Police: Investigating if Missing Colorado Girl Linked to Wyoming Abduction

That tip and others from Maryland, Texas, Nevada and Wyoming are among the hundreds of bits of information that have been passed on to investigators in the Denver suburb of Westminster, police spokesman Trevor Materasso.

He didn’t release details but earlier in the day said police were looking at whether there’s a link between Jessica’s disappearance and the Monday abduction of an 11-year-old girl in Cody, Wyo. — about 500 miles away.

In that case, a man lured an 11-year-old girl into a sport utility vehicle saying he needed help finding his puppy. She was released about four hours later and found by hunters. Police there say they’re looking for a white man between 55 and 60 years old with short, strawberry blond or white hair and a neatly trimmed mustache.

Jessica was last seen Friday after leaving home to meet friends at a park on her way to school. Two days later, the fifth-grader’s backpack was found on a sidewalk in a neighborhood about six miles north of her home. Police won’t discuss what was found inside the bag or the results of testing done on it.

The same day the backpack was found, a woman reported seeing a girl who looked like Jessica in a blue Buick station wagon with Colorado license plates in Dexter, Maine — 2,000 miles away.

Authorities don’t know if it really was Jessica spotted in the town of 5,000 people, but they’ve issued a statewide alert for officers to stop a blue Buick station wagon with Colorado plates if they see one, Dexter police Sgt. Alan Grinnell said. So far, none have been stopped. The car’s license plate number wasn’t known.

Materasso said searchers were scouring Jessica’s neighborhood and divers were searching ponds as a “precautionary measure” to see if they can be ruled out as having a connection to her disappearance. Police also have isolated landfill garbage collected around the time of the girl’s disappearance but will search through it only if their investigation points them in that direction, he said.

Police have revealed little about their investigation and have instead tried to keep the focus on Jessica. They’ve asked the public to study her face in various photos they’ve released showing her with and without glasses. They’re also encouraging people to keep tweeting about her in the hopes that will develop new leads.

Police say Jessica’s family has been cooperative, but Materasso said he wouldn’t discuss whether they have been ruled out as being involved with the disappearance. He told KOA-AM that investigators are checking out people identified by tips and there are no persons of interest yet.