NEED TO KNOW
\nAmber Hagerman went missing in January 1996, while riding her bike in Arlington, TexasHer body was discovered four days later, about six miles from where she had been abductedAmber’s case hasn’t been solved, but her murder inspired the AMBER Alerts system<\/p>\n
Though Amber Hagerman<\/a>‘s murder has never been solved, her case helped recover countless children nationwide by inspiring the AMBER (America\u2019s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alerts<\/a> system.\n<\/p>\n On Jan. 13, 1996, the 9-year-old and her younger brother, Ricky, were riding their bicycles around a parking lot in Arlington, Texas. Ricky returned to their grandparents’ home, but Amber did not. Her body was discovered four days later near a creek roughly six miles from where they had been playing, per The New York Times<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n “Finding Amber’s body is a sad moment I’ll never forget,” Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson previously told PEOPLE. Despite efforts by investigators and her family, the case is still unsolved.\n<\/p>\n In response to Amber’s heart-wrenching case, a Texas mom named Diana Simone had the idea to create an emergency system for abducted children, similar to a weather or civil defense alert. After the pitch was picked up by the Child Alert Foundation, AMBER Alerts were created. The system went into development in 1996 and is still used today.\n<\/p>\n “It’s a shame my daughter had to be butchered and had to go through what she went through for us to have the AMBER Alert, but I know she would be proud of it,” Amber’s mother, Donna Williams, told Yahoo News<\/a> in January 2016.\n<\/p>\n On the 25th anniversary of her disappearance, in January 2021, Arlington Police held a news conference in the parking lot where Amber was abducted. They honored the young girl\u2019s legacy and assured her family and the public that they were still looking for Amber\u2019s killer.\n<\/p>\n \u201cI miss her voice. I miss her touch. I miss her hugs,\u201d Williams said, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/a>. \u201cI remember everything about her. There\u2019s nothing I\u2019ve forgotten about her.”\n<\/p>\n Here\u2019s everything to know about Amber Hagerman and how her murder led to the creation of AMBER Alerts.\n<\/p>\n Who was Amber Hagerman? <\/p>\n Amber Hagerman in a school photo.<\/p>\n Amber Hagerman was born on Nov. 25, 1986, in Arlington, to Richard Hagerman and Donna Williams (at the time of Amber\u2019s disappearance, Williams went by the name Whitson). Williams left Hagerman in 1994, according to WFAA-TV<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Amber was 9 years old when she was abducted. Williams described Amber to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2021 as an \u201cinnocent and sweet little girl\u201d who loved being like a \u201clittle mommy\u201d to her younger brother, Ricky.\n<\/p>\n She was a Girl Scout who loved writing, Barbies, the Disney princess Pocahontas and her pink bike. Her third-grade classmates at Barry Elementary in Arlington described her as \u201cpretty\u201d and \u201cnice,” according to a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) blog post<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Months before her abduction, Amber, Ricky and Williams, who at the time was a single mother working toward her GED, were interviewed by WFAA-TV for a special on welfare reform. In the piece, Amber showed off her scrapbook, which included awards for good grades and attendance, and Williams said Amber \u201cloved school.\u201d\n<\/p>\n “Amber was just a very sweet, innocent child, and that’s the memory we got to hold onto as we investigate,” Arlington Police Sgt. Grant Gildon told PEOPLE in 2022. “That this is someone who was doing something as innocent as riding a bicycle, and evil found her that day.”\n<\/p>\n What happened on the day Amber Hagerman went missing? <\/p>\n Donna Whitson and Richard Hagerman, parents of Amber Hagerman, speak outside the Arlington Funeral Home on Friday morning, Jan. 19, 1996.<\/p>\n AP Photo\/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bruce Maxwell<\/p>\n On Jan. 13, 1996, Amber and her 5-year-old brother, Ricky, took their bicycles to a parking lot in Arlington, Texas.\n<\/p>\n After a few minutes, Ricky decided to go back to their grandparents\u2019 home, about two blocks away. Before Amber could join her brother, according to one witness, a man in a black pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot, snatched Amber off her bicycle and took off. The abduction took place in broad daylight, at 3:18 p.m. local time.\n<\/p>\n One month after Amber\u2019s murder, Williams visited her daughter\u2019s elementary school classmates. A boy asked what time Amber left on her bike, and Williams told him 3:10.\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt just took eight minutes,\u201d she said, according to a 2021 NCMEC blog post. \u201cSo you guys stay close to home, okay?\u201d\n<\/p>\n In 2016, 20 years after his sister\u2019s murder, Ricky told reporters that at the time, he \u201cdidn\u2019t quite understand what was going on,” per The Seattle Times<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \u201cI just knew my sister was taken from us,\u201d he said with tears in his eyes. \u201cShe was my best friend, like a second mother.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Were there any witnesses to Amber Hagerman\u2019s abduction? <\/p>\n A tree planted in memory of Amber Hagerman stands adorned with pink ribbons on January 10, 2006, in Arlington, Texas.<\/p>\n \u00a0R. Jenna Jacob\/Fort Worth Star-Telegram\/Tribune News Service via Getty<\/p>\n A man named Jimmie Kevil was the only witness to come forward after Amber’s abduction. He claimed to have seen the abduction from his backyard, telling police that a 1980s or 1990s single-cab black truck had been parked earlier at a nearby laundromat. The assailant allegedly drove up in the truck, kidnapped Amber and traveled away from Highway 360 towards the center of Arlington.\n<\/p>\n \u201cI saw [Amber] riding up and down,\u201d Kevil told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth<\/a> in January 2016. \u201cShe was by herself. I saw this black pickup. He pulled up, jumped out and grabbed her. When she screamed, I figured the police ought to know about it, so I called them.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Sgt. Ben Lopez, who was a rookie on the Arlington police force when Amber disappeared, acknowledged at a 2021 press conference that police knew there may have been undocumented residents at the laundromat who were afraid to come forward but \u201cif there is a witness or witnesses who have that concern, we are not interested at all in pursuing any kind of deportation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Kevil died in May 2016.\n<\/p>\n When was Amber Hagerman found? <\/p>\n Donna Norris touches a photo of her daughter, Amber Hagerman, on January 12, 2006 at her home in Hurst, Texas.<\/p>\n R. Jeena Jacob\/Star-Telegram via AP<\/p>\n Four days after her disappearance, Amber\u2019s body was found in a drainage ditch with cuts, including to her throat.\n<\/p>\n Amber\u2019s body was spotted by a man behind the Forest Ridge apartment complex, about six miles from the parking lot from which she was taken.\n<\/p>\n Dee Anderson, a spokesperson for the Tarrant County police, said at the time that maintenance workers had been near the creek hours earlier, but Amber\u2019s body was not found. It was believed that her body \u201cmoved there during a rainstorm,\u201d according to The New York Times, and that she had been alive for 48 hours after her kidnapping.\n<\/p>\n “We will find the person who did this,” Anderson said. “We never want another little girl, another family, to go through what this little girl, this family, has been through.”\n<\/p>\n Sgt. Gildon described the area where Amber was found as \u201cvery secluded.\u201d\n<\/p>\n “We do believe you’d have to be somewhat familiar with that area to know where that creek is,” he told PEOPLE. “Was there a connection with that location? And was it someone who had a reason for turning back to the center of town? The thought has always been that the easiest way to get out of the area would’ve been to go to Highway 360.”\n<\/p>\n Who abducted Amber Hagerman? <\/p>\n Police believe the suspect was a local male. Officials described him as White or Hispanic, in his 20s or 30s, under 6 ft. and with dark hair.\n<\/p>\n “Based on the direction of travel when they left and then based on her being found in Arlington, being abducted in Arlington and just being in that spot, the question has always been, did somebody have a connection with that area where the abduction was?” Sgt. Gildon told PEOPLE.\n<\/p>\n How did Amber Hagerman\u2019s murder help create AMBER Alerts? <\/p>\n President Bush, joined by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Donna Norris and her son Rick Hagerman, speaks before signing Amber Alert legislation into law on April 30, 2003 at the White House in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite<\/p>\n After Amber\u2019s murder, a local Texas mother named Diana Simone kept thinking about how Amber disappeared without a trace.\n<\/p>\n “I said, ‘I can’t get over this child. There has to be something we can do,’ ” Simone told PEOPLE. There were weather and civil defense alerts so, “why wouldn’t they do it for this?”\n<\/p>\n Simone called a local radio station with an idea for an emergency system. The concept was that when a 911 call was placed, radio stations would immediately interrupt programming to broadcast the alert. Fourteen days after Amber’s abduction, Simone wrote a letter to the station requesting that if the alert system got put into place, it should be known as Amber’s plan.\n<\/p>\n Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters and local police then teamed up to develop an early warning system, according to the official AMBER Alert website<\/a>. The system, officially named AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert, began development in 1996. It was first implemented on July 5, 1997, and the first success story came on Nov. 10, 1998, per Nevada’s AMBER Alert website<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n The system, which is used in \u201cthe most serious child-abduction cases,\u201d aims to \u201cinstantly galvanize the community to assist in the search for and safe recovery of a missing child,\u201d according to the NCMEC, which manages the program for the U.S. Department of Justice.\n<\/p>\n The alerts are first issued by law enforcement to broadcasters and state transportation officials. NCMEC is then notified, and they re-distribute the alert to secondary distributors, which include radio, television and road signs. As of 2013, messages are sent to phones through the Wireless Emergency Alerts program (WEA), and alerts are also shared on social media via Facebook, Instagram and X.\n<\/p>\n Today, AMBER Alerts are used in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, parts of Indian country, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and 45 other countries, according to its website. As of Oct. 31, 2024, they have saved at least 1,221 children in the U.S., according to the NCMEC.\n<\/p>\n Was Amber Hagerman\u2019s case solved? <\/p>\n Donna Williams stands next to a mural depicting her daughter, Amber Hagerman, on January 13, 2021 at the parking lot where she was taken in Arlington, Texas.<\/p>\n Yffy Yossifor\/Star-Telegram via AP<\/p>\n