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Deceased Savannah Frances-lee Leckie, 16

starry1

starry1

Trusted Member
This is a friend of a friend's baby girl and she is autistic (high-functioning). Please take a look and thank you.

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Posted: Friday, July 21, 2017 2:22 pm

By Sara Karnes | 0 comments

A 16-year-old girl from Ozark County disappeared from her home Thursday and her family believes she may be coming to the Hollister area.

Savannah Frances-Lee Leckie, of Longrun, is 5 feet, 3 inches tall, weighs about 110 pounds, has long brown hair and hasn’t been seen since July 19.

Her mother, Rebecca Ruud, spoke with Branson Tri-Lakes News Friday afternoon and said her daughter has high-functioning autism.

“This is a child that if she wants something, she will get it,” Ruud said. “We’re just trying to figure out where she’s set her mind to.”

On Tuesday, Ruud said she and her family were doing a brush fire on their farm when the fire got “out of hand” and Ruud was burned.

“I got massive second-degree burns from my wrist to my shoulder,” Ruud said. “She freaked out and I think that’s why she ran. She feels guilty.”

Searchers believe Savannah was on foot, Ruud said.

“She never did learn how to drive,” Ruud said.

Although their home is nearly two hours away, Ruud said she believes Savannah may be trying to reach Hollister because that’s where her biological father’s family is from. Another possibility is Savannah may try to go to her friends and family in Minnesota.

According to family friend Heather Tankersley, Savannah left home between the hours of 11 p.m. Wednesday night and 8 a.m. Thursday morning. Savannah took a teal and pink computer bag full of coloring books, a pillow and a blanket with her.

“Kids do not disappear without a trace,” Ruud said. “We’ve had no contact since I saw her Wednsesday.”

If you have information regarding Savannah, please call the Ozark County Sheriff’s Office at 417-679-4633 or dial 9-1-1.

The Branson Tri-Lakes News will provide updates as they become available.

http://bransontrilakesnews.com/news_free/article_e2f2b3ee-6e49-11e7-bb2d-2788f0b23dfa.html
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I am concerned since it's been five days and we all know the usual ending to autistic kids going missing, particularly if there's a body of water nearby; and in the neck of the woods I grew up in, there's plenty of creeks and ponds. I don't know this family at all, but my friend is a youth pastor and knows them through his extended church family. Maybe this child went to one of his summer camps. I will ask him.
 
It says she is high functioning, so she may have a good shot at staying alive. Minus the no sense of danger thing. She can figure out where to get scraps when hungry, and it doesn't sound like she would be one to end up in water. She packed some stuff and went, so sounds like she ran away. Though it seems she is on the lower end of high functioning by what she took. The good news is in the summer there won't be worries about her freezing in the night.
 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sheriff-bones-found-could-be-missing-missouri-girl/
OCIE, Mo. — Authorities say burned human bones found on a rural property in southwest Missouri might be those of a 16-year-old girl who hasn't been seen for nearly three weeks.

Ozark County Sheriff Darin Reed says a third search warrant was executed Wednesday on the property in the Ocie area of western Ozark County where the remains were found Friday.

The property belongs to the mother of Savannah Leckie, who reported the girl missing July 20.

Reed says experts will make and identification using dental records and DNA from bones and teeth found in a burn pile near a home where the girl lived with her mother and her mother's boyfriend for about a year.
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What the fuck. So lithiumgirl called it for sure, it definitely sounds like Mom killed her. And then just made up the shit about the bright computer bag filled with coloring books to.. what..? Elicit the response it did, from all of us whose hearts broke a bit reading about it?

And then sent people on a wild goose chase out of state, knowing the girl was already dead.

I hope her 2nd degree burn festers and becomes infected, slowly poisoning her system and infecting her blood, killing her only after a torturously agonizing decline.
 
starry1 said:
Jeez, my friend is going to be gutted by this.
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Warn her to stay away from her friend. Obviously, this could get messy for anyone around the mom and bf. This isn't the kind of friend she should want anyway. I know not all the evidence is out, but it looks pretty definitive. Savannah didn't die of natural causes, and at this point, I call all kinds of bullshit that she ran away.
 
Caligirl90 said:
Warn her to stay away from her friend. Obviously, this could get messy for anyone around the mom and bf. This isn't the kind of friend she should want anyway. I know not all the evidence is out, but it looks pretty definitive. Savannah didn't die of natural causes, and at this point, I call all kinds of bullshit that she ran away.
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her friend is a youth pastor and I hope they are southern Baptist getting ready to go all Mayan. Mommy murdered her or helped, the bf might have been molesting the kid & they were afraid she'd talk or she was pregnant. That was the first thing in my head when I first read this but didn't want to be a morbid freak to someone that knew the people second hand or in general. The whole truth of this will probably never come out but they need t treat it as the worse case scenario. Starry,hug your friend and tell them they couldn't have known what was happening without the girl letting them
 
Caligirl90 said:
Warn her to stay away from her friend. Obviously, this could get messy for anyone around the mom and bf. This isn't the kind of friend she should want anyway. I know not all the evidence is out, but it looks pretty definitive. Savannah didn't die of natural causes, and at this point, I call all kinds of bullshit that she ran away.
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No, its a he and he's friends with the dad, they live in Minnesota. Her dad is somehow associated with the youth pastor group that my friend is involved in.

PsychoKitty said:
her friend is a youth pastor and I hope they are southern Baptist getting ready to go all Mayan. Mommy murdered her or helped, the bf might have been molesting the kid & they were afraid she'd talk or she was pregnant. That was the first thing in my head when I first read this but didn't want to be a morbid freak to someone that knew the people second hand or in general. The whole truth of this will probably never come out but they need t treat it as the worse case scenario. Starry,hug your friend and tell them they couldn't have known what was happening without the girl letting them
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They're actually a Mennonite sub-sect. They're not quite as crazy with the plain clothes and women completely covered up and all that.
 
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starry1 said:
They're actually a Mennonite sub-sect. They're not quite as crazy with the plain clothes and women completely covered up and all that.
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it always seems like these off shoot groups are the worse [don't really put the mennonites in that category as at least they seem pretty decent and hard working if not totally unto themselves] but child molestation is heavy in the jehovahs witnesses, and any and all of the mormon sects and other fundie cult types [and I am not talking just Christianity in any shape or form]my condolences to her real father can just imagine all the things going through his head
 
There are some Mennonites in our town, they run a very nice restaurant that serves very good food.

The women dress plain, pale colored plain longish dresses with white caps on their hair, the men dress fairly plain in blue jeans and either plaid shirts or plain button down shirts, tho the men do have a bit more color than the women are allowed. The women don't seem to be as cowed as women in some of the more basic christian sects are.

I feel the same about them as I do most everybody else, what you do in your private life is your business, as long as you're not trying to convert me, we will have no problems. That applies to everything and everybody.
 
http://m.startribune.com/minnesota-...missouri-are-missing-teen-daughter/439709673/

Suspicions are growing that the charred skeletal remains found on a farm in Missouri are that of a teenage girl who has been missing for the past three weeks after she went to live with her biological mother last year “for a time” with the support of her lifelong adoptive parents in Minnesota.

Authorities in Ozark County working on making a positive identification have requested and received from Minnesota the dental records of 16-year-old Savannah Leckie, who has been missing from the 81-acre farm home where she had been living for 11 months with her biological mother, a spokesman for the girl’s adoptive parents said Thursday.

The Sheriff’s Office “has given us the news that our beautiful, smart, artistic, outgoing child may no longer be with us,” said a statement from adoptive parents Tamile Montague of Minneapolis and David Leckie of Park Rapids, who are now divorced.

“They have not yet made a positive identification,” the parents’ statement continued. “We have to face the possibility that, though Savannah may be coming home, it might not be the homecoming that we hoped and planned for.”

However, David Leckie appeared resigned that his daughter is dead, writing Wednesday on his Facebook page, “My daughter Savannah has passed away in Missouri. … My Faith in God will get us through this and I will forever miss my sweet girl.”

Leckie’s biological mother, Rebecca Ruud, has told authorities that the teen was home when she went to sleep on the night of July 19 and was not in the home the next morning. Ruud said she and a neighbor searched the property and then contacted authorities later that morning.

The girl’s disappearance was entered into the National Crime Information Center’s Missing Persons database that same day.

Cary Steeves, acting as a spokesman for the girl’s parents in Minnesota, said there is “a lot of strong suspicion” about the remains that turned up in a burn pile 1,200 feet from the home during a search on Aug. 4 and who might be responsible for the teen’s disappearance and possible death.

Ruud has volunteered publicly that she is being investigated as a suspect in Leckie’s disappearance. She started an online campaign on GoFundMe to raise money to pay for an attorney.

“Police are investigating me, which is good that they are eliminating me as a suspect,” she explained on the page, which has since been taken down. “During this investigation they are infringing upon my rights, and I need an attorney. I cannot afford one. If I raise more funds for an attorney than I need, the balance will go toward a reward for information leading to finding my daughter.”
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https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/burned-bones-found-rural-missouri-identified-teens-142122967.html

A Missouri woman was charged Tuesday with killing the autistic teenage daughter she gave up for adoption as a baby, weeks after the girl's remains were found in a burn pit on her remote property and months after the girl moved back from Minnesota, where she was raised.

Rebecca Ruud, 39, is charged with first-degree murder, abuse of a child resulting in death and second-degree felony murder in the killing of her 16-year-old biological daughter, Savannah Leckie. She is also charged with tampering with physical evidence and abandoning a corpse, said Ozark County Prosecutor John Garrabrant. He declined to say whether anyone else would be charged, but Sheriff Darrin Reed said the investigation is ongoing and more charges are expected.

Ruud is being held in the Ozark County jail. A cellphone number listed as hers wasn't working, and the public defender's office didn't immediately reply to a phone message seeking comment.

According to a probable cause statement filed with the charges, Ruud reported a fire on July 18 on the property where she and her now-husband live in Theodosia, a village of about 250 people near Missouri's southern border with Arkansas. She told fire officials she was burned trying to save the girl from the fire, but refused to let them talk to Savannah.

Two days later, Ruud reported that Savannah had gone missing, investigators said. She later gave differing accounts of how she was injured but claimed Savannah ran away because she blamed herself for starting the fire.

Several searches of the property turned up human teeth, a meat grinder, a knife and 26 bottles of lye, which can be used to accelerate the breakdown of bodily tissue, according to court documents. Human bone fragments were found in a field about 400 yards (365 meters) from the home on Aug. 4. During that search, Ruud and her husband left the farm and got married.

A forensic analysis identified the remains as Savannah's, the sheriff said.

Ruud was arrested at a Greyhound Bus station on Saturday. She had bought a ticket to Kansas City and her husband, who has not been charged, had a ticket to Memphis, Tennessee. Investigators arrested her because she was known to have contacts in several states and is affiliated with groups involved in living off the public grid, according to the probable cause statement.

Ruud told investigators that she put Savannah up for adoption when she was born and that the girl spent most of her life in Minnesota. Affidavits filed in support of search warrants describe Savannah as having high-functioning autism.

Savannah's adoptive mother, Tamile Leckie-Montague, asked Ruud last November to take the teen because Savannah couldn't get along with her fiancé, Cary Steeves. Ruud agreed and was given power of attorney. After the girl moved to Missouri, she was home-schooled and had "almost no social contacts," according to an affidavit.

Ruud's ex-boyfriend, Buddy Smart, told investigators he had seen her discipline Savannah by forcing her to crawl through a hog pen and making her to bathe in a pond, the affidavit states. Ruud acknowledged that was true and told investigators that when Savannah cut her arm "in a suicidal gesture," she forced the girl to scrub the wound daily with alcohol and salt as punishment.

Steeves told Minneapolis television station KSTP-TV that Savannah "needed a lot of one-on-one focus and the farm just seemed like a really good place for her at the moment." He told the Star-Tribune that Leckie-Montague last spoke to Savannah on June 3, which was her 16th birthday, and that there was "nothing like big, red flags" suggesting anything was amiss.

Leckie-Montague, who lives in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights, told authorities that Ruud "continually complained" about how Savannah was acting on the farm and the time and money it took to care for the girl, according to the probable cause statement.

Leckie-Montague issued a news release Tuesday thanking Missouri investigators and asking for privacy for her and her family.

"Our family is in deep grief and is mourning Savannah as her remains were identified yesterday. This is not the outcome that we were hoping and praying for," she wrote.
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Let me get this straight. This woman adopts this kid as a baby then 16 years later signs over the kid BACK to the POS mom because...... She didn't get along with your dick of the moment? Your personal life was more important then this autistic child's? You couldn't wait a few more years or try to make it work in a way that wasn't so traumatic for this kid!? Everyone failed this little girl. Wtf is wrong with people
 
So after they divorced, neither adoptive parent seemed to want this child? How tragic for her. If they could have toughed it out until she turned 18 (less than two years), she could have gone to a group home. Poor girl.
 
Well my friend was told that the adoptive dad did want her, but he's been single since he and the adoptive mother divorced and these small-minded small town people didn't think it was "appropriate" for a girl child to be raised by a man. Obviously, the birth mother who never wanted her was a better choice in their eyes. I think he should have forced the issue in court.

ETA: I just confirmed with Seth, dad is single but recently engaged. Dad was planning to go to court about his daughter once he was married.
 
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starry1 said:
Well my friend was told that the adoptive dad did want her, but he's been single since he and the adoptive mother divorced and these small-minded small town people didn't think it was "appropriate" for a girl child to be raised by a man. Obviously, the birth mother who never wanted her was a better choice in their eyes. I think he should have forced the issue in court.
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I'm sorry, but I don't really buy that. As her LEGAL PARENT, he would be entitled to custody of his child, especially if the adoptive mother was unwilling, small town or not. He would never have had to force the issue in court, he is her father. Unless he is a drug addict, pedophile, serious criminal, etc, he would have been entitled to custody. I think someone is telling you stories to make the adoptive parents look less bad for having basically thrown the poor girl away.
 
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