Hannah Anderson case cracked by 'one chance in a trillion' sighting

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Phillip Garrido enters a courtroom in Placerville, Calif. Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 431 years in prison for Jaycee Dugard’s abduction. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

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A tent in the backyard of a home in Antioch, Calif., where authorities say kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard lived. (Paul Sakuma / Associated Press)

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Elizabeth Smart addresses the media outside a federal courthouse following the guilty verdict in the Brian David Mitchell trail in Salt Lake City. Mitchell was found guilty in the June 5, 2002, kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. (Colin E. Braley / Associated Press)

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Elizabeth Smart poses with her parents, Lois and Ed, outside their home in 2003. Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom in 2002 (Tom Smart / Associated Press)

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Brian David Mitchell, Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper, is escorted into the Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City in 2010. (Jim Urquhart / Associated Press)

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Katie Beers, whose kidnapping attracted nationwide headlines in 1992, poses for a photo in Old Westbury, N.Y. The 30-year-old mother of two co-wrote a new book about her ordeal. (Frank Eltman / Associated Press)

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John Esposito sits handcuffed in a van in Hauppauge, N.Y., as he is about to be taken to court for arraignment on charges of kidnapping Katie Beers. (Michael Albans / Associated Press)

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Shawn Hornbeck, 15, watches as his parents Craig and Pam Akers talk to the media in Richwoods, Mo. Shawn, who was missing since Oct. 2002, was recovered in 2007 with another missing boy. (Tom Gannam / Associated Press)

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Michael Devlin is escorted out of the Franklin County Courthouse in Union, Mo. Devlin pleaded guilty in Franklin County to one charge of child kidnapping and one count of armed criminal action in the 2007 abduction of 13-year-old William “Ben” Ownby. (Tom Gannam / Associated Press)

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Steven Stayner, right, and and his brother Delbert Stayner walk toward their Merced County home as Steven was reunited with his family following a 7-year kidnap ordeal. (Ted Benson / Associated Press)

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Convicted kidnapper Kenneth Eugene Parnell during a court appearance in Oakland in 2003. Parnell was convicted in the kidnappings of Steven Stayner in 1972 and Timothy White in 1980. (Nick Lammers / Associated Press)

By Kate Mather

Aug. 12, 2013 4:30 AM PT

BOISE, Idaho -- It was the crucial tip, authorities said, that helped them narrow their search for missing San Diego County teen Hannah Anderson in the vast wilderness 75 miles northeast of here.

Christa John said it was “one chance in a trillion” that she and three other horseback riders came across Anderson and murder suspect James DiMaggio in the rugged back county.

“Idaho wasn’t even on the radar for her,” she said. “Nobody suspected her to be there.”

“If they would have been over the side hill a little bit, or inside their camp, we wouldn’t have bothered,” John, 68, continued. “We would have never known. We would have never seen anything. So that was just one of those once-in-a-lifetime events.”

She said the group saw the pair twice Wednesday -- once as they rode toward Morehead Lake, and again when they came back. They didn’t realize the girl was the subject of a massive, multi-state search, however, until they came home Thursday and turned on the television, she said.

“We went into the house and the news flashed on, and the Amber Alert was on the television,” her husband, Mark John, said. “I told my wife, ‘That is the girl we seen on the mountain.’”

Mark John, a retired sheriff, conferred with a couple who was also on the trip. After they agreed the girl on TV looked a lot like the girl on the trail, he called a friend at the Idaho State Police.

The next day, DiMaggio’s blue Nissan Versa was found covered in brush and logs at a trailhead in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Federal, state and local authorities swarmed the area, looking for any sign of the two.

The next day, crews in a plane spotted DiMaggio and Hannah at a campsite near Morehead Lake, not far from where the riders saw them two days before. Two FBI hostage teams were flown into the forest and hiked more than two hours to the site, which they then surrounded.

When DiMaggio and Hannah separated far enough so that they could safely rescue the girl, the team moved in. DiMaggio was shot and killed, authorities said. Hannah, who was not hurt in the rescue, was helicoptered to an area hospital, ending the six-day search.

Ada County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Andrea Dearden said the information from the horseback riders was crucial to Hannah’s rescue, saying it was “absolutely” the needle in the haystack investigators were hoping to find.

“Their information, that’s what led people here,” she said. “We had no way to know where to look until we were able to speak to them.”

“As these kidnapping cases go, you really don’t know where the next lead will be,” she continued. “You have to be ready for anything,” she said. “And we’re so fortunate that we got a lead, we followed it up and it led straight to Hannah.”

Mark John said that after he called Idaho authorities, the FBI came to his ranch in Sweet on Friday morning to ask about the sighting. “They wanted to know every single solitary thing about it,” he said.

When DiMaggio’s car was found that morning, he said, the group was relieved, knowing their hunch had proved correct.

But they were nervous about how the search would end, he said.

“We were all on pins and needles, wondering what was going on and what was happening,” he said. “We were extremely happy when we found out it turned out the way it did.”

Christa John said she saw the news on TV first. Her husband was out doing chores, and when he rode back to their house on a four-wheeler, she said, she was jumping up and down, holding two thumbs up.

“We were relieved,” she said.

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Twitter: @katemather