Georgia Woman's Instincts Save Two Children

Jan. 27, 2006 — -- Tracie Dean just knew something was wrong when she encountered a young girl in an Alabama gas station. The girl tried to follow her out of the store and wanted to leave with her.

"I said: 'Are you coming with me?' And she wouldn't let go of the door, and so I wouldn't let go of the door. And then the man said: 'You can let go of the door now,'" Dean said.

Her instincts told her something was wrong.

Dean, of Georgia, wrote down the license plate number of their truck, and when police said there was nothing they could do, she began her own investigation. She looked for the girl on missing persons Web sites and even drove hundreds of miles from her home back to the Evergreen, Ala., gas station to search through surveillance images until she finally found the tape of the girl with the older man.

Just then, a deputy sheriff walked into the gas station and agreed to help.

"She was very persuasive," said Conecuh County sheriff's Deputy Bryan Davis. "She kept repeating the story over and over."

The sheriff checked the license plate number, which led to the trailer home of Jack Wiley, 58, and Glenna Faye Marshall, 40. There, they allegedly had been abusing the 3-year-old girl Dean had seen and a 17-year-old boy.

Wiley is charged with two counts of raping the girl. Police also charged him with one count of sodomizing the 17-year-old boy. Marshall is charged with abusing the girl.

"From the beginning, there was something not right," Davis said.

Dean feels vindicated that her instinct was right, but shudders at the thought of what would have become of those children had she not acted.

"What's scarier is to think that it took me four days and for me to actually go and do it myself before anything got done."

Davis says that it goes to show that sometimes a hunch can prove correct.