2-year anniversary for missing eastern Missouri girl

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A teenage girl who disappeared two years ago will be remembered Saturday, while a regional task force continues efforts to find her and other missing children from eastern Missouri.

Bianca Piper was 13 when she vanished March 10, 2005, in rural Lincoln County, about 60 miles north of St. Louis. Family and friends will gather at 1 p.m. Saturday to plant a tree and dedicate a bench at Winfield Elementary School, where Bianca attended.

Bianca was last seen walking on a gravel road near her home in Foley. Bianca's mother, Shannon Tanner, told authorities she dropped the girl about a mile from home, hoping the walk would give her a chance to calm down after a dispute over doing dinner dishes. Tanner said it was a practice counselors had advised.

Two years later, Bianca's fate is still unknown, even as a special task force made up of federal, state and local police look into whether kidnapping suspect Michael Devlin could have played a role in her disappeareance and several other unsolved cases.

Devlin, 41, was arrested Jan. 12 after two missing boys were found at his apartment in the St. Louis County town Kirkwood. Ben Ownby, 13, had been missing four days since his abduction from the Franklin County town Beaufort. Shawn, now 15, had been missing since 2002 from Richwoods in Washington County.

Devlin has pleaded not guilty in the disappearances. In addition to kidnapping charges in Franklin and Washington counties, he faces forcible sodomy charges in St. Louis County and federal charges for producing child pornography and transporting a boy across state lines with the intention of sexual assault.

So far, investigators have found no link between Devlin and Bianca. But task force spokesman Sgt. Al Nothum of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said the investigation continues.

"Are we ready to say we're ruling out this person or that person? They (the task force) specifically said we're not at that point," he said.

Tanner did not return phone calls from The Associated Press. She told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that despite new leads in the case, her daughter's disappearance only becomes more difficult.

"It's getting harder to face, the fact that it's been so long," Tanner said. "I think I'm almost more depressed about it this year."

Tanner was placed on probation in March 2005 for an assault against another daughter. Police have said they do not view the domestic incident as related to Bianca's disappearance.