Delaware County Daily Times - Aug 31, 1999 Article #2

Tire iron could hold clue to missing tot

Delaware County Daily Times (Primos - Upper Darby, PA) - Tuesday, August 31, 1999

Author: ROSE QUINN ; Of the Times Staff

MEDIA -- First it was a mysterious baby car seat.

Now, as District Attorney Patrick Meehan confirmed yesterday, investigators looking for missing Katelyn Rivera-Helton want to know what happened to a tire iron that was in her father's borrowed getaway car.

Meehan described the tire iron as standard issue for the red 1985 Ford Escort that Robert N. Rivera of Upper Chichester was driving when he rode off with his 20-month-old daughter three weeks ago today.

""Investigators were informed that on the day the car was used, there was a standard issued tire iron in the trunk,'' Meehan said. ""When police (later) searched the vehicle, that tire iron was missing.''

Added Meehan, ""It may or not be of evidentiary value.''

Rivera, who told authorities he gave the little girl to a couple he met but did not know at Longwood Gardens, is scheduled for preliminary hearing tomorrow on kidnapping and assault charges.

Jennifer Helton, Katelyn 's mother, told the Daily Times just days after Rivera turned up at her mother's Upper Chichester home without Katelyn and was apprehended by police, that he was driving a car that he told police belonged to his ""girlfriend.''

Helton, who had left Rivera weeks before, had sought a protection from abuse order after he assaulted her while moving belongings from an apartment. She and Katelyn moved home with her parents.

She said when Rivera , who was on the run more than 24 hours and who called Helton repeatedly from the road, had been spotted in the neighborhood before his arrest, there was a child's car seat in the car that had not been there before.

""Somewhere, a baby car seat appeared,'' she said.

However, ""(the owner of car) has no baby.'' Rivera 's diligence in somehow locating a seat came as some relief to Helton because she felt it showed he meant no harm to Katelyn .

Helton believes that when Rivera returned to her mother's Upper Chichester home Wednesday afternoon, beeping the car horn, it was to take her away, too.

Only then, Rivera told Helton, would he reveal Katelyn 's whereabouts.

Hours before the kidnapping, Rivera waived a hearing in district court on the assault offense.

Helton arrived at the courtroom after dropping Katelyn off at daycare.

Shortly after court, police say Rivera confronted Helton at a convenience store -- a violation of the protection from abuse order.

She called police while he headed to the daycare for his daughter.

Though Helton talked to Katelyn on the phone at least once during the ordeal, the father and daughter were last seen at a gas station at Route 1 and 100.

A river, woods and construction site have since been searched in Maryland, where Rivera visited some friends the night of the kidnapping. But nothing's turned up.