Delaware County Daily Times - Aug 26, 1999 Article #1

Shovel linked to Katelyn

Delaware County Daily Times (Primos - Upper Darby, PA) - Thursday, August 26, 1999

Author: SETH AGULNICK and ROSE QUINN ; Of the Times Staff

A shovel found at a Maryland construction site was positively identified yesterday as the one missing from a home that an Upper Chichester man visited the night his daughter vanished.

The shovel was found Monday at a construction site on Route 40 in Elkton, Md., as police searched for clues in the disappearance of 20-month-old Katelyn Rivera-Helton, said FBI Special Agent Adrienne Menn.

Katelyn has been missing since Aug. 10, when police say her father snatched her from a babysitter's house. Robert N. Rivera, 33, surrendered to police the next day, telling investigators he'd given his daughter away to strangers.

Rivera had visited friends in Elkton the night of the kidnapping, according to police. Those friends told investigators Rivera didn't have Katelyn with him that night and after he left, they noticed a shovel was missing from their shed.

One of the friends told police he'd been using the shovel earlier that day, so he's sure it disappeared around the same time Rivera was there.

Authorities, who last week searched the Elk River near the home of those friends, were already looking around the construction site when a deputy from the Cecil County Sheriff's Department stumbled across the shovel, said FBI Special Agent Robert Norton.

The shovel was identified by one of its owners as the one that had disappeared, authorities said.

""That doesn't mean (Rivera) is the one who took the shovel to that place,'' Norton said.

Still, the discovery concentrated the search for Katelyn to a more specific area of the 18-acre parcel of land, where a complex of car dealerships is being built.

As many as 10 search dogs assisted police Monday and Tuesday as they combed the site, which borders the Delaware state line. Nothing more was found and police were not at the site yesterday.

Katelyn's mother, Jennifer Helton, visited Rivera in prison Tuesday night but has since stopped talking with the media. Rivera is being held on $100,000 cash bail as he awaits a hearing on charges that he assaulted Helton in a Wawa parking lot and kidnapped Katelyn minutes later.

""I don't believe there was anything gleaned from that (visit),'' Norton said yesterday.

The alleged kidnapping happened the same day Rivera waived a hearing on charges that he'd assaulted Helton 11 days earlier when she tried to remove some belongings from an apartment.

Just five days before Katelyn was snatched, Rivera and Helton had signed a protection from abuse agreement that allowed Rivera only supervised visits with his daughter and required him to stay away from Helton's home and work.