"But it always came back to me - couldn't stop it." "I'd make myself think of other things when it was happening," she said. To keep her silent he used rewards - as well as threats. "He'd tell me not to tell anyone, or else something bad would happen," Masha said. So I just didn't tell anybody, 'cause I was afraid." A Desperate Search by Police "He wouldn't tell me what it would be, but he'd just say something bad would happen. The road to Masha's rescue began hundreds of miles away in the Chicago suburb of Palos Heights. Mike Zaglifa had been posing as a pedophile on the Internet, where obscene pictures of children are often traded like baseball cards. There is a limited supply of child porn, and so pedophiles are always looking for arousing new images - so when Masha's fresh pictures appeared, this caused a feeding frenzy. Zaglifa pretended to want them too, and struck up a conversation with someone using the handle "NkdSister." After chatting with him for a bit, he had a gut feeling - and traced NkdSister's Internet address to Pittsburgh. On May 27, 2003, federal agents Denise Holtz and Tom Clinton visited Mancuso's home, looking for the photos advertised on the Internet. When they pulled up, they saw Mancuso and Masha outside. They immediately separated them, and Clinton says he could tell Mancuso was concerned. "He wasn't happy that we were there and it was obvious to us," he said. The agents found computer disks with child pornography - but the biggest discovery was to come from Masha herself. Holtz remembers her asking: "Is this about my secret?" An agent had taken Mancuso inside his house, but even there, he tried to keep Masha from talking by yelling out to her.īut Masha spoke anyway. "It was like, I finally had someone to talk to. So once I said something - I said everything else. Masha was finally rescued at the age of 10. She says she doesn't know what she would have done if they didn't come. "I guess I'd still be waiting, like I did for five years," she said. It turns out Masha was not Mancuso's first victim. His ex-wife, Doreen McDade, and his 28-year-old daughter, Rachelle, told ABC News he had done this before. He had molested Rachelle as a child, they said. When I first found out that he adopted a little girl I should have spoke up, I should have said something. I feel somehow responsible," Rachelle said.īut McDade and her daughter both say they were never contacted by adoption authorities.
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