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Hannah Anderson arrives at the Boll Weevil restaurant for a fundraiser in her honor to raise money for her family, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013 in Lakeside, Calif. The father of Hannah Anderson, the 16-year-old girl who was abducted by a longtime family friend and rescued during an FBI shootout in the Idaho wilderness says his daughter is spending time with family and friends and happy to be home. (AP Photo/U-T San Diego, Howard Lipin) NO SALES; COMMERCIAL INTERNET OUT
LAKESIDE, Calif. >> The father of a 16-year-old girl said she is taking things one day at a time after FBI agents killed a longtime family friend suspected of torturing and killing her mother and brother and escaping with her to the Idaho wilderness.
"Right now, she’s with her family and, of course, with some friends, and she’s just happy to be here," Brett Anderson told reporters outside a restaurant where his daughter Hannah got a warm welcome home reception on Thursday, five days after her ordeal ended.
She was mobbed by reporters as she entered and left the eatery that hosted an all-day fundraiser. News crews were told to wait outside while Hannah and her father stayed for hours. She did not make a statement.
"I don’t know what I want to say. I just want to give her a hug," said Alyssa Haugum, a classmate of Hannah’s in Lakeside, an east San Diego suburb of 54,000 people.
Firefighters found the body of Christina Anderson, 44, near a crowbar and what appeared to be blood next to her head. James Lee DiMaggio is believed to have shot and killed their family dog, found under a sleeping bag in the garage with blood close to its head.
Investigators found 8-year-old Ethan’s body as they sifted through rubble.
DiMaggio "tortured and killed" the mother and son, San Diego County Sheriff’s Detective Darren Perata wrote, offering no elaboration, in warrants released Wednesday.
Investigators who searched DiMaggio’s home found letters from Hannah, an incendiary device, handcuff boxes, a handwritten note, a Yosemite camping guide, two used condoms and "arson wire," according to one warrant, which does not elaborate on the content of letters or nature of the devices.
Jan Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, declined to comment on the content of Hannah’s letters.
"As to the other items, I believe they rather stand on their own and clearly elevated the need to find her as soon as possible," she wrote in an email.
The warrants say DiMaggio and Hannah exchanged about 13 phone calls before she was picked up from cheerleading practice Aug. 4, hours before firefighters found DiMaggio’s burning garage in Boulevard, a rural town 65 miles east of San Diego. They do not indicate the time, duration or nature of the calls.
Caldwell has said they may have been discussing pickup times.
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore has been adamant that Hannah was an unwilling victim from start to finish. "I can’t make it any clearer," he said at a news conference Monday.
DiMaggio was extraordinarily close to both children, driving Hannah to gymnastics meets and Ethan to football practice. The warrants say the former telecommunications technician took Hannah on multi-day trips, most recently to Malibu and Hollywood.
Asked on her ask.fm social media account this week if she would have preferred DiMaggio got a lifetime prison sentence instead of being killed, she said, "He deserved what he got."
The account was disabled but there were postings on an Instagram account linked to Hannah’s now-disabled ask.fm page.
"Dad is not taking this very well," she wrote late Wednesday. "None of us are but please watch over him. I’m all he’s got left. Even though your gone we are still a team. Love and miss you. "
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Spagat reported from San Diego.
