Who Killed Alanna Gallagher?

Alanna Gallagher / Screengrab, NBC 5

Some children playing in a Saginaw, Texas neighborhood made a horrific discovery Monday: the nude, bound body of six-year-old Alanna Gallagher. Alanna was found under a tarp, a bag around her head, in the middle of the street. The little girl had been missing for a few hours when she was found.

Crimes involving children are hard for just about anyone to write about. For me they eventually became such a deal-breaker they were a factor in backing out of writing about crime as a singular pursuit. I don't plan to cover many.

The murder of Alanna Gallagher is so strange and chilling it needs more coverage. National broadcast media seems mostly consumed with the trial of George Zimmerman and backfilling with international coverage of events in Egypt in particular, so anyone wanting more information has to go to regional, Texas based sources.

Here is some information from one of those sources, NBC 5 in Dallas, about the case so far:

Saginaw police also do not know if Gallagher was abducted, [police spokesman Officer Damon Ing] said. Her cause of death has not yet been determined, and investigators are still trying to establish a timeline of what led up to her death, he said.

Police believe the slaying is an isolated case, Ing said.

"I can assure the community of Saginaw and all surrounding areas that you're perfectly safe in this community," he said.

Pause. Reports so far indicate there are no suspects. Why, then, do police say this is an "isolated" case? A normal law enforcement desire to keep the community calm is understandable, but most police departments these days will be up front if they think a murderous sexual predator is loose in the community. They'll warn locals to lock doors and be even more wary than usual of strangers. Damon Ing isn't saying any of this.

Then there's this:

According to a FBI receipt of seized evidence, federal agents took a blue-gray tarp, electrical tape, and Wal-Mart plastic bags from a car registered to the victim's parents. The car is parked on the street in front of where the 6-year-old victim lived. Agents also searched the girl's home, where she lived with two siblings, her parents and another man.

It isn't the sketchy inventory of items taken from a car registered to the little girl's parents as the final, "and another man" that catches my attention.

In this article, no further reference is made to "another man," yet Damon Ing told NBC 5 that the family isn't under suspicion. Maybe that other man is a family member.

If he isn't, perhaps Officer Ing was being clever with words.

At the moment, make of that what you will.

With the bald facts as known it sounds like the child might have been the victim of a sexual predator. If that's the case and there are no suspects, yet police believe local children are safe--the predator is somehow hemmed in, whoever it is.

If that's the case, it sounds like the kind of crime the killer might have planned well in advance. That, or it wasn't his first time.

[NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth]