James Wood was a dinner guest in a Pocatello home June 29 when 11-year-old Jeralee Underwood came to the door, collecting money for her paper route.
According to court records, Wood excused himself after the girl left the house, saying he was going to buy beer. He said he would be back, but he did not return.About 5:45 p.m., minutes after Wood left the house, a woman several doors away saw a man force the girl into a beige car. Another neighbor saw the car speed away with the girl inside.
An hour after that, Jeralee's father, Jeffrey Underwood, reported his daughter had possibly been kidnapped.
Residents of Pocatello and surrounding areas joined in an intensive weeklong search for the missing girl, keeping their own children under close watch in the meantime.
Intense publicity about the abduction aroused the suspicions of Dave Haggard, who lives north of Pocatello. The suspect and vehicle description matched that of a relative, James Wood, 45, who had been staying at his house since October.
Haggard had talked with another relative, who lives in Pocatello, who told the story of Wood being at her house for dinner and leaving abruptly to buy beer after the newspaper carrier had been there.
According to court records, Haggard went to police Tuesday early in the afternoon and told them of his suspicions about Wood, who hadn't returned home the evening of Underwood's disappearance. Wood looked tired when he did return home the next morning, Haggard told police, describing how Wood washed his car, vacuumed the interior, and then parked the brown-over-beige 1984 Buick Century in a spot between a pickup truck and a boat, concealing it from view.
Haggard was so convinced Wood was involved in the kidnapping that he removed the contents of the vacuum and concealed them in a plastic bag inside his house until police arrived.
By that time, police believed Underwood had been murdered and her body dumped in the Snake River on the north end of Idaho Falls, 50 miles north of Pocatello.
Police searched Haggard's house and Wood's car about five hours after Haggard went to the police. The search warrant authorized them to look for any of the girl's personal items, including her glasses; and for a .22-caliber pistol and pornography.
Prosecutors in Pocatello and Idaho Falls would not say later Wednesday what they found in the search, only that Wood was taken into custody and led searchers to the spot where they found Underwood's body.
Wood was arraigned Wednesday on one count of first-degree kidnapping, a death-penalty offense in Idaho. Prosecutors Mark Hiedeman and Dave Johnson said murder charges will follow. The magistrate conducting the arraignment ordered Wood held without bail and set a July 16 preliminary hearing.
Pocatello Police Chief James Benham said he has received hundreds of calls during the past week from other law enforcement officers who wanted to exchange information about unsolved cases. Johnson would not say whether Wood, previously convicted of rape and robbery in Louisiana, confessed to any unsolved crimes after he was taken into custody.
Haggard's neighbors were shocked when police cars swarmed his house Tuesday night. "He came across the street and said `What do you think of my auction sale?' " across-the-street neighbor Nolan Davis recalled.
Haggard has an old Cadillac limousine parked in front of the house with a for sale sign in it. A number of old vehicles and a boat are parked in the yard. But his remark about the auction seemed odd to the neighbor of 20 years.
Then Haggard told Davis all of the cars along the street in front of the house were not there for an auction - they were police vehicles. Haggard seemed upset and nervous. He told Davis about Wood and the pending arrest.
As the story unfolded, Davis and Haggard's next-door-neighbor, Eugene Fountain, recalled meeting and talking to Wood several times along the rural street. "He seemed like such a nice guy. That's what scares me," Fountain said. "We all had talked to him."
Circumstances led Fountain to think about his daughters, who work late hours and come and go from the house at all hours. And the large elementary school next to Davis' house: "There are dozens of kids walking by here every day to the school," he said. "And it's a big school."
None of the neighbors knew of Wood's criminal past. "That would have made us very leery," Davis said. "I didn't know until last night that he regularly packed a pistol."
"If he would have walked out and shot somebody it wouldn't have frustrated me as much as him taking and hurting that little girl," Davis said.
The Underwoods' LDS stake president, Kent Howard, has acted as a family spokesman and said Wednesday the family wants to see justice done but has never talked of revenge.
Benham met with the family Wednesday and said the Underwoods wanted a few days to themselves before saying anything publicly about the tragic outcome to their daughter's kidnapping.