Teen who traveled to the Middle East to meet man met no resistance

Friday, June 23, 2006

(6/23/06 - WJRT/GRAND BLANC, MI) -- Katherine Lester's story is one with many subplots: love, deception and intrigue. It is a story that continues to this day and one that still has many unanswered questions.

She told her parents she was going to Canada with friends when instead, she secretly made her way to New York for a flight to the Middle East. She was trying to meet Abdullah Jimzawi, 20, a man she met on MySpace.com.

"We're willing to take our responsibility in this," said Katherine's father Terry, "but someone along the way should have questioned a 16-year-old who's obviously from a western culture, why she was leaving, unaccompanied, to the most dangerous place in the world."

For Katherine, her secret plan to meet a man she says she loved, and still loves, began with a trip to New York.

"I took a Greyhound bus and I got to New York," explained Katherine. "I stayed with some people who I met up with there and I stayed 'til my flight."

Back in Michigan, the Lester family, aware that Katherine did not go to Canada as was originally thought, began to use every available resource to find Katherine's whereabouts.

"At first we thought she was just hanging out with some friends in her local town," said Krista Lester, Katherine's stepmother. "As she was calling us on the phone and her story wasn't making sense. We started checking with the friends she was supposedly with. We knew something bigger was going on."

It was bigger than family members could ever have imagined. Katherine Lester was about to board a transatlantic flight to the Middle East.

So were there any raised eyebrows when Katherine went to JFK?

"Not at all," Katherine said. "None. I went to the ticket counter and he said, 'How many bags of luggage do you have?' No one asked me one question. Not one."

"I do have to question why no one even asked why a 16-year-old girl was boarding a plane to the most dangerous city in the entire world," wondered Krista.

Katherine, though, carried with her a different kind of fear. "I was scared of getting caught," she said.

In investigating how Katherine could have traveled to the Middle East virtually unnoticed, ABC12 discovered that GreyHound bus lines have strict policies to ensure an unaccompanied child reaches their destination safely. Passengers over the age of 15 are considered adults and are free to travel unaccompanied.

The airline that Katherine flew to the Middle East had "no comment."

The Lester family says they have asked Congressman Dale Kildee's office to help them look further into the matter.

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