By KARIN WILLIAMS, kwilliams@phoenixvillenews.com
By 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 1988, hundreds of volunteers had offered their help in the search for little Lauren Jackson, who had been missing from her home for 12 hours.
The last time anyone had seen the 5-year-old girl was around 7:30 p.m. the night before, when she was playing with another child in the Park Springs apartment complex in East Vincent Township where she lived. Lauren's mother, Christina O'Donnell, had called police around 9:15 p.m. to report Lauren missing.
People were turning out in droves to help search for Lauren over an eight-mile radius surrounding the apartment complex. The search area stretched from the defunct Pennhurst State Hospital in Spring City to an abandoned garage at the intersection of routes 23 and 724 in East Pikeland.
Several former patients from the state hospital had moved into Park Springs after the facility was shut down.
In checking all possible leads, the Greater Philadelphia Search and Rescue (GPSAR) team took their dogs to the grounds of the former state-run mental facility, which also houses the Southeast Pa. Veterans Center. Their mission was to check the utility tunnels beneath the buildings.
Irvin Lichtenstein is the founder of GPSAR and is a member of, among other emergency service organizations, the International Society of Professional Trackers. Lauren's case was the first emergency call for GPSAR, and Lichtenstein was among those who came to aid in the search.
Initially, GPSAR responded to the parking lot of the abandoned garage at routes 23 and 724 around 3 a.m. on Oct. 5. Members spent the wee hours of the morning jumping from location to location searching for Lauren.
"The search shifted to what is now the ... Veterans home," Lichtenstein wrote in an August 2006 e-mail to The Phoenix. "Crews checked and sealed the utility tunnels and sewers under the complex; we checked the surface and there were boats in the river."
The search continued, as it would for the next two weeks, sun up to sun down, with hundreds of people from various organizations, as well as individuals, who volunteered to join the search. Many people who were not able to assist in the hunt for Lauren provided coffee and refreshments for search teams.
After days of searches by hundreds of people, Philadelphia psychic Valerie Morrison provided what many hoped might be a pivotal break in the case.
The psychic claimed to have had a vision of where the little girl had been just days before. The description Morrison provided of the location she "saw" matched what investigators discovered on the property of John French.
Morrison spoke of seeing a red barn, something orange and a sequence of numbers. She also heard dogs barking.
She contacted police to tell them that, although she couldn't provide an exact location of the barn, she knew that Lauren had been inside.
Search parties combed the area until they found a red barn matching the description given by Morrison.
Inside was a car covered by an orange tarp. The sequence of numbers Morrison had provided to police was on the license plate of that vehicle and, at a nearby home, there were three dogs - two of them were barking.
On Friday, Oct. 7, 1988, Morrison was shepherded around the township in a van with shaded windows, then transported to the barn by the Army National Guard.
When search dogs were brought to the area near French's property, they picked up Lauren's scent trail, which led them directly to the barn. The trail ended there.
French cooperated with police fully, allowing them to search the barn and several wells on the property.
"As the search widened, it was imperative that we receive complete cooperation from property owners to eliminate the possibility of Lauren being injured, or worse," said then-Sgt. James Cote.
Cote, who was in charge of the investigation for the East Vincent Township Police Department, said property owners granted access to houses, farms, tool sheds, ponds and other structures in the days following Lauren's disappearance.
"One of the properties that was of early interest was the barn, wells and property ..." said Cote. "The property owner, Mr. French, assisted with the many requests for searches of the area."
Last August, French, who still owns the property, granted an interview to The Phoenix that included a tour of the barn, which looks much the same today as it did in 1988.
"I tried to be as helpful as possible while they were here," French said of the search teams. "Your first concern is the child and trying to locate her.
"I remember a lot of people showing up all at once. I think they were all pretty focused on the psychic at that point."
French said he had spoken with Morrison on the telephone before she arrived in the area, and she provided him with visual "clues" that helped identify the property she had seen in her vision, including seeing water in a ditch.
French told Morrison about a drainage ditch that had been dug around the barn by the previous owner.
At the time, Morrison requested that her involvement be secret, but when a month went by without anyone finding a trace of Lauren, Morrison went on the "People Are Talking" show on Philadelphia's KYW-TV to talk about the case.
A Nov. 1, 1988, article in the Evening Phoenix - presently The Phoenix - gives a detailed description of the vision Morrison spoke about on television.
"I saw a vision in my mind of where the child was, at least of where I had seen her," Morrison said in the article. "(Police) asked me if I would come to the area. They had found exactly what I had seen in my mind. It was the first time I had ever actually (physically) seen something that I had seen in my mind."
In a July 2006 interview, Morrison said that she had the opportunity to speak with Christina about Lauren in 1988.
"Because of the way I work with people, I interrogated the mother nicely because I thought I could get more from her," Morrison said.
Although she didn't recall every detail about the conversation that had taken place 19 years prior, Morrison said she recalls Christina's demeanor and physical state - she seemed disoriented - which Morrison said would make her "more apt to tell the truth."
She also said the search for Lauren is something she thinks of frequently.
"Lauren's always been sort of a special place in my heart," she said.
After receiving the phone call from The Phoenix last summer, Morrison said she had another vision about Lauren.
"I know she is at peace with our God," she said.
Morrison also provided additional information that was turned over to authorities.
Despite the hope that Morrison's vision would provide clues to Lauren's whereabouts, the search of French's property turned up no new leads. Although the search dogs had tracked Lauren to the barn, the trail dissipated, and Morrison's vision did not extend past the barn.
Just behind French's property were large, open fields that had not yet been searched. Cote approached the Army National Guard, which also operated on the grounds of Pennhurst, asking for assistance in searching that area.
Although the governor is the only one who can activate the National Guard to assist with a search, Cote said the commander of the unit out of Spring City restructured their weekend training activities.
Armed with compasses, 200 members of the Army National Guard took to the fields behind the barn on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 8 and 9, searching for a trace of Lauren, who had been missing since that Tuesday.
"The commander took the troops out, gave them maps and compasses and told them the field-training exercise was map and compass reading," said Cote. "He said, 'Where do you want us?'"
For hours, teams tramped through the fields looking for a trace of Lauren. Several people, including Morrison and her daughter, also checked the area on horseback.
The searches turned up no trace of the little girl.
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