Cherchez La Femme

Did little Hannah commit the perfect crime?

A 5-year-old girl who was feared drowned with her grandfather on a boating trip startled searchers Friday when she emerged from the woods - naked, scratched and holding mulberries.

Crews had pulled her grandfather's body from the Kankakee River in eastern Illinois just hours earlier.

"People were like, 'Who's that little girl? That can't be her, can it?'" Kankakee Sheriff's Chief Deputy Ken McCabe said. "I went up to her (and) asked, 'How you doing? What's your name?'"

When authorities told Hannah Klamecki's family - already grieving the loss of her grandfather - that she was alive, the home erupted in screaming.

"It was very emotional," Momence Fire Chief Dave Horn said.

Searchers gave Hannah - a little dirty but unhurt - a banana and water, but she asked for a chocolate cookie. She was taken to a hospital as a precaution, McCabe said.

"It's a tragedy that the gentleman drowned. It's a bittersweet moment that she was OK," he said.

Hannah and her grandfather, David Klamecki, 62, were last seen Wednesday evening on the river near Momence, about 45 miles south of Chicago.

Authorities believe the river current swept the girl away from a small island where she and her grandfather had stopped to swim and to the shore of the mainland where she eventually was found.

She told searchers she was wearing floats on her arms and pulled herself from the water with a branch.

Two people go into a river and only one comes out alive.
The way I see it, the girl had the opportunity, and buoyed by water wings, had a powerful advantage that gave her the means. The motive eluded me until I saw the update about the chocolate chip cookies. Notice how a banana just wasn't good enough for her? The supposedly starving girl refused it and instead demanded cookies from her "rescuers." Did grandpa have a sweet snack in his backpack that he wouldn't share? Some Del-Monte pudding perhaps? I bet when they find that backpack it won't be there.