DENHAM SPRINGS - Friday morning, Virginia Firmin was jolted back to the worst time of her life, nearly 25 years ago, by a call from her daughter.
"She said 'Mom, I don't know if I should tell you this or not, but I'm hearing that the guy that kidnapped those two little children is the son of Kelly Wayne Drott.' It brought it all back," she said.
News of Daniel Callihan's arrest for the murder of Callie Brunett and her 4-year-old daughter brought everything back up when Firmin discovered he is the son of the man who killed her youngest daughter in 1990.
According to reports, 18-year-old Rebecca Forbes did not return home after visiting the Italian festival in Independence. Her body was found three weeks later.
"She had been in the river for three weeks on a sand pile and they were lucky enough to find - which there wasn't very much of her left," said Firmin.
Authorities say Forbes met Drott at the festival and got into his car. Drott beat her to death and dumped her body in the Tangipahoa River.
Drott confessed to killing Forbes but always claimed it was an accident. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was given a 25-year sentence, however, he escaped his New Orleans prison and went on the run with another woman, whom he later shot. During his time on the lam, he kidnapped a teenage girl and later shot himself to death as police moved in.
"I would describe him as very disturbed. Probably had a very bad childhood," she said.
Callihan was only a toddler at the time and it's unclear what his relationship with his father was, but he did not take his last name.
The crimes he's accused of are eerily similar to his father's and a mind-boggling coincidence for Firmin.
"Did he grow up knowing that his daddy was a killer and then he turned out to be one too? You know? How can that be?" she asked.
Firmin says though it happened in 1990, it still feels like yesterday. Now, even more so.
"I have forgiven him but I haven't forgotten and it was very hard. Still is."
Both the woman Drott shot and the girl kidnapped during his time on the run survived their ordeals.
Callihan is a native of Independence, but according to his arrest documents - his most recent address is listed as homeless in Brandon, Mississippi.
Drott's kidnapping victim in 1994 was Lindsey Michelle Dye, then a 17-year-old in Batesville, Mississippi. She was abducted from a convenience store after Drott asked her for directions; she escaped by deliberately wrecking his getaway car while he shot at pursuing police in western Arkansas.
"As coolly as I could I stayed calm and tried not to do anything that would make him nervous," Dye said after returning home in 1994. "I knew if I made him nervous he might do something rash."
Dye said Drott made her drive after police spotted him near Dardanelle, Arkansas, and that she sped up and deliberately swerved into a ditch. She said in 1994 that she learned the driving trick from her father, a fan of action movies.
3 окт 2024
