costs for good farmland. The girls’ community of Heuvelton, a highly conservative Swartzentruber Amish community near the Canadian border, is the second-largest in the state, the website said.

As it turned out the search was unnecessary. According to police, Howells and Vaisey dropped the girls off 24 hours later. Cold and wet, they walked to the home of a couple who recognized them, fed them and took them home.

Police arrested Howells, 39, and Vaisey, 25, both of Hermon NY, Aug. 15. They were each charged with two counts of first-degree kidnapping with intent to physically harm and are being held without bail. A preliminary hearing is set for Aug. 21.

Their capture “no doubt saved young children from future abuse,” the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Officials said the girls were not known to Howells and Vaisey, who noticed the sisters alone at the farm stand. The rest of the family was doing the evening milking, according to news reports.

Vaisey has talked to police about her relationship with Howells, according to the New York Times. Her attorney Bradford Riendeau said that the relationship was abusive and that Vaisey was seeking an order of protection against Howells.

“She was not the lead person or a coequal in this at all,” he told the Times.

Vaisey is a dog groomer. Howells, a nurse, worked at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in Ogdensburg, NY.

Mary E. Rain, St. Lawrence County’s district attorney, told the media investigators were reviewing computers from Howell’s house, where the two girls were held.