Wisconsin

Police defend probe of faked disappearance

Police who spent two days and tens of thousands of dollars investigating a false abduction report are defending their decision, saying ignoring the woman’s claims could have left the city at the mercy of a kidnapper.

On Friday, two days after police found the sophomore at University of Wisconsin-Madison unhurt in a swamp, they announced that she had faked her disappearance.

More than a hundred e-mails came in to the department from people around the country, wondering how Audrey Seiler could have fooled detectives, said Larry Kamholz, a spokesman for the department.

“We can’t take the chance that there’s somebody still out there loose,” he said Friday.

City officials had estimated that the case could cost at least $70,000.

Colorado

Some evacuees near fire allowed to return home

Cool, wet weather Saturday helped firefighters trying to contain an 8,700-acre wildfire that has burned for five days, and most of the scores of evacuated residents were being allowed to return home.

The state’s first significant wildfire of the season has destroyed a house and a garage, and threatened other homes and outbuildings.

The fire west of Fort Collins in northern Colorado was 30 percent contained Saturday afternoon. It began Tuesday when a yard fire got out of control.

Arkansas

Second fugitive arrested in trooper shooting

Police arrested a second man Saturday for shooting a state trooper and continued the search for his missing neighbor, who they fear may be dead.

William J. Frazier, 28, was arrested on a rural highway, said state police Sgt. Pete Westerman. He was jailed on charges of attempted capital murder and felony possession of a firearm.

“I don’t think he knew where he was going for sure,” Westerman said. “I think he’s pretty well wore out. Everybody else is.”

Authorities had been searching for Frazier and Mark Holsombach, 49, in the Ozark Mountains and adjacent rural communities since March 22, the day a state trooper was wounded by gunfire. Holsombach was captured Friday.

North Carolina

Shooting suspect’s family warned police

The parents of a man suspected of killing the manager of a state unemployment office and wounding an employee had warned police that their son might go to the office with a gun, a relative said.

William Case, who was arrested about an hour after the shooting behind a nearby store, is charged with murder and attempted murder, police said. He was jailed Saturday without bond.

Letch Beatty, 51, a manager at the Hendersonville office, was killed and Ron Piercy, 57, was wounded in the shooting Friday.

Darron Case, the suspect’s brother, said his parents went to the magistrate’s office three times in recent weeks to say Case had threatened to shoot someone at the employment office, the brother said.