dashed hopes

This is kind of a heavy post that I started a week or more ago and never published. We've been following a child abduction story. It stands out because in nearly the year since we've been here it's the only one we've heard of for the whole country. A 10 year old girl was riding her bike home from soccer practice in a rustic small town in the western part of Sweden and never made it home. They found her bike a half kilometer from her house and no trace of the girl.

Just so happens that a guy recently bought a camera and was out testing it the day she disappeared. When he heard the report of the missing girl he contacted police about some pictures he had taken. He happen to take a picture of the girl riding her bike on the way home. In another picture right behind her was a car that police later traced to a known sexual predator. After several days of interogation the guy admitted to killing the girl as well as a 31 year old woman back in 2000.

It is one of those incidents where when you look at the facts and the outcome seems hopeless and yet against reason you hold out hope anyway. It is similar to a recent development back home with a missing US soldier in Iraq. Although the tenets of the case all point to something sinister something inside holds out hope for a family reunion. Even in Sweden we were saddened to hear about the discovery of Matt Maupin, in another sense relieved for his family.