Family Friend Charged In Abduction

Police: Snatched Girl While Fixing Mother's Van; Body Found

(CBS/AP)  Police were investigating whether a body found Friday is that of a 10-year-old girl who authorities said vanished with a registered sex offender.

Cedar Rapids police canceled an Amber Alert for Jetseta Marrie Gage after the body was found in a rundown mobile home in a rural area near the small town of Kalona, about 45 miles south of Cedar Rapids. A positive identification of the body had not been made.

Roger Bentley, 37, a family acquaintance, was charged late Friday with felony child stealing and was being held in the Linn County Jail in Cedar Rapids. He is accused of taking Jetseta from her mother's house in nearby Cedar Rapids on Thursday night.

Bentley is the brother of the child's mother's former boyfriend, James Bentley, who is facing charges that he molested Jetseta for a year, reports Iowa's KCCI-TV.

Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said state criminologists were to work through the night processing the site where the body was discovered. He declined to share any more details of the investigation, and refused to answer questions.

According to state's Sex Offender Registry, Roger Bentley was convicted in 1994 of lascivious acts with a child.

Police said he was working on the van of Jetseta's mother, Trena Gage, Thursday night before disappearing with the child.

Gage, who was away at the time taking a college course, said her 7-year-old son saw Bentley leave in his pickup with Jetseta. The children's grandmother also was at home.

"My mom gave my daughter her medicine and sent her to bed," Gage told KCRG-TV. "My son said he saw my daughter in the truck and he thought that she had permission" because the family have "known him for so long."

Gage said her mother, Teresa, later went to check on the child and she was gone. "She looked all over the house and she called me hysterical," Gage said.

Jetseta was born with physical and mental limitations and couldn't attend traditional schools, KCRG-TV reports. She suffered from spina bifida and a thyroid problem.