BALTIMORE -
Hall of Fame baseball player Cal Ripken Jr. got uncharacteristically emotional on Friday when telling reporters in Baltimore about how his family determined that 74-year-old Violet Ripken had been kidnapped from her home in Aberdeen.
A Maryland farm family wrote down a license plate number when they encountered a Lincoln Town Car with suspicious activity in it.
"It was the worst feeling you could imagine," Ripken told a phalanx of television cameras before pausing, clearing his throat, and drumming his fingers for several seconds before continuing. "My sister called me and said there had been a report that the car with my mom's tags on it was reported, and that a woman was tied up in the back seat of the car. And they wanted to know if we knew where mom was. And so we couldn't find mom."
Ripken said he personally started driving around Maryland roadways looking for his mother's missing car.
Violet Ripken was returned the next morning to the neighborhood from which she was abducted at gunpoint about 23 hours earlier. Even though she was bound (and in the back seat), the elderly woman managed to wriggle forward and she started sounding the car's horn. That summoned a passerby, which led to Mrs. Ripken's release.
At Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Cal Ripken Jr. told reporters there are two reasons he is now talking publicly about the gunpoint abduction (and safe return) of his elderly mother from her home in Aberdeen. First, the family has been bombarded with questions about how 74-year-old is doing.
The former Orioles player gave an expansive answer: "My mom has gone to her granddaughter's softball game. She's gone to the Ironbirds' games. She's continued to live her life ... in ways that she wants to. And she refuses to let [the kidnapping] affect it to that point. But, you know, from a mental, traumatic standpoint, she's still a little shaky. And we're all a little shaky."
The gunman who abducted and bound Vi Ripken, and drove her Lincoln around for 23 hours, was taped by a security camera at a WalMart in Anne Arundel County. He is described as a white male with short, brown hair, standing 5'10", and weighing 180 pounds.
Aberdeen Police say widespread distribution of these photos has generated leads, but so far, none has resulted in an arrest. That was the second reason for Cal Ripken Jr.'s meeting with reporters: "If you know anything about the case," Ripken pleaded to the public, "if you know anything about the identity of the person in the photos, the sketch, I would encourage all of you to call in and report what you know."
Both Cal Ripken and police from Aberdeen say they just don't know about the motivation of the armed kidnapper. No ransom demand was ever made during the abduction.
Clear Channel is posting the suspect photos on five of its electronic billboards in Maryland in a further effort to generate leads in the case.
Cal Ripken confirmed that, in general, the kidnapper treated his mother in a "civil" manner. He said there was not much conversation between the gunman and the elderly woman tied up in the back seat. The retired ballplayer said for the time being, his mother is not living in her house in Aberdeen.
Cal Ripken Jr.
