McKEESPORT, Pa. -- A McKeesport teen who disappeared in 1996 has been found.
Tanya Kach was 14 when she disappeared on Feb. 10, 1996.
That was the last time she was heard from, police said.
Ten years later, officials said that Kach was found in McKeesport -- the very city from which she vanished.
The girl had been going by the name "Nicky Evans," Channel 4 Action News reporter Kelly Frey said.
According to Frey, the man who found Kach is the owner of JJ's Deli Mart in McKeesport.
Joe Sparico said that for the past seven months, Kach had been going to his deli.
On Tuesday, Sparico said Kach came into his deli and told him she had something to tell him.
He said Kach told him that she had been using an alias -- that her name is Tanya Kach.
Sparico said that Kach said she had been in a locked bedroom for four years at a man's parents' house.
Kach said, "Don’t you abandon me," Sparico said.
Tuesday night, Sparico checked missing persons reports and located Kach, and then called McKeesport police.
The man at whose home Kach had allegedly been held has not been arrested nor has his name been released.
Where was she locked up for the other six years, I wonder?
raven56706
03-22-06, 01:47 PM
can someone answer me how is it kidnapping if she went to the deli...... hmmmmmm she must be a moron
PopcornTreeCt
03-22-06, 01:48 PM
Hmm..I'm assuming there's a lot more to this story.
CKMorpheus
03-22-06, 02:44 PM
Love to know the story with this...
NORML54601
03-22-06, 02:48 PM
I suspect she was kidnapped by aliens but when they programmed her they acceidently told her to say she was locked up for 4 years instead of 10. Oftentimes, the simplest explanation is the right one.
Vibiana
03-22-06, 03:25 PM
It was probably the only way they could get her to stay on her bunkbed. Hey, Topbunk, your date's here! :D
Breakfast with Girls
03-22-06, 04:46 PM
Tanya Kach -> Nicky Evans? At least make your alias a clever anagram of your real name. :(
Girl Missing for 10 Years Found, Was Allegedly Held Captive
March 22, 2006— A Pennsylvania woman has been found after being allegedly held captive since 1996, when she disappeared at age 14.
http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/ht_kach_060322_sp.jpg
This image shows Tanya Kach as she looked 10 years ago, and what she might look like today at 24. (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children)
Tanya Kach of McKeesport, Pa., was found this week living in the same city under a different name, local officials told ABC News' Pittsburgh affiliate WTAE.
Kach had last been seen on Feb. 10, 1996.
On Tuesday she was identified as a 24-year-old woman using the name Nicky Evans, WTAE reported.
"She's in good condition. She's with family members in the Pittsburgh area," Police Chief Joseph Pero told The Associated Press.
Joe Sparico, owner of JJ's Deli Mart in McKeesport, told WTAE that the woman had been a customer at his store for seven months and they'd become friendly.
Sparico said that on Tuesday she told him she had been using an alias, and that her real name was Tanya Kach. She also claimed she had been locked in a bedroom for four years at a man's parents' house — without their knowledge. Further information about her account was not available.
Sparico said Kach pleaded, "Don't you abandon me."
Sparico checked missing persons reports and located Kach before calling the McKeesport Police Department.
The man who allegedly held Kach has not been arrested or charged. His name has not been released.
Held Captive for a Decade
Sparico told "Good Morning America" the alleged captor is a security guard at a school, and that he brainwashed her into thinking that her family didn't want her anymore. He and Kach had allegedly concocted a cover story, telling people that she'd met him when he was 18 and he was working as a security guard at a mall.
Sparico said Kach told him she was kept in a bedroom in the house of her captor's parents. She said the parents were unaware she was there, because he locked her in when he went to work.
Kach has now been reunited with her father, he said.
McKeesport and Allegheny County police said they were investigating the girl's disappearance, but they didn't immediately offer other details.
Now, how can a 14 year old be brainwashed to think that her family didn't want her anymore? And how could his parents not know there was someone else living in the house for 4 years?
Either there are a lot of stupid people here or we are not hearing the full story.
I have a Google alert with her name and I will keep everyone up to date, because I know you want to know the truth! ;)
Chris
brianglenn
03-22-06, 06:48 PM
So she was just sitting in the room silently everyday? She's not very good at trying to get away.
grrrah
03-22-06, 06:55 PM
especially if she has been going out to the deli to pick up lunch for 7 months
brianglenn
03-22-06, 07:01 PM
I don't think anybody even really wanted to find her. It doesn't sound like they looked too hard.
melbatoast
03-22-06, 07:19 PM
This story is just plain strange. Gimme more...
mrpayroll
03-22-06, 07:27 PM
This story is just plain strange. Gimme more...
When I get it (or someone else), you'll get it! ;)
Chris
Bloomiesgirl
03-22-06, 07:59 PM
This sounds nuts. Yes, keep us updated as soon as new info arrives. :)
grrrah
03-22-06, 08:26 PM
my guess...
runaway girl to be with a secret lover.
relationship goes bad 10 years later.
lordzeppelin
03-22-06, 11:43 PM
Let me explain a few things...McKeesport doesn't have the, uh, brightest people in this city. In fact, there's a good amount of dumb white trash around the area. Unfortunately, this story is they type of crap that happens in the "stuck in the 70's" enigma that is Pittsburgh...
ShallowHal
03-23-06, 12:20 AM
Where was she locked up for the other six years, I wonder?
You mean seven. I mean.. I have no idea. -other-
Nick Danger
03-23-06, 06:52 AM
I've read a similar story:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/sex_slave/1.html
raven56706
03-23-06, 07:55 AM
give me a break.... she ran away with the guy and things arent going her way so...... there....
plain and simple..... she is a moron....
FantasticVSDoom
03-23-06, 08:40 AM
Interesting story...You can always count on good old DVDTalk for some good, heartwarming tales ;).
VinVega
03-23-06, 08:48 AM
Bizarre. :whofart:
I expect daily updates payroll! :grunt:
:D
Mrs. Danger
03-23-06, 09:52 AM
She looks awfully sulky in both pictures.
NCMojo
03-23-06, 10:00 AM
She looks awfully skanky in both pictures.
http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/ht_kach_060322_sp.jpg
Fixed.
The Bus
03-23-06, 10:01 AM
http://pittsburghlive.com/images/head_ptr.gif
Vanished girl returns as woman
By Jill King Greenwood
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Tanya Kach was 14 when she walked out of her father's McKeesport home more than a decade ago.
The Cornell Middle School eighth-grader vanished. There were no sightings. No phone calls.
The case went cold and stayed that way until Tuesday - 10 years, one month and 11 days later - when Kach walked back into her father's life and told the world that a school security guard with whom she had fallen in love held her captive since Feb. 10, 1996.
The guard, Thomas John Hose, 48, surrendered to police Wednesday afternoon and was charged with child sex offenses.
mium and sold out events
Jerry Kach collapsed upon seeing his long-lost daughter.
"I've got my baby back," he said, sobbing and stroking her face. "I can't believe it."
This is her story:
Kach spent most of the past 10 years locked in a bedroom of Hose's parents' Soles Street home.
Hose and Kach met in late 1995 at the school where Hose, then 37, worked as a security guard. They secretly dated. She believed they were in love.
No one could take care of her better, she believed. He invited her to move in with him, but told Kach she would have to remain hidden from his parents until he mustered the courage to tell them about her.
She agreed and dreamed of their future together - a wedding, and maybe even children.
But it was mostly a nightmare.
He locked her in an upstairs bedroom where she used a bucket as a toilet. He brought her water and food - mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
She was allowed to watch television and listen to the radio, but only with headphones so his parents wouldn't hear. She tiptoed around the room. Hose made her memorize which floorboards creaked.
Hose gave her a new first name - Nikki - and told her to pick another last name. She opened the telephone book, closed her eyes and pointed: Allen.
"So from then on, I was Nikki Allen," she said.
Hose never physically abused her, but he left emotional scars. He often threatened to kill her if she ever tried to leave.
"You're stupid. You're immature. Nobody cares about you but me," he told her.
As the years went by, he convinced her that she was no longer Tanya Kach and that he was her only ally.
"He told me no one even cared I was missing and no one was looking for me," she said as her eyes welled with tears. "He said the case was cold. I believed him."
Hose rarely allowed her to leave until 10 months ago, when Kach began attending church and taking walks to a nearby deli.
A woman who answered the door yesterday at Beulah Park United Methodist Church in McKeesport said Kach recently began attending Sunday services and volunteered in the church's thrift shop on Wednesday nights.
In the past 10 months, Kach befriended Joe Sparico, owner of JJ's Deli Mart on Evans Street, and visited his store just about every day. Some days she would linger for hours. She lived with an older man, Kach told him, and didn't have a driver's license or an education.
The store owner gently prodded Kach for details because "I knew something about her situation just wasn't right," Sparico said.
On Tuesday morning, something had changed in his young friend. Her hands trembled, and she was crying.
They sat down together in a back room and she revealed her secret: Nikki Allen didn't exist. She was really Tanya Kach, the girl who disappeared from her daddy's house long ago.
"To be honest with you, I really didn't believe her at first," Sparico said. "I mean, who could believe that?"
Sparico called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which confirmed Kach's disappearance.
"I don't know what she was running away from, but he convinced her that she was better off staying with him," said Ron Jones, a senior case manager with the missing children's center. "He certainly coerced this young woman into staying with him, which is exploitation. But I don't believe the young woman realized that she was being exploited."
Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said investigators believe Kach's story.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released about 400 million exposures of her picture - on television, milk cartons and elsewhere - and there were no sightings. Periodic checks on her Social Security number also revealed no activity.
"This bolsters her contention that she wasn't outside the home," Moffatt said. "That's where she was all the time."
Police charged Hose with statutory sexual assault and three counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
Defense attorney James M. Ecker, who accompanied Hose yesterday to county police headquarters in Point Breeze, said that his client is a "good person" who has no criminal record and a full-time job, and that he should not be prejudged.
"She is 24 years old now," Ecker said. "She definitely was not held against her will."
Moffatt, however, said charges are warranted even if Kach went willingly because she was a minor at the time.
"I think it's very easy to play mind games with a child her age," he said. "He was 24 years older. He was an authority figure. He told her what to eat, when to eat and what to wear."
Many unanswered questions remain.
Police want to interview other people who might have information about the case, including a White Oak hair stylist who, at Hose's behest, changed Kach's hair color, style and length as part of her identity makeover, Moffatt said.
Hose also has a son a few years younger than Kach who lived with them part of the time, he said. Police believe Hose's parents lived in the house at some point during Kach's stay, but they are not certain when, Moffatt said.
The house is within view of a cemetery where the remains of murder victim Kimberly Krimm, also 14, were found in 1998. Moffatt would not say if Hose would be questioned in that unsolved slaying.
Kach's reappearance and Hose's arrest rocked the McKeesport Area School District, which suspended him without pay.
"This is just devastating to the district," school board President Kathy Ritchie said after last night's board meeting.
Hose worked as a security guard for 15 years and has been an exemplary employee who was well-liked by the students and staff, Ritchie said.
McKeesport police went to Hose's home Tuesday afternoon, helped Kach gather her belongings and then reunited her with her father.
Clinging to him yesterday, Kach said she was stunned to learn her father had never stopped looking for her and that he became deeply depressed each February as the anniversary of her disappearance neared, and again on Oct. 14 - her birthday.
She is happy to be back with her family and said her biggest wish is to get a high school diploma. She's still getting used to being called Tanya again. When introducing herself, she has to pause to think about who she is.
She is surprised how much the world has changed, noting, for example, the higher price of everyday items such as gas, milk and bread.
During an interview yesterday at her father's home in Elizabeth Township, where he moved after his daughter disappeared, she was alternately giddy and unsure of herself.
She asks him for permission to smoke a cigarette and to go clothes shopping in the next few days.
"You're 24 years old, Tanya," he tells her. "There are no locks on these doors and no bars on these windows."
These words make her cry.
"I can't believe I'm free."
<hr>
Totally reminds me of <a href="http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/sex_slave/1.html">this story</a>.
kantonburg
03-23-06, 11:02 AM
Thats unfreaking believeable. If completely true I honestly feel for the girl. But I have a weird feeling that there is more to the story.
The deli owner probably wanted a piece that was why he was trying to get to know her.
mike45
03-23-06, 04:41 PM
She looks particularly well groomed for being locked in a bedroom for ten years. Watching the video of the story, she also had well manicured fingernails.
By Jill King Greenwood, Karen Roebuck and David Conti
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, March 23, 2006
A McKeesport beautician helped Tanya Kach run away from home and move in with a security guard accused of holding the teen captive in his parents' home for a decade, according to a police affidavit released this morning.
Judy Sokol told police she cut and dyed Kach's hair in 1996 as a favor to the security guard, Thomas Hose, now 48, even though "she knew Hose was engaged in an inappropriate relationship," the affidavit states. Kach said today that Sokol cut her hair very short and dyed it red. She normally wears her hair long and very blonde.
The Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families even contacted Sokol about Kach's whereabouts, prompting the beautician to sever her ties with the pair, the affidavit states, but it does not explain what Sokol told CYF case workers.
Allegheny County police said they are investigating why CYF contacted Sokol in connection with Kach's disappearance. They're also taking a closer look at Hose in connection with the murder of 14-year-old Kimberly Krimm, whose body was found in 1998 in a cemetery that is within view of Hose's Soles Street home.
County police homicide Lt. Chris Kearns said Hose was questioned back in 1998 about Krimm's slaying but there was no indication he was involved. Kearns declined to say what evidence - including DNA - police might have collected from Krimm's body and the crime scene.
Investigators today interviewed Hose's parents, Howard and Eleanor Hose, and his son, Justin, 22. They believe the elderly parents lived in the home the entire time Kach was held captive but they don't believe the couple knew she was in the house until recently, said county police Sgt. Richard Mullen.
Kach, now 24, met Hose in Setpember 1995, when she was in the 8th grade at Cornell Middle School in McKeesport, where he worked as a security guard.
The following month, she was skipping class when Hose caught her in the stairwell. The two started kissing, according to the police affidavit.
They began a relationship and Kach made plans to runaway. Her father, Jerry Kach, of Elizabeth Township, said his daughter wasn't having problems at home that would have prompted her to run away.
Jerry Kach and Tanya Kach's mother, Sherry Koehnke, were divorced when their daughter disappeared. Koehnke is now remarried and living in West Mifflin.
Kach stayed at Sokol's McKeesport home until she could move into Hose's house on Soles Street. The security guard wanted to hide Kach until his parents, with whom he lived, left the house and he could take the runaway there, according to the affidavit.
It is not clear from the affidavit how long Kach stayed with Sokol, who also cut and dyed the teen's hair to help disguise her. Hose and Kach returned to Sokol's house repeatedly over a month to spend the night and have sex, the affidavit said.
"After moving in with Hose, he instructed her not to leave his second-floor bedroom and had threatened her if she left or attempted to leave," the affidavit said.
She was locked in a second-floor bedroom for almost four years, where she had to use a bucket for a toilet. She was fed the food Hose brought her - mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bottled water - and was told to tiptoe around the room. Hose made her memorize the floorboards that creaked so she could avoid them.
She was allowed out of the room twice a week, in the middle of the night, to take a shower in the home's bathroom, Mullen said.
Kach told police Hose insisted she keep track of their sexual activity in a calendar book "so he could brag to co-workers and friends of him in enganging in sex and how often," the affidavit said.
Hose started letting Kach come out of the bedroom on and off - when his parents weren't home - from 2000 until 2005, police said.
Last June, Hose changed Kach's identity to Nikki Allen and introduced her to his parents and friends as his girlfriend. He started letting her walk to church and to a nearby deli. She finally confided to the owner of JJ's Deli Market on Tuesday morning that she was not Nikki Allen, but was really the girl who disappeared from McKeesport on Feb. 10, 1996.
Hose was arraigned late last night on charges of statutory sexual assault and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. District Judge Thomas Miller set bond at $2,000 at 10 percent and ordered that Hose be evaluated by the county jail's behavioral clinic.:eek: Defense Attorney James Ecker said Hose likely will not be seen by the clinic staff until Friday.
A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Monday in McKeesport.
Wow, this WILL be a tv movie of the week, guaranteed!
Man there's so much good info in this article, I should bold the whole thing! ;)
Why is the bond so low? This is almost a case of kidnapping, even though it was by mental force.
Chris
Autotelik
03-23-06, 10:18 PM
So many names.... I got lost keeping track of who's who. I didn't get the part about Hose wanting to hide Kach at Sokol's place until his parents were gone.... well, his parents are still there today, aren't they? So he just figured that since his parents were never going to leave, then might as well lock her up in his room instead? I'm confused, and this doesn't make sense.
Derrich
03-24-06, 12:04 AM
I call BS.
I dont care how stupid she was. You can't lock a teenager in a room for 4 years without her figuring out how to get out. I've snuck out of my room, stole my moms car, drove it across town, and got back without her ever knowing (until I wrecked the car). So don't tell me that there was no way for her to even signal for help.
Here's what happened. She ran off with the guard. One day, they got in a fight. Maybe he didn't want to watch Gilmore Girls. She got pissed and 'escaped to freedom'. Even though her story is full of holes, her family is happy she's not dead and she gets away with it. But after a couple of weeks, they'll figure it out.
D
Buford T Pusser
03-24-06, 12:38 AM
This keeps making me think of the cult TV movie "Bad Ronald" although it's not really the same.
In the movie the kid's parents died and he lived in a secret room in the house. Anyone see that or find this reminding them of the film?
mrpayroll
03-24-06, 01:30 AM
This keeps making me think of the cult TV movie "Bad Ronald" although it's not really the same.
In the movie the kid's parents died and he lived in a secret room in the house. Anyone see that or find this reminding them of the film?
I saw that when it premiered in 1974, I think. It was a good movie, along with "Born Innocent"! :)
Chris
mrpayroll
03-24-06, 01:34 AM
I saw that when it premiered in 1974, I think. It was a good movie, along with "Born Innocent"! :)
Chris
Boy, what a memory I have (it was 1974, I was only 13):
"Bad Ronald was promoted heavily in the week preceding its air. The scene which included Ronald's eye peering back through the peephole at the girl who has just found it, replete with blood curdling horror-scream, is, with it's creepy soundtrack and wide angle distortion, one of the defining moments of teenage tele-voyeurism we have, and was shown at least fifty times to Americans before the movie aired, prompting many parents to quip "you're not watching that," before the full program air. But the effect worked and, although the film is a cheap derivation of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), it's themes of forbidden lust and masturbatory existence trapped inside "one's own house" gave ABC the highest ratings for one of its MOW of that era (Nielsen)."
When I think back to that movie, that was the only time I have ever seen the movie and it is not available on DVD!
The same with "Born Innocent" with Linda Blair. I had the hots for her during that movie and they showed the shower rape scene only once on tv, if I'm not mistaken.
Chris
Buford T Pusser
03-24-06, 01:36 AM
Where is that quote from?
I just picked up a bad quality DVD copy on eBay. A friend has been dying to see it and I still vividly remember it from 1974.
Duh Vuh Duh
03-24-06, 11:46 AM
She looks particularly well groomed for being locked in a bedroom for ten years. Watching the video of the story, she also had well manicured fingernails.
You can't post on this board about watching video of the story, without posting a link to said video. C'mon n00b. ;)
fujishig
03-24-06, 12:27 PM
I call BS.
I dont care how stupid she was. You can't lock a teenager in a room for 4 years without her figuring out how to get out. I've snuck out of my room, stole my moms car, drove it across town, and got back without her ever knowing (until I wrecked the car). So don't tell me that there was no way for her to even signal for help.
Here's what happened. She ran off with the guard. One day, they got in a fight. Maybe he didn't want to watch Gilmore Girls. She got pissed and 'escaped to freedom'. Even though her story is full of holes, her family is happy she's not dead and she gets away with it. But after a couple of weeks, they'll figure it out.
D
I'm sure she could have escaped had she wanted to. In fact, it would have been easy to make enough noise to draw some kind of attention to her. What we seem to have here is a case of psychological manipulation, where she didn't want to escape or was too afraid to even try. Perhaps she even thought that she loved him and "was doing it for him" but I doubt you'd find many people that would argue she was ready to make this kind of decision at the age she did. Not that I'm saying everything here is true, but she was a child when this first happened, and she stayed in the same town where she was kidnapped without anyone recognizing her, which probably meant she was kept hidden for some time.
mrpayroll
03-24-06, 01:07 PM
Where is that quote from?
I just picked up a bad quality DVD copy on eBay. A friend has been dying to see it and I still vividly remember it from 1974.
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I should have linked it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071186/
Chris
Buford T Pusser
03-24-06, 03:05 PM
Apology accepted Mr. roll and thanks for the link. :)
mrpayroll
03-24-06, 04:34 PM
Apology accepted Mr. roll and thanks for the link. :)
Hey, just because I've been eating a lot lately and exercising less and just because there is a 'roll' around my tummy, doesn't mean you have to broadcast it to the whole world!
Chris
mrpayroll
03-27-06, 12:44 AM
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06085/676809.stm
Emotional reunion for mom, daughter
2nd suspect sought in girl's 10-year captivity
Sunday, March 26, 2006
By Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Police continued to search yesterday for the second suspect in the disappearance and reappearance of a teenage runaway from McKeesport whose family hadn't seen her for a decade.
A warrant was issued Friday for hairdresser Judith Sokol, 57, who is accused of aiding the man accused of hiding Tanya Kach, then 14, in a home on Soles Street in McKeesport that he shared with his parents and son.
Miss Kach was reunited with her family last week.
When police interviewed her Wednesday, Ms. Sokol told them she cut and dyed Miss Kach's hair and allowed her home to be used for sex between the teen and Thomas John Hose, 48. Mr. Hose is a middle school security guard already jailed in the case.
Allegheny County police detectives could not be reached yesterday for comment on the search.
Until 1998, Judy Sokol was married to former McKeesport police officer and unsuccessful mayoral candidate Robert Sokol.
Mr. Sokol retired from the police department in 1989, ending a 23-year career, after he was accused of raping a woman at a park. He was tried in 1990, but a jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case. Instead of facing another trial, Mr. Sokol later pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of indecent assault and was placed on probation.
He lost the Democratic nomination for McKeesport mayor in the 1987 primary election, getting trounced by the incumbent, Louis M. Washowich.
Municipal officials had suspended Mr. Sokol from the police department for violating policy by running for office. Mr. Sokol said at the time that the letter informing him of the suspension was from Mayor Washowich.
Mr. Sokol, interviewed briefly outside his McKeesport home Friday, said he knew nothing about Tanya Kach.
Yesterday, Miss Kach's parents, Jerry Kach and Sherri Koehnke, said the hairdresser was a mystery to them.
Mrs. Koehnke, 44, however, recounted the emotional reunion she had Friday with her daughter that spanned nearly three hours in a secret office location.
She had a decade's worth of catching up to do, but first had to reconcile the image burned into her memory of an adolescent child with that of the adult whose height was the same as hers.
"She was a little girl. Now she's all grown up," Mrs. Koehnke said. "It was like staring into a mirror. I really looked a lot like her at that age. The change from 14 to 24 is immense.
"My emotions were just everywhere. You're happy. You're crying. You're sad, too," Mrs. Koehnke said. "She sat on me most of the time -- on my lap.
"She wants to go shopping. She wants me to teach her how to cook," her mother said. "She wants to get a GED and her dad, Jerry, to teach her how to drive."
For Mrs. Koehnke, the meeting culminated a surreal week that began Tuesday with a phone call from her ex-husband, who said someone wanted to talk with her. Seconds later, Mrs. Koehnke was on the phone with a caller whose voice she had not heard since 1996 yet knew instantly.
"She said, 'Hi, Mom. How are you?' '' Mrs. Koehnke said. "I said 'Where were you?' She said, 'McKeesport.' "
Miss Kach had run away from home previously and was believed to have been distraught over her parents' pending breakup when she disappeared on Feb. 10, 1996.
Police now say she had spent the past decade with Mr. Hose, who works as a guard at Cornell Middle School. Miss Kach was a student there in the 1990s. Mr. Hose has been suspended with pay from his job.:eek:
Police say that after moving in with him, Miss Kach was brainwashed by Mr. Hose and kept hidden from neighbors. Investigators say she took a new name -- Nikki Allen.
Ms. Sokol told police she cut off ties with Mr. Hose and Miss Kach after being contacted by the county Office of Children, Youth and Family, according to an affidavit filed in the case. She is charged with statutory sexual assault and three counts of involuntary deviate sexual assault -- the same charges filed Wednesday against Mr. Hose.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Bill Schackner can be reached at bschackner@post-gazette.com or at 412-263-1977.)
What's up with this Ms. Sokol & Mr. Hose crapola? They make it sound like they should be treated with some kind of respect! -ohbfrank-
For The Valley Independent
Saturday, March 25, 2006
ELIZABETH TOWNSHIP - During a decade of captivity in a McKeesport home, Tanya Kach knew she had to do whatever she could to keep her mind sharp.
She read books from the spine-tingling "Goosebumps" series by RL Stine, devoured every word in Cat Fancy magazine and watched educational television shows that would tease her brain.
"I read anything I could get my hands on and kept my mind busy so I wouldn't go crazy," Kach said Thursday as she tried to adjust to the national spotlight the bizarre story has provoked.
From the time Kach, now 24, disappeared Feb. 10, 1996, from her father's McKeesport home until Tuesday - when she re-emerged without warning at a local deli - she says she spent most of the time locked in an upstairs bedroom of Thomas Hose's parents' house on Soles Street.
Hose, 48, a school security guard, is in the Allegheny County Jail charged with child sex offenses. His attorney, James Ecker, said his client is innocent.
Kach met Hose in September 1995 at Cornell Middle School in McKeesport, where Hose was a security guard and Kach was an eighth-grader. He caught her skipping class and they kissed in a stairwell, she said. They began secretly dating, and she made plans to run away from home.
Kach says Hose convinced her to move into his parents' home. And that's when a teenager's dream of building a life with Hose, then 37, crumbled.
He told her she would have to stay hidden from his parents, Howard and Eleanor Hose, until he mustered the courage to tell them about her. He locked her in a bedroom. She used a bucket as a toilet and ate mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Hose let her out of the room twice a week in the middle of the night to shower in a basement bathroom.
"The cellar floor was freezing all the time and I had to hurry up down there and get back upstairs," Kach said.
When Hose's elderly parents ventured upstairs, Kach was ordered to hide in a closet, sometimes for hours. Investigators said they believe the elderly couple did not know about Kach until last summer. That's when Hose started letting Kach venture out to church and a nearby deli.
It was then that Hose changed her name to Nikki Allen and began introducing her to his parents and friends as his girlfriend, Kach said.
During the ordeal, Kach cut her own hair and tried to keep her hygiene and beauty routine maintained with items that Hose brought her. She did not visit a doctor or dentist for a decade -- even after a filling in her tooth fell out. Hose told her to deal with it, she said.
For years she wore clothes discarded by Hose and Hose's son Justin, now 22. Eventually, he bought her women's clothing.
Kach said she had to ask permission to do anything, and she's struggling now to break that habit.
"I don't know how to live any other way," she said. "I'm figuring things out all over again."
Kach is seeing a counselor and working with a victim's advocate to deal with the effects of her captivity. She's relishing simple things, like sleeping in her own bed and eating whatever she wants.
She's surprised to hear about the interest in her story - from Oprah, Geraldo Rivera, Montel Williams and newspapers from all over the world. She's surprised people, including retired McKeesport police Capt. Eugene Riazzi, continued looking for her over the years.
Riazzi, now a county sheriff's deputy, expressed surprise that Kach never left McKeesport.
"It's not often in a police career that you get an ending like this after so many years," Riazzi said. "It's a great ending to a long saga."
When Kach was first reported missing, investigators thought she would return within a couple of weeks - like many missing teens, Riazzi said.
"After a few months, we thought there might be more to this and we started digging further," he said.
Riazzi said investigators returned to Kach's parents for interviews and created a profile of the family and the missing teen. They enlisted the help of county homicide detectives and the FBI.
"We put her profile in the FBI database so it could be compared to similar cases around the country," Riazzi said. "We wanted to do anything we could if there was a link to any other cases."
Over the years, and even after Riazzi retired from McKeesport in 2000, detectives chased down "several active leads," he said. He declined to discuss specifics.
Twice police had the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children create age-progression photos through a computer program that uses pictures of parents and children to create a portrait of what the missing child would look like today. The photos were distributed around the area, Riazzi said.
"It stayed on my mind a long time," said Riazzi, who still lives in McKeesport and travels in the area each day delivering court papers for the sheriff's office. "No one ever let it go."
Hearing that makes Kach cry, something she's done a lot lately as she tries to figure out how to fit back into the life she disappeared from a decade ago.
"Wow, people really cared about what happened to me," said Kach, now living with her father in Elizabeth Township. "For so many years, I felt like I was forgotten."
This woman reminds me of Elizabeth Smart who had many chances to get away from her captors, but chose to stay with the man that abducted her.
Even though Hose is 100% at fault here, I think Tanya deserves to share some of this blame, #1 for running away with him in the first place and #2 staying with him all of these years, even though she could have escaped at any time.
This may have been mind control, but she still has to bear some of the blame for her predicament. And now she is going to become rich and famous, selling the rights to her story. -ohbfrank-
Chris
fujishig
03-27-06, 05:22 PM
Personally, if all of this turns out to be true, I have no problem with her getting compensated for her story, after what she's been through. If she had been a bit older, or if she had run away with him and had a more normal life, I'd agree with you, but with what she (allegedly) had to live through...
mrpayroll
03-27-06, 06:19 PM
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06083/675918.stm
Runaway teen turned woman lived alone in parallel world for 10 long years
Police say school security guard who took in Tanya Kach when she was 14 held her in a psychological prison
Friday, March 24, 2006
By Jonathan D. Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Running away from home was nothing new for Tanya Kach. Not returning was.
The girl who disappeared in McKeesport a decade ago and then abruptly re-emerged this week in the same town had been a runaway several times over as a teenager, her stepmother Jo-Ann Kach said yesterday.
Upset about her parents being in the throes of splitting up, the young Tanya would spend several days away from home. Then she would call her father, Jerry Kach, cry, and ask if she could return.
But Feb. 10, 1996, was different. Jo-Ann Kach said she remembers waking up early for work that Saturday morning and seeing Tanya sitting on the edge of her bed, stuffing something into a bag.
By the time she got out of the shower, Tanya was gone.
The family had no idea where she had gone, but could only imagine the worst as the days stretched to weeks, then months, and then the unthinkable time span of years.
But Allegheny County police believe they know. Tanya Kach, investigators say, was held prisoner in a battered, two-story 104-year-old home that belonged to the parents of Tanya's middle school security guard, Thomas John Hose.
For 10 years, police said, Ms. Kach lived in her own parallel universe on that narrow street with its chockablock houses. She stayed hidden from neighbors, from her family, and even, police said, from Mr. Hose's parents, who lived in the house.
Police have described Mr. Hose, 48, as a Svengali who brainwashed Tanya Kach, taking advantage of her vulnerability to engage in a long-term sexual relationship and keeping her as a veritable prisoner. They said he gave her a new identity -- Nikki Allen -- and kept her hidden from the public until the past 10 months when he occasionally took her out.
"That's what we're looking at -- psychological control," county police Sgt. Richard Mullen said. "There is no evidence he physically forced her to stay there."
Sgt. Mullen likened Ms. Kach's situation to that of a battered woman who can't bring herself to leave her abuser.
"You take a 14-year-old," Sgt. Mullen said, "how much more vulnerable is she?"
Jerry Kach said last night his daughter has been through a rush of emotions since she returned home yesterday. Mr. Kach said she can be completely content one minute then begin crying uncontrollably the next.
He said hearing Mr. Hose's name or being reminded of her 10 years of captivity in any way seemed to trigger her mood swings.
"She became absolutely hysterical after finding out he [Mr. Hose] might be released from jail," Mr. Kach said last night in the dining room of his home in Elizabeth Township. He said Ms. Kach was in an upstairs bedroom resting and that the family was being harassed by curiosity seekers who have been driving in front of their house.
Mr. Kach said his daughter would not talk to the news media anymore and that the family has hired a lawyer, Lawrence Fisher, of Canonsburg, to be the family's spokesman. He also said the family is making arrangements for Ms. Kach's grandparents to fly down from Anchorage, Alaska, to see her.
In an interview Wednesday with KDKA-TV, Ms. Kach said she hates Mr. Hose and what he did to her.
"He took away 10 years of my life," she said. "I didn't finish high school -- dropped out in the 8th grade, no sweet 16, no prom. All those years I could have met a real man who would've appreciated me and loved me."
I'm having less and less sympathy for her the more I read. She had run away multiple times, probably looking for Mr. Right.
It sounds like she was really excited in the beginning, running away with her 'boyfriend'. And it was probably good for a couple of weeks/months. Then she wasn't happy and he started playing mind games with her.
I'm sorry, she was 14 years old at the time, not 8 years old.
I bet if the relationship had stayed good, meaning that he didn't lock her up, and hide her away and he really treated her with the love and kindness she deserved, we wouldn't be here right now reading this story.
It sounds like she didn't like her relationship anymore and it took her 9 years to come to the conclusion that she should tell someone. -ohbfrank-
Chris
dre123
03-28-06, 10:38 AM
I am sure she could have left at any time. They said she was walking around the neighborhood and stuff.
Thomas Hose and Judy Sokol are accused of helping Tanya Kach, then 14 years old, run away from home ten years ago and move in with a grown man.
Meanwhile, Hose is back in his McKeesport home under house arrest and under a court order to stay away from Kach.
Bob Allen
(KDKA) McKEESPORT Two suspects in the mysterious case of a teen who went missing for 10 years, but resurfaced alive last week are now out of jail.
Thomas Hose and Judy Sokol are accused of helping Tanya Kach, then 14 years old, run away from home ten years ago and move in with a grown man.
Tuesday, Thomas Hose got out on bail.
The other person arrested in the case, Judy Sokol, is free as well. Sokol made bail and was released from jail Tuesday night. She's accused of statutory sexual assault and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse. Sokol allegedly helped then 14-year-old Kach run away from home.
Meanwhile, Hose is back in his McKeesport home under house arrest and under a court order to stay away from Kach. Investigators say for a decade, until last week, Hose held Kach psychologically captive in his home.
“He was very anxious to get out, as you would be, and just looking forward to getting home to his mom and dad that are elderly,” said Hose’s attorney Jim Ecker.
Court papers said the first time Hose and Kach had sex was at Sokol's home. Hose met Kach when he was a security guard at the Cornell Middle School.
In downtown McKeesport, people had mixed opinions about Hose and Sokol being released from jail.
“I think house arrest, but they really have to listen to his side, too. I mean this girl, how could she be held captive if she was allowed to go for six months to that store and go to church,” said one resident.
Another said, “I think he should have stayed in there.”
Both Hose and Sokol face separate hearings on the charges next week. Sokol has a hearing scheduled on Monday. Hose goes to court on Thursday.
I couldn't figure how to link the pictures of Hose & Sokol, so click on the link if you want to see them.
Chris
Nick Danger
03-30-06, 03:02 PM
I'm not surprised that she was a runaway with parents in the middle of a divorce. Cults don't recruit happy, emotionally-secure people. Why should this guy?
Captivity of Tanya Kach Gets More Bizarre As Details Emerge
By Marilyn Bardsley
March 31, 2006
MCKEESPORT, Pa. (Crime Library) — In such a bizarre case as the 10-year captivity of Tanya Nicole Kach, there is certain to be a great deal of investigation into the character of the victim, the man charged with sexually assaulting her and how the captivity could go on so long without being discovered. As new details emerge about the main players in the cast of characters, the story gets stranger and more incredible.
In 1996 Tanya was a defiant teenager, according to published accounts, who had run away before disappearing for 10 years. Some of Tanya's emotional difficulties appeared to have resulted from the breakup of her parents' marriage and the appearance of a stepmother. These domestic problems boiled over into her school life, affecting her attitude towards other students. Her behavior did not earn her many friends.
There were hints of precocious sexuality even before she took off with Thomas J. Hose, the security guard at her school. Her stepmother referred to Tanya as "streetwise."
http://www.crimelibrary.com/graphics/photos/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/tanya_kach/Thomas_John_Hose150.jpg
Thomas J. Hose
Tanya's youthful interest in Thomas John Hose, then 38, was not a secret. According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, she indicated to Kevin J. Churchfield, a person for whom she babysat, that she had a crush on Hose. Others reported that Hose escorted Kach to her classes. Many of the students picked up on this relationship and discussed it openly, but no one paid much attention. Police questioned Hose in connection to Kach's disappearance, but his reputation seemed to offer him some protection against any further surveillance
Hose was a very highly respected security guard according to his employer. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the students and staff at the Cornell Middle School thought so highly of the security guard that they celebrated 'Thomas Hose Day' in 1999 and presented him with a plaque.
Incredibly, Hose, now 48, has always lived with his parents, even during the ten years that Kach alleged she was kept captive in the house, confined to the second floor. According to Kach, during that time, Hose's parents did not know that she was a captive on the second floor of their home.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/graphics/photos/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/tanya_kach/House-Kach-was-kept200.jpg
House belonging to Hose family
Some of the people who worked with him considered Hose a "ladies man," who always wore too much cologne. But they never questioned his competence or integrity.
Kach's allegations have re-opened the investigation into the suspicious death of another 14-year-old, Kimberlie Krimm, who went to the same middle school as Kach. Kimberlie's half-clothed body was found in 1998 in Versailles Cemetery which is close to Hose's residence.
As a teen, Kach was known as streetwise
Details emerge on her pre-runaway life
Friday, March 31, 2006
By Jonathan D. Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A police officer who investigated Tanya Kach's disappearance in 1996 remembers her as a troubled teen who was sassy, argumentative and reputed to have a penchant for older men.
E. Michael Elias, the former detective lieutenant in charge of the McKeesport Police Department's juvenile bureau, also recalled that Miss Kach's father, Jerry Kach, expressed little interest in monitoring police progress in the case.
"It almost seemed like he couldn't care less. They weren't calling the station," recalled Mr. Elias, who is now security supervisor for the McKeesport Housing Authority. "They weren't stopping in to see us, unlike most parents whose kids run away."
The family's attorney last night disputed that characterization.
"Jerry Kach was always interested in the safe return of his daughter and has never given up hope that she would be returned to him," said attorney Lawrence Fisher. "This is a very close-knit family and Tanya is very much daddy's little girl. Any suggestion to the contrary is absurd."
When Miss Kach ran away from her McKeesport home in February 1996 as a 14-year-old described by her own stepmother as "streetwise," she had been carrying on a relationship with a then 38-year-old security guard at her middle school, Thomas J. Hose, according to police.
Last week, investigators charged Mr. Hose, 48, with statutory sexual assault and three counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
A McKeesport hairdresser, Judith Sokol, 57, was arrested as his accomplice. Police accused her of cutting and dyeing Ms. Kach's hair and allowing Mr. Hose and Miss Kach to have sex at her home.
Miss Kach told police she was not bound or chained; instead, she said, she spent nearly 10 years simply under Mr. Hose's influence, hiding in the house he shared with his parents and son.
Only within the past year did she begin venturing out into public, using the alias Nikki Allen, McKeesport residents said. And it wasn't until last week that she told Joseph Sparico, the owner of a local deli where she whiled away the hours playing video poker in his back room, who she really was.
When Miss Kach re-emerged, she seemed bubbly and naive, a person who was said to have lived a sheltered existence in a dingy house without much access to the outside world.
But she also had manicured nails, her hair was styled and she knew enough to tell Mr. Sparico that her picture was on a Web site for missing children. She is said to have bought Avon products locally, gone shopping at a Wal-Mart in North Versailles and volunteered at a church thrift shop in her old neighborhood.
Miss Kach and her family present a confusing mix of imagery.
On one hand, there was an emotional reunion with Mr. Sparico and tender moments with her father.
But on the other, according to her stepmother, there was a father who went back to sleep after being told his teenage daughter with a history of running away was packing a bag at 6 in the morning.
"I says, 'Jerry, Jerry, Tanya's gone.' His words were 'She better not be' and he goes back to sleep," Jo-Ann Kach said.
And, said Mr. Elias, Mr. Hose himself had volunteered that Miss Kach liked older men.
"It was Tom Hose himself coming to me, telling me to be careful, she likes coming on to older men," Mr. Elias said.
"He always pointed her out to me -- that's Tanya Kach, she's got lots of problems, but she likes to come on to older men. She was 13. ... He said, 'One time, she even tried to get me into trouble by saying I tried to molest her or ask her out on a date.' "
Tanya's stepmother said the teenager had run away several times, usually for a few days, before her final disappearance. At the time, she said, Jerry Kach and Miss Kach's mother were splitting up. Jo-Ann Kach, the step-mother, said Tanya resented her.
"It was adolescence, a lot of emotions," Jo-Ann Kach said. "She felt that her father didn't love her -- a new woman in the picture -- and she was hoping that her mother and father would get back together."
Wrong suspicions
The night before Miss Kach disappeared, she baby-sat the daughter of Kevin J. Churchfield on Cleveland Street in McKeesport, a few blocks from the Kach home at the time.
Mr. Churchfield, 46, said yesterday that Miss Kach had watched his child a few times before. That night, Mr. Churchfield said, he dropped Miss Kach off at her home, said "good night," and left.
Police, however, had a different theory, Mr. Churchfield said. He claims that investigators have hounded him since 1996 about whether he played a role in Miss Kach's disappearance, even asking him where he hid her body when they thought she might be dead.
"I went through 10 years of hell," Mr. Churchfield said. "They wanted me to take a polygraph test to see if I killed her. ... They took pictures of my family. They watched every move I made."
Mr. Churchfield said he took two polygraph tests and passed both. He also claimed investigators had been in contact with him regularly since 1996, most recently in November. He said he never did anything untoward with Miss Kach.
Allegheny County Police Assistant Superintendent James Morton acknowledged that Mr. Churchfield was questioned in Miss Kach's disappearance. He said, however, Mr. Churchfield greatly exaggerated the detectives' level of interest and was one of many people police interviewed as part of the Kach investigation.
"He was talked to in relation to her and that was it. I don't have anything to accuse him of, but we didn't make his life a living hell," Assistant Superintendent Morton said.
'Stunning' disappearance
When Miss Kach vanished, she did so without a trace, Mr. Elias recalled. He said investigators spoke to parents of classmates, but no one provided useful leads. As far as speaking with classmates, Mr. Elias said, Miss Kach had not endeared herself to other students.
"I don't know that she had any friends at all," he recalled. After getting to know Miss Kach and dealing with her troubles in school, the disappearance was remarkable to him.
"Next thing I know, she's gone. It was stunning, the way she dropped out of sight. These kids, they run away for a day or two and then find out how hard it is to be on their own and come home," Mr. Elias said. "She just disappeared off the face of the Earth."
In March 1996, several weeks after Miss Kach's disappearance, Allegheny County's child welfare agency filed a dependency petition, a document that would turn custody of a child over to the state if approved. The reason cited was "parent-child conflict."
The agency could have been notified by those involved in the investigation, by neighbors, the family itself, or others familiar with the family situation. The case was closed in January 1997.
Over the years, Mr. Hose's name came up in various ways in regards to Miss Kach. Mr. Churchfield said he alerted police to Mr. Hose early on.
"I told the county homicide 10 years ago to check him, and they said, 'He works for the school, and he would have had nothing to do with that,' " Mr. Churchfield claimed. "I told them he's a guard at the school and she had a big crush on him. ... She used to brag about that security guard. She'd say she had the biggest crush on him."
County police said they spoke to Mr. Hose in 1998 or 1999 after Ms. Sokol directed them to him. Police, however, have said there was nothing provoking suspicion of Mr. Hose at the time.
When police spoke with Mr. Hose, they were in McKeesport investigating the discovery in 1998 of the remains of 14-year-old Kimberlie Krimm, whose body was found on a hillside in Versailles Cemetery, near Mr. Hose's home on Soles Street.
Kimberlie's older sister, Monica, was in Tanya Kach's class. Their mother, Jeanie Krimm, said her daughter believed from the moment that Miss Kach disappeared that Mr. Hose was involved.
Mrs. Krimm, who once worked in the Cornell Middle School cafeteria, recalled Mr. Hose as a "wanna-be ladies man," with too-tight pants, cologne, jet-black hair, a smooth patter and winks for the ladies.
"Even at the time that she disappeared, Monica always contended he had something to do with it. All the girls at school knew about their affair," Mrs. Krimm said.
"I always blew it off. I feel bad about that. I feel bad I didn't believe Monica, but who would?"
Mon Valley
McKeesport
Woman arraigned in missing-girl case
Judith Sokol, the woman accused of helping a McKeesport man conceal a runaway girl who was missing for 10 years, was formally arraigned Monday.
She faces a pretrial hearing Sept. 29 before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge John Zottola.
Sokol and Thomas Hose are accused of sexually exploiting Tanya Kach, of McKeesport, who vanished in 1996 when she was 14 and resurfaced a decade later.
Police say Sokol, now of Duquesne, is accused of helping Kach change her appearance and conceal a sexual relationship with Hose, who was a security guard at what now is Cornell Intermediate School. Authorities do not think that Sokol directly assaulted Kach. She is accused of providing aid that was instrumental in the assault of which Hose is accused.
Hose is expected to be formally arraigned Aug. 31.
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