GBI releases sketch of abduction suspect

By Megan Matteucci

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CLEVELAND, Ga. – Investigators believe a man who tried to kidnap a North Carolina woman may be responsible for the abduction of a Blairsville mom nine days later.

The announcement on Monday is the first solid lead into the disappearance of Kristi Cornwell, a former Georgia probation officer who was last seen Aug. 11 walking near her parents’ Union County home.

“I would say there is a great deal of similarities,” said Mike Ayers, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s regional office in Cleveland.

On Monday, the GBI released a sketch of a possible suspect and asked the public to help find a silver Nissan Xterra with tinted windows and a brush guard on the front.

The suspect, a white male in his mid 20s with dark hair, is also connected to an attempted abduction on Aug. 2 in Ranger, N.C., about 25 miles north of where Cornwell was last seen.

In both cases, the man in the SUV targeted women on remote residential streets around 9 p.m., Ayers said.

For the Cornwell family, the tip is the latest in a tragedy that has cost the family jobs, a vacation home and thousands of dollars.

Richard Cornwell, the missing woman’s brother, said the tip helps the family focus their search.

“We’ve been waiting for new information to act on,” said Cornwell, who quit his engineering job in Knoxville and spends about 80 hours week on his sister's case.

“We still got the same motivation and adrenaline we had on Aug. 11 and we’re going to continue that,” he added.

He can't put a dollar amount of what the search has cost the family, but knows that it will be worth if his sister is found and a suspect is captured.

Investigators won’t talk about the likelihood that Cornwell is still alive.

“It is my firm belief that you never abandon hope,” Ayers said. “It will always be policy of this office and every other law enforcement working this case that Kristi Cornwell is alive and we will do everything to bring her home.”

At the time of her disappearance, Kristi Cornwell was talking on her cell phone to her boyfriend, Douglas Davis. The boyfriend told investigators Cornwell complained that an SUV was following her. He heard a struggle before the call ended.

Davis was ruled out as a suspect and has helped investigators, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.

Nine days before Cornwell’s abduction, a North Carolina woman told police a silver Nissan Xterra struck her as she was walking near a community center in Cherokee County, Ayers said.

She called the North Carolina State Highway Patrol and said the driver got out of the SUV and approached her, but climbed back into the vehicle and left when another car approached. The woman received minor injuries, Ayers said.

The trooper did not file a police report, the GBI said Monday.

But the incident stayed in the back of the woman’s mind. When she saw news coverage about Cornwell’s abduction, she thought there may be a link and called the GBI tip line, Ayers said.

Investigators won’t say when they got the woman’s call, but said it is believed to be the only fruitful tip of more than 1,600 leads.

Since receiving the woman’s tip, GBI investigators said they have searched five counties in Georgia, seven counties in western North Carolina and several in Tennessee. They identified more than 500 Nissan Xterras just in the North Carolina area that match the description of the SUV,  said Brian Whidby, the case agent for the Cornwell investigation.

That’s in addition to interviewing about 200 sex offenders in the three-state area, Whidby said.

It’s unclear why the North Carolina trooper didn’t file a police report, but investigators say that may have stalled the Cornwell case.

A spokesman for the North Carolina State Highway Patrol told the AJC on Monday that it is now under investigation, but preliminary information shows the trooper did not make a report because he could not confirm if the incident was a hit and run.   The trooper has given a statement to the GBI.

“I think it possibly slowed the process down a little bit,” Ayers said Monday. “But now that we have it, we’ll move forward.”

The Cornwell family doesn’t want to point fingers. They just want their loved one found, they said.

On Saturday, the family auctioned off their lake-front vacation home to raise money for the search.

The three-bedroom Union County house, which has been owned by the family since 1958, garnered $390,500. About $355,000 of that sale goes to the family, sales agent Joe Tarplay told the AJC.

“That was a difficult thing to do, but something necessary,” Richard Cornwell said.

The money from the sale will help pay for helicopter rentals, newspaper ads and 60,000 postcards mailed to area residents, he said.

The family has previously offered a $50,000 reward in the case. They built a heliport on other property they own so they can quickly do aerial searches with volunteer pilots. Richard Cornwell is also a licensed pilot.

Cornwell, a single mom, is a former probation officer. She was taking classes at Dalton State College to become a medical technician when she went missing, her family said.

Anyone with information may contact the GBI at 1-800-597-TIPS.