Friday, March 23, 1990

Fort Knox area is searched for Ann

Gotlib’s body
By Cary B. Willis
The Courier-Journal

Police and FBI agents began searching a remote area of Fort Knox yesterday for the body
of Ann Gotlib, the Russian immigrant who was 12 when she disappeared from a
suburban Jefferson County shopping mall seven years ago.

A man convicted of murdering three people, including two teen-age girls, was brought
from Texas to Kentucky and returned Wednesday by the U.S. Marshal's Service,
according to Charles Brown, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Authorities refused to comment on whether Michael Lee Lockhart -- a 29- year-old
drifter from Toledo, Ohio, who reportedly has confessed to crimes in all but five states --
is a suspect in the highly publicized disappearance.

But the state medical examiner, Dr. George Nichols, said yesterday that county police
told him a man had confessed to the crime.

"They said they required assistance at a site which had been visually identified by a man
who allegedly is her murderer," Nichols said.

Jefferson County police would not comment beyond saying a search was under way.
They said the search was called off at dark. An FBI agent said only that investigators
were acting on seemingly reliable information. It could not be determined last night if the
FBI and police were to resume the search today.

Phil Doty, a spokesman for the FBI, said agents surveyed a wooded area on the military
base Wednesday evening. An intensive search, involving county police and military
police, began yesterday morning, he said. Some digging was taking place, he said.

Doty said investigators are searching in an area that is off-limits to the public.

He refused to say how the information about Fort Knox was developed. "We're not going
to go into that. It's just one of the many leads that we've gotten in that case and it's come
up. It was evaluated as being at least worth a try, so we went on down there."

Ann was last seen at Bashford Manor Mall in the late afternoon of June 1, 1983, after
visiting a friend who lived nearby. Police found the girl's bicycle at the south end of the
shopping center, near Bacon's department store, that night.
Ann and her parents, Lyudmila and Anatoly Gotlib, had moved from the Soviet Union to
Louisville in 1980.

Police have pursued hundreds of leads since Ann's disappearance, but have come up
empty each time. Her disappearance has gripped the community unlike any other in
recent history, with candlelight vigils and publicity drives keeping alive hopes of finding
her.

Nichols said Dr. David Wolf, the state anthropologist, was sent to Fort Knox at the
request of county police. Wolf's job "has to do with systematic investigation of burial
sites, and evaluation of skeletonized and decomposed remains," Nichols said.

"At the time I was contacted they were asking for assistance in evaluation of a site to see
whether Dr. Wolf could expose or identify a burial site," he said.

Lockhart, who compares himself to serial killer Ted Bundy, is on death row for killing a
Texas police officer and has been sentenced to death for killing teen-age girls in Indiana
and Florida.

Lockhart repeatedly stabbed a 16-year-old Griffith, Ind., girl in October 1987. A 14-year-
old Land O'Lakes, Fla., girl was found bound, gagged and stabbed in January 1988.

Lockhart has told police that he has killed 20 to 30 young girls and committed crimes in
all but five states, according to officials.

Lockhart was convicted in October 1988 for killing Beaumont Police Officer Paul D.
Hulsey Jr. on March 22, 1988. Hulsey was shot twice, including once in the chest, with
a .357-caliber Magnum at a motel in that city.