Cold Cases

PINOLE (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― The mystery of Amber Swartz, a 7-year-old Pinole girl who disappeared after going to jump rope outside her home 21 years ago, has been solved, police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Monday.

However, the girl's mother remained somewhat skeptical of the claim because her daughter's body has never been found.

Notorious convicted killer Curtis Dean Anderson made a signed confession in November 2007 — a month before dying in prison — that he kidnapped and killed Amber, Pinole Police Chief Paul Clancy announced at a news conference.

Police and FBI investigators said they believe him after spending the past 18 months corroborating the story.

"Everything that he's done indicates he's the type of person who can do this," Clancy said.

"This man is a convicted child molester a convicted murderer," added FBI Special Agent Marty Parker said. "We have a signed confession. At some point you have to say 'We've done everything we can.'"

Anderson, 46, died of natural causes on Dec. 12, 2007, before investigators were able to conduct any follow-up interviews. His death came while he was serving a prison sentence of more than 300 years for kidnapping and sexually assaulting two other young girls from Vallejo.

He was sentenced to 251 years for the 2000 abduction and sexual assault of 8-year-old Midsi Sanchez, who subsequently escaped. He was then sentenced to another 50 years to life after pleading guilty to the 1999 kidnapping, molestation and murder of 7-year-old Xiana Fairchild, whose partial remains were found in the Santa Cruz Mountains in January 2001.

Anderson had not been a suspect in Amber's disappearance until his arrest in 2000, the police chief said.

Then, during a lengthy interview on Nov. 5, 2007 at Corcoran State Prison with the FBI, Anderson admitted kidnapping and killing Amber, officials told reporters.

When asked how Anderson managed to avoid suspicion in Amber's abduction for so long, the FBI's Parker said that Anderson was a "very smart, cunning man."

She said he was also a loner -- he never had anyone help him commit his crimes and he never told anyone what he had done, she explained.

An FBI profiler who was present during the interview told investigators that Anderson was "a true psychopath," Parker said, and that he showed "absolutely no remorse" for his crimes.

While announcing the case was closed, police distributed copies of Anderson's brief handwritten statement that read, "If there is no pursuit of the death penalty, I will freely admit my role in being responsible for the death of Amber Swartz-Garcia."

Anderson told authorities he was driving to Arizona and decided to "take someone with him for company," Clancy said.

"In a case of tragic timing, Amber was standing in front of her house (on Savage Avenue) at the exact moment Anderson randomly drove through her neighborhood," Clancy said. "He opened the car door and pulled her in."

Anderson told investigators he kept Amber "sedated with root beer Schnapps because it was better than duct tape," and killed her at a motel room in the Tucson area before disposing of her body, according to Clancy.

Amber is believed to have died within a day and a half of her abduction on June 3, 1988.

Anderson claimed he put Amber's body in the trunk of his car and tried to cross the border into Mexico to dispose of it, but Mexican authorities didn't let him through because he was too drunk, Clancy said.

He later disposed of Amber's body in a remote, open desert area off Highway 10 near Benson, Arizona where it was likely carried away by animals, Clancy said.

Investigators confirmed that Anderson was in the Pinole area at the time of Amber's abduction and also that he had ties to Benson, Arizona, where his aunt had a ranch, Clancy said. However, they weren't able to find physical evidence in the old case.

Amber's mother, Kim Swartz, said the lack of hard evidence was difficult.

"We don't have her. We don't have anything of hers. Her jump rope, her clothes, her shoes, a bone out of her finger. We have nothing," she said.

She added that over the two decades since Amber's disappearance, many people have contacted her and given false confessions to killing Amber, all of which turned out to be false.

Swartz said she had always "known in my heart that it's going to be a hard case to solve. I just really always hoped that we would at least have something that we could at some point bury with her father."

Amber's father, Pinole police officer Floyd "Bernie" Harold Swartz, was killed while pursuing a murder parolee in 1980. (The suspect, James Odle, was later arrested and sentenced to death.)

His wife was pregnant with Amber at the time of his shooting death.

"I almost lost her at the time my husband died and I had made a prayer that if I could be allowed to keep her only for a little while just to not lose her then," Kim Swartz said. "And I got that little while."

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