Feb 27, 2009 10:00 pm US/Eastern
No Remains Found In Search For Missing NJ Toddler
PLEASANTVILLE, N.J. (AP) ―
Authorities in southern New Jersey said Friday they're ending a search of a wooded area near Atlantic City after failing to turn up any remains of a toddler missing for 22 years.
The search began Monday after prosecutors got a tip that Bonita Sanders was killed and her body might have been buried in the lot in Pleasantville.
Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel said he can't prosecute the case as a homicide without a body or other evidence.
Bonita was last seen strapped into a stroller, eating an ice pop on the porch of her family's home on Sept. 14, 1986 -- three days before her second birthday.
"This is an important case," Housel said. "The disappearance and/or death of a 2-year-old is a tragedy."
He said his focus is now trying to find the girl's mother, also named Bonita Sanders. Investigators have not been able to locate her. He would not say what information the woman might have.
Over the decades, some in Bonita's family have held out hope that she was still alive, taking their pleas for help to "America's Most Wanted."
Housel said a tipster gave "significant and credible evidence" earlier this month that pointed investigators to a specific portion of the wooded lot where the child's body may have been abandoned. The 1.7-acre tract was right across the street from the Pleasantville Recreation Center.
For eight straight days, cadaver dogs, radar and earth-moving equipment were used to try to find the child's remains. Some searchers were still on the scene Friday, but they planned to return the site to its owner by Monday.
Housel said it's possible that the remains had decomposed completely, that they were removed by people or carried away by animals -- or that they were never there.
He would not say whether there was another place to search.
The missing toddler's sister, Tameika Sanders, now 26, said she had rarely heard from her mother for years. But the woman turned up at a school event for Tameika's children on Feb. 11.
Just hours later, Sanders said, prosecutors told her about the break in the case.
She said she was disheartened that the search didn't turn up her sister's remains and disappointed that her mother has not come forward.
"I was hoping to put my sister to rest," she said.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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