Disturbing new details emerged Tuesday surrounding the abduction of 9-year-old Charlotte Sena and the suspect who is alleged to have swiped her from a park while riding a bike.
In an arraignment memorandum obtained by CNN, 46-year-old Craig Nelson Ross Jr. “wrote a ransom letter with the intent to compel the payment of monies as ransom for her,” the document says.
Also among the new details to emerge Tuesday is that Ross may have forced the child to pen her own ransom letter to demand $50,000 from her parents. Those details emerged in a report by the Albany Times-Union, which cited anonymous police sources.
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The Times-Union’s sources also revealed that a state trooper is under scrutiny for failing to arrest Ross when he dropped the note off in a mailbox at Sena’s family home—that was under police surveillance—early Monday morning.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was involved in search operations and who has spoken repeatedly about the case since Sena’s discovery, did not address why a state trooper guarding Sena’s family residence failed to arrest Ross in any of her comments about the ordeal, which included a live interview on CNN and a Monday night press conference.
Ross was arrested Monday night moments after cops raided the camper he lived in, which was adjacent to his mom’s double-wide trailer, officials said. He’s since been charged with kidnapping and is accused of swiping Sena off a bike loop inside Upstate New York’s Moreau Lake State Park on Saturday. Police say more charges are expected.
Sena was found stuffed in a cupboard inside the camper, officials said. She was physically in “good health,” but authorities have not spoken to her mental wellbeing, nor have they said what the girl endured in the nearly 48 hours she was trapped by Ross.
Sources told CNN that investigators have held off on interviewing Sena about what occurred with Ross. They told the network that Sena was returned to her family after a medical check and that she’ll eventually be spoken to by specially trained forensic interviewers who work with young victims.
Investigators were able to identify Ross as a suspect using a fingerprint he left on the ransom note. Authorities said the fingerprint returned as a match to Ross from a 1999 arrest for driving under the influence.
Ross was nabbed four hours after the match was confirmed, with a specially trained police unit reportedly raiding his camper to find him wearing only his underwear, according to the Times-Union’s sources.
The Times-Union reported that Ross was uncooperative with authorities once in custody and received minor injuries. He reportedly refused to divulge details of the kidnapping and wouldn’t say if he had specifically targeted Sena or not.
Cops have not publicly identified any relation between Sena and Ross, though authorities revealed an address listed to Ross is near the Sena family home.
Ross was recently the center of a New York State Police probe into sexual abuse allegations that claimed he assaulted a girl when she was around 12 years old. The Times-Union reported that Ross denied those allegations, which were over a year old, and that investigators closed their probe into Ross last month.
Ross is being represented by a public defender in Saratoga County, who didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast by time of publication. The alleged abductor appears to have fallen out of favor with his own kids, with TMZ reporting Tuesday that his son, Joshua, said his dad is “disgusting,” “gross,” and that he “should die.”
“He’s in jail. We want nothing to do with him,” video showed Joshua yelling from a screened-in porch. “I couldn’t give a fuck if the dude dropped dead tomorrow. I could care less.”
