Update: Brooke Bennett, VT State Police Press Conference Statement

Statement of: James Baker, Director, Vermont State Police
June 27, 2008 - 10:30AM

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you all for coming. Your patience throughout this investigation is greatly appreciated and it has not gone unnoticed. When it comes to a missing child, I can assure you, as Director of the Vermont State Police, that getting information to the media to relay to the public are crucial. You are as much a part of this investigation as the investigators working the case. With that said, I will update you on where the investigation is at:

As of late yesterday afternoon, the FBI assigned two agents to work on this investigation full- time. In addition, the FBI is sending a five person team made up of agents who specialize in child abduction cases to assist in the investigation. In addition to a large number of Troopers and Detectives, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the Randolph Police Department, the Attorney General’s Office, the Orange County State’s Attorney’s Office, the New England K-9 Team, Border Patrol, Vermont State Police K-9 and the Vermont State Police Dive Team and the Vermont Forensic Laboratory are also a part of this investigation.

With information of Brooke communicating with an individual through MySpace, members of the Internet Crimes against Children (I.C.A.C.) have been working on the computer forensics portion of the investigation throughout the night. The results of their findings is not yet complete, therefore I am unable to comment on that at this time.

Yesterday morning items of clothing were recovered off of Rt. 65 in Brookfield in the vicinity of the floating bridge. After further development in the investigation, the State Police was reasonably assured that one of the items belonged to Brooke. As a result, Vermont’s first Amber Alert was issued at approximately 5:25 PM. Detectives have been following up on leads generated by the Amber Alert throughout the night.

In an effort to not compromise the case, I cannot discuss at this time the items that were found that are believed to belong to Brooke.

The last known sighting of Brooke was inside the Randolph Village Laundromat around 9:45 AM. We are asking the public if you were in the area of the Cumberland Farms or the Randolph Village Laundromat, between the hours of 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM to please call the State Police or your local law enforcement agency. Regardless of whether you feel you don’t have any information to offer, we would still like to speak with you.

I can’t emphasis enough that we need the public’s help. Please, if you think you may have ANY information pertaining to the disappearance of Brooke Bennett, I ask that you immediately call the State Police or your local law enforcement agencies.

Thank you.