Former Priest's Yard Is Dug Up
So far, nothing has been found, but police in Truckee, Calif., are continuing to dig up the yard of the vacation home of Stephen Kiesle, and Thursday plan to bring in a backhoe to pick up the pace.
CBS Station KPIX-TV reports Kiesle is a former priest from Fremont, Calif., who was arrested last month on charges of sexually abusing three children in the 1970s when he was assigned to Santa Paula parish.
Police are checking for any possible links between Kiesle and the 1988 disappearance of 7-year-old Amber Swartz, who lived on the same street as Kiesle at the time of her disappearance from Pinole, Calif.
Swartz, the daughter of a Pinole police officer who was killed on the job in 1980, was last seen jumping rope in front of her family's house.
Her case got national publicity and led to the establishment of the Amber Foundation for Missing Children - better known to Internet users as MissingChild.org - which works to help find missing children and lobbies for legislation affecting abduction cases.
Amber's missing child poster, with a $50,000 reward, remains on the Web site today, along with photos showing how she might look if she is still alive.
Kiesle is currently free on $180,000 bail after pleading not guilty to last month's child molestation charges.
Police say they got a warrant to search his vacation property after dogs trained to detect human remains "keyed in" on several spots outside the house.
"We've had tens of thousands of leads on this case, and we've had several cadaver dog hits, and thus far, they have not resulted in any human remains being found," says Pinole Police Commander John Miner.
The alleged victims in the unrelated child molestation charges that Kiesle now faces ranged in age from 9 to 13 years old.
Authorities are also investigating allegations that Kiesle might have abused ten other children in the 1970s.
Kiesle was defrocked in 1978 after he was charged with tying up two boys and molesting them. He also was arrested on molestation charges in 1981, in Union City, Calif.
The parish where Kiesle served in the 1970s is no longer in existence. Another priest who was also at Santa Paula parish - Rev. Robert Freitas - was arrested in April on a charge of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy in 1979 when he was associate pastor.
Freitas was arrested after meeting with his alleged victim, who wore a hidden device that recorded what police describe as a confession.
The alleged victim, now 38 years old, says he decided to come forward when he moved back to his hometown and saw that Freitas was still an active priest.
Local Catholic church officials say they called the police as soon as they were made aware of the allegation.