Anchorage Daily News

Anchorage police are now considering the case of the missing Johnson boys a criminal abduction, they said Monday, a week after the brothers vanished from their Dowling Road-Lake Otis Parkway neighborhood.

Interviews with half a dozen family members have turned up no evidence that Malcolm, 8, and Isaiah Johnson, 5, were kidnapped by a relative in a custody or other dispute, Police Chief Walt Monegan said.

Family members "are just as concerned as we are," Monegan said.

Likewise, days of searching by police officers and a horde of volunteers who covered 22 square miles of forested parkland, streets, back yards, ditches and other nearby areas turned up no trace of the brothers, police said.

"So they didn't just wander off," Monegan said.

That leaves one possibility, he said: The boys were taken against their will.

"Through a process of elimination, we're fairly sure it's a criminal act, that the boys were abducted by a stranger," Monegan said. "We're fairly confident that it's not the other two" possibilities.

Because of the narrower focus, police today plan to re-evaluate the number of officers and detectives assigned to the case and may relieve some of them so they can attend to their other duties, Monegan said.

"We may end up with a smaller staff" on the case, he said.

Police on Monday showed the news media a small mannequin dressed like Isaiah Johnson was on the evening of March 10, when he and Malcolm were last seen half a block from their house on Doil Drive, which backs up against Far North Bicentennial Park.

The clothes were a mostly maroon jacket with gray trim and sleeves, jeans and black-and-white high-top sneakers.

The purpose of the mannequin was to offer a visual image to jog the memory of anyone who may have seen the boys that night, Monegan said.

Some residents of Anchorage have been calling a police tip line (729-7888) with reports of seeing boys that look like the Johnson brothers, Monegan said. The mannequin will give the public more precise information, he said.

Isaiah is 3 feet tall and weighs 40 pounds.

No mannequin was brought out to represent Malcolm, because the boys' mother could not be specific about the type of clothes he wore that evening, police said.

Police have said that Malcolm, 4 feet tall and 60 pounds, was wearing light-blue jeans, Nike shoes and a black coat.

The missing boys are two of four children who live with their mother, Brandi Johnson. The others are a 12-year-old boy, Randy, and Isaiah's twin sister, Alaysha. The missing boys' father lives in the Midwest.

All four children attend Tudor Elementary School.

Both the FBI and the organization A Child Is Missing have reviewed the techniques used so far by Anchorage police to investigate the boys' disappearance, Monegan said. The agencies used hundreds of other child-abduction cases and a checklist of possible police actions.

"They said we're doing the right things," he said.

Investigators could not come up with a psychological profile of a potential kidnapper, because there is no crime scene to work with, Monegan said.

Daily News reporter Peter Porco can be reached at pporco@adn.com or 907-257-4582.