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FBI Release Suspect Information In 1999 Child Abduction, Molestation Case

Last updated on Monday, January 16, 2017

(UNDATED) - Federal authorities say a man charged in the 1999 abduction and sexual assault of a Seymour girl assumed the identity of a car crash victim as he avoided arrest until this week in Oregon.

FBI agents arrested 61-year-old Charles Hollin at a Walmart Supercenter where he was working on Tuesday.

Hollin is formerly of Clearsprings, Indiana.

He had been living under the name of an Indiana boy who had been killed in a car accident in 1975.

Hollin subsequently obtained driver's licenses in three states, a Social Security card and a U.S. passport in the dead boy's name, according to an FBI agent's affidavit.

U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler says investigators tracked down Hollin, after he was identified through facial recognition software of his passport photograph.

Hollin faces state charges of child molestation and confinement for the attack on the 10-year-old girl. He also faces federal charges of identity theft and fleeing prosecution.

Authorities say Hollin was living in Oregon as Andrew David Hall, an 8-year-old boy who died from a 1975 crash in Fayette County, Kentucky.

The crime:

According to court records, the 10-year-old girl was alone January 20, 1999, waiting outside the old Girls Inc. facility on West Second Street.

Hollin asked her to come to his car, where he told her he had locked his keys inside and needed her help.

When they got close to the car, police say Hollin cupped his hand over the girl's mouth and showed her a knife and threatened to kill her if she didn't come with him.

He then made her put a stocking mask over her head and drove away to an undisclosed location, undressed her and sexually assaulted her.

He then forced the girl, who was naked, out of his car, leaving her on an isolated road as he sped off, tossing her belongings out of the car as he drove away.

The girl was later picked up by a passing motorist.

When police went to the scene, they found the girl's belongings, as well as a coat, which had a day planner with Charles Hollin's name on it.

Hollin told police the coat had been stolen out of his vehicle.

FBI Agent Todd D. Prewitt wrote in the affidavit, that DNA samples from Hollin's car and coat and from the victim's coat, showed that Hollin was a match for the sample. Fibers on both coats matched the inside of Hollin's car.

The Jackson County prosecutor charged Hollin with two felony counts of confinement with a deadly weapon and three felony counts of child molestation. But when investigators went to arrest him, he had disappeared.

When investigators interviewed Hollin's friends and co-workers, they learned he was an avid reader of detective magazines and had claimed to have many ways to disguise his identity, including fake hair pieces and mustaches.

Hollin told his co-workers he knew the victim had identified him in a police lineup. He asked others if they would "'pull a Houdini" if they were facing charges, according to police interviews.

"It would be better to be alienated on some tropical island somewhere than in a 10x10 jail cell," Hollins told his co-workers, according to court documents. "If you want to, and you know how, you can become someone else just like that."

Police have spent 16 years trying to find and arrest Hollin.

It wasn't until late last year, on December 20, that a facial analysis comparison test confirmed a "most likely'' candidate match between Hollin and "Andrew David Hall'' via a U.S. passport application photograph.

Investigators learned the original Andrew David Hall was an 8-year-old boy who had been hit by a car and killed in Kentucky in 1975.

The application indicated Hall had applied for a passport on April 26, 2007, to travel to China. The application said Hall was born in Massachusetts.

He was able to get the driver's licenses, Social Security number and passport using the dead boy's name because on Hall's death certificate, the box for Social Security number was never filled in, FBI agent Prewitt wrote in his affidavit.

A subsequent search of Accurint, a database tool used by government, police and commercial customers, showed Hall was possibly living in Oregon. FBI agents pulled Hall's birth certificate and found he had applied for a Social Security card on Feb. 18, 1988, at age 20, which was unusual, according to the Social Security Administration.

Further investigation turned up that Hall had gotten a driver's license in Indiana on April 29, 1999, four months after the abduction of the 10-year-old girl. The driver's license information matched Hollin's height and weight and hair and eye color, the federal affidavit says. Indiana couldn't locate any photographs for the driver's license, the FBI agent wrote.

It appears when Hollin got the Indiana license in Hall's name that the state didn't have the capacity to keep the motor vehicle license photos and couldn't use them for future facial recognition technology, says Tim Horty, a spokesman in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Indiana.

Agents suspect Hollin, using Hall's name and driver's license, moved to Minnesota and got a Minnesota driver's license there in August 2001 before moving to Oregon and getting an Oregon driver's license on March 29, 2011.

"This case is a prime example of the tenacity of the FBI," W. Jay Abbott, Indianapolis FBI Special Agent in Charge, says in a press release. "The public should be assured the FBI will not stop seeking justice for innocent victims."

If convicted on the federal charges, Hollin faces up to eight years imprisonment, according to Assistant United States Attorney Bradley P. Shepard, who is prosecuting the case. If convicted on the Jackson County charges, Hollin could face decades in prison.

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