According to media sources, Investigators will hold a press conference today, in which they will announce that 24-year-old Jarred Harrell has been charged with the little girl’s kidnapping and murder.

Thompson disappeared while walking home with her siblings and neighborhood friends at about 3:00 PM, on Monday, Oct 19, 2009. She had apparently argued with those with whom she was walking and, as children will do, ran ahead of the small group of children, this in the direction of her home. She never arrived and a massive search and good police work resulted in her body being found in a distant landfill, this evidence that her killer had disposed of her remains in a trash dumpster close to her home that was hauled to the Georgia landfill for disposal. On a good hunch, police searched the landfill and found young Somer’s remains. Then the hunt was on for her killer, a hunt that eventually identified Harrell her likely killer. Many who know Harrell had had their suspicions concerning him since Somer’s murder.

A man who worked in the construction area, Harrell once helped to build a restaurant and then stayed on to be the cook. Media reports indicate that Harrell’s roommates put him out of their apartment because they felt he had stolen one of their I-Pods. He left his computer and a number of CDs in the apartment, one disc labeled “Don’t lose music.” When his roommates and others viewed the contents of Harrell’s computer and at least one of his CDs they were sickened with what they found. Dozens of pictures and videos with child pornography involving young girls. The computer and other evidence were turned over in August, two months before Somer’s murder, to the local sheriff’s office who eventually gave it to Clay County, Florida investigators for analysis. As no “rush” was placed on the request for forensic computer analysis, it was November before the results that which would lead to Harrell being charged with 55 counts of child pornography were obtained, over a month after Somer’s murder.

Harrell formerly resided on Gano Avenue, a street located nearby Thompson’s Orange Park home. Somer was last seen in front of 1080 Gano Avenue. Harrell would have been in a position to watch the young children as they walked to and from school each day and played in the neighborhood. He could have witnessed young Somer run ahead of her group that fateful day, far enough ahead that he could have felt she was out of sight of both friends and adult neighbors. It was then, apparently, that he likely struck. For someone with a “rich” history of viewing child pornography, Somer would have been an easy victim. Harrell was arrested in Meridian, Mississippi by US Marshalls on charges of child molestation and child pornography and has been transferred to Florida.

In such cases authorities first consider someone from the immediate neighborhood, someone who could have know the victim, who could have identified the victim and then struck when the time was right. Now it is up to these same investigators to prove their case, to take whatever physical evidence they may have gathered from the victim’s body and to compare such to Harrell. While he remains a logical suspect, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is, of course, the standard of evidence that will be needed to convict him. Hopefully investigators found the victim’s body fast enough that such linking physical evidence was recovered before contaminated or lost. Whoever did this terrible crime, they are but one more reason for a one-strike-law in this country for violent sexual predators. Somer’s killer should never see the light of day again as a free man!

For more information concerning personal and family safety and security, to obtain a free copy of our DVD Protecting Children from Predators, to find out the identity and location of sex offenders in your community, and to learn how to get our new iPhone and iPod application, Silent Bodyguard, that with just one-button allows you to send both a personal distress message to up to four people and transmits your exact GPS coordinates every 60 seconds, go to livesecure.org

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