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10 years as a prisoner???

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Vanished girl returns as woman

 

By Jill King Greenwood

 

PITTSBURG TRIBUNE-REVIEW

March 23, 2006

 

 

Tanya Kach was 14 when she walked out of her father's McKeesport home more than a decade ago.

 

The Cornell Middle School eighth-grader vanished. There were no sightings. No phone calls.

 

The case went cold and stayed that way until Tuesday - 10 years, one month and 11 days later - when Kach walked back into her father's life and told the world that a school security guard with whom she had fallen in love held her captive since Feb. 10, 1996.

 

The guard, Thomas John Hose, 48, surrendered to police Wednesday afternoon and was charged with child sex offenses.

 

Jerry Kach collapsed upon seeing his long-lost daughter.

 

"I've got my baby back," he said, sobbing and stroking her face. "I can't believe it."

 

This is her story:

 

Kach spent most of the past 10 years locked in a bedroom of Hose's parents' Soles Street home.

 

Hose and Kach met in late 1995 at the school where Hose, then 37, worked as a security guard. They secretly dated. She believed they were in love.

 

No one could take care of her better, she believed. He invited her to move in with him, but told Kach she would have to remain hidden from his parents until he mustered the courage to tell them about her.

 

She agreed and dreamed of their future together - a wedding, and maybe even children.

 

But it was mostly a nightmare.

 

He locked her in an upstairs bedroom where she used a bucket as a toilet. He brought her water and food - mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

 

She was allowed to watch television and listen to the radio, but only with headphones so his parents wouldn't hear. She tiptoed around the room. Hose made her memorize which floorboards creaked.

 

Hose gave her a new first name - Nikki - and told her to pick another last name. She opened the telephone book, closed her eyes and pointed: Allen.

 

"So from then on, I was Nikki Allen," she said.

 

Hose never physically abused her, but he left emotional scars. He often threatened to kill her if she ever tried to leave.

 

"You're stupid. You're immature. Nobody cares about you but me," he told her.

 

As the years went by, he convinced her that she was no longer Tanya Kach and that he was her only ally.

 

"He told me no one even cared I was missing and no one was looking for me," she said as her eyes welled with tears. "He said the case was cold. I believed him."

 

Hose rarely allowed her to leave until 10 months ago, when Kach began attending church and taking walks to a nearby deli.

 

A woman who answered the door yesterday at Beulah Park United Methodist Church in McKeesport said Kach recently began attending Sunday services and volunteered in the church's thrift shop on Wednesday nights.

 

In the past 10 months, Kach befriended Joe Sparico, owner of JJ's Deli Mart on Evans Street, and visited his store just about every day. Some days she would linger for hours. She lived with an older man, Kach told him, and didn't have a driver's license or an education.

 

The store owner gently prodded Kach for details because "I knew something about her situation just wasn't right," Sparico said.

 

On Tuesday morning, something had changed in his young friend. Her hands trembled, and she was crying.

 

They sat down together in a back room and she revealed her secret: Nikki Allen didn't exist. She was really Tanya Kach, the girl who disappeared from her daddy's house long ago.

 

"To be honest with you, I really didn't believe her at first," Sparico said. "I mean, who could believe that?"

 

Sparico called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which confirmed Kach's disappearance.

 

"I don't know what she was running away from, but he convinced her that she was better off staying with him," said Ron Jones, a senior case manager with the missing children's center. "He certainly coerced this young woman into staying with him, which is exploitation. But I don't believe the young woman realized that she was being exploited."

 

Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said investigators believe Kach's story.

 

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released about 400 million exposures of her picture - on television, milk cartons and elsewhere - and there were no sightings. Periodic checks on her Social Security number also revealed no activity.

 

"This bolsters her contention that she wasn't outside the home," Moffatt said. "That's where she was all the time."

 

Police charged Hose with statutory sexual assault and three counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.

 

Defense attorney James M. Ecker, who accompanied Hose yesterday to county police headquarters in Point Breeze, said that his client is a "good person" who has no criminal record and a full-time job, and that he should not be prejudged.

 

"She is 24 years old now," Ecker said. "She definitely was not held against her will."

 

Moffatt, however, said charges are warranted even if Kach went willingly because she was a minor at the time.

 

"I think it's very easy to play mind games with a child her age," he said. "He was 24 years older. He was an authority figure. He told her what to eat, when to eat and what to wear."

 

Many unanswered questions remain.

 

Police want to interview other people who might have information about the case, including a White Oak hair stylist who, at Hose's behest, changed Kach's hair color, style and length as part of her identity makeover, Moffatt said.

 

Hose also has a son a few years younger than Kach who lived with them part of the time, he said. Police believe Hose's parents lived in the house at some point during Kach's stay, but they are not certain when, Moffatt said.

 

The house is within view of a cemetery where the remains of murder victim Kimberly Krimm, also 14, were found in 1998. Moffatt would not say if Hose would be questioned in that unsolved slaying.

 

Kach's reappearance and Hose's arrest rocked the McKeesport Area School District, which suspended him without pay.

 

"This is just devastating to the district," school board President Kathy Ritchie said after last night's board meeting.

 

Hose worked as a security guard for 15 years and has been an exemplary employee who was well-liked by the students and staff, Ritchie said.

 

McKeesport police went to Hose's home Tuesday afternoon, helped Kach gather her belongings and then reunited her with her father.

 

Clinging to him yesterday, Kach said she was stunned to learn her father had never stopped looking for her and that he became deeply depressed each February as the anniversary of her disappearance neared, and again on Oct. 14 - her birthday.

 

She is happy to be back with her family and said her biggest wish is to get a high school diploma. She's still getting used to being called Tanya again. When introducing herself, she has to pause to think about who she is.

 

She is surprised how much the world has changed, noting, for example, the higher price of everyday items such as gas, milk and bread.

 

During an interview yesterday at her father's home in Elizabeth Township, where he moved after his daughter disappeared, she was alternately giddy and unsure of herself.

 

She asks him for permission to smoke a cigarette and to go clothes shopping in the next few days.

 

"You're 24 years old, Tanya," he tells her. "There are no locks on these doors and no bars on these windows."

 

These words make her cry.

 

"I can't believe I'm free."

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