in early january of NUMBER_TOKEN police in athel massachusetts received an alarming phone call from the legal guardians of nine-year-old natalie malte what had started out as a weekend visit with her grandmother had now turned into an alleged kidnapping according to natalie's guardians on saturday january NUMBER_TOKENrd the NUMBER_TOKEN year old's NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN-year-old grandmother rose had come to pick her up from their home with the expectation that she would return the following day however sunday came and went with no sign of natalie when they contacted rose she reportedly told them that they would never see the nine-year-old again thanks to information provided by natalie's guardians apple police had some idea where to focus their search they knew that she had relatives in rhode island and that her biological mother marlena santos lived in louisiana still with more than a day's head start investigators were also aware that rose could really have taken natalie anywhere knowing that the girl had a cell phone on january NUMBER_TOKENth police first tried the most obvious thing and called her surprisingly natalie picked up and investigators were able to talk to both her and her grandmother rose told police that they were in rhode island but refused to give up their exact location she said that natalie wasn't in any danger and that she would turn herself in the following morning when rose failed to follow through with her promise police knew that they would need to find another way to track her and natalie down keenly aware that they were likely not in rhode island and that rose had instead used the fake surrender to buy herself even more time as a result police reached out to natalie's cell phone carrier requesting that they give them gps coordinates for the phone the phone company was able to provide police with a stream of ongoing data showing the approximate location of the cell phone to within a few hundred feet each time it was activated because investigators believed that natalie and her grandmother would be heading through knoxville tennessee their initial plan was to track them once they left using the direction they went to give them a better idea of their final destination however the quick thinking of one person athel deputy fire chief thomas lozier would make that unnecessary the deputy fire chief had reportedly been asked to assist with the kidnapping case because of his extensive experience with gps technology when he took a look at the coordinates that the cell phone company was providing he noticed that several of them were coming from an intersection in the town of natural bridge virginia roughly NUMBER_TOKEN miles away from where natalie had originally gone missing knowing that lozier jumped onto google maps and using the service's street view feature started to look at the area around the intersection when he did he noticed a long building with a red roof across a nearby field that looked like a motel a second google search revealed that the building in question was a budget inn and after lozier took a look at the place on street view he reportedly told police that's where they should focus their attention sure enough when virginia police were contacted and asked to check out the motel they found natalie unharmed and were able to
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