The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children issued an alert Tuesday after a former Red Wing teen ran away with Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey, the self-proclaimed vampire who in 2006 ran for Minnesota governor.
The center's "endangered runaway" alert followed concerns issued by friends and family of the Faribault, Minn., student.
"I want her found and brought to safety and away from this psychopath," said Jillian Moen, mother of Paige Brewer, 16. "They can't stay holed up forever."
Moen said her daughter slipped away with Sharkey, 45, sometime Sunday after spending the night at Moen's mother's house in Faribault. Since then, people claiming to be Sharkey and Brewer have been posting updates on a Twin Cities media blog.
Faribault Police Chief Dan Collins said he has "no reason to doubt" that Sharkey and Brewer are who they claim to be on the City Pages blog.
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In the blog posts, Sharkey indicates his intention to marry Brewer. In her posts, Brewer discusses wedding plans, as well as plans to emancipate from her mother's legal grasp.
According to a post on the City Pages blog, Sharkey intends to run for governor again this year. Sharkey bills himself as "the king of the vampyre nation" on his Myspace page.
"Yes I am a satanic vampyre, and a hectate witch," his description reads.
Collins said investigators are attempting to make contact with Brewer but are not treating the case as a missing persons case, despite protests from Moen. Collins said that since all indications are that Brewer went willingly with Sharkey, the situation did not meet the threshold for an Amber Alert.
'Her choice'
In an e-mail to the Red Wing Republican Eagle newspaper, Brewer insisted the decision to join Sharkey was her choice.
"I pretty much told Jonathon either he come meet up with me or I would walk to New Jersey on my own," she wrote, referencing Sharkey's native state.
But Collins said police do have some concerns about the man who in 2009 was convicted of harassment in Olmsted County after a Rochester, Minn., teen broke off an online relationship with Sharkey.
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"Anytime you have a 44-year-old man hooking up with a 16-year-old, there's a concern," Collins said.
Brewer and Moen lived in the Red Wing area between 2001 and 2007, Moen said. During that time, she said Brewer attended Concordia Lutheran school and Twin Bluff Middle School.
Moen, Mound, Minn., said she was in e-mail contact with Brewer on Monday and that she does not fear for her daughter's safety but said a blog comment by the person purporting to be Sharkey made her fearful for her own life.
"I was nervous enough to call the FBI," she said, adding that Sharkey has "completely brainwashed" Brewer.
In numerous communications, Brewer alleges child abuse, a claim Moen said stems from an incident when Brewer became unruly.
The episode took another turn toward the unusual Tuesday when Brewer informed the Republican Eagle that Sharkey had written to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and his predecessor, Jeb Bush, in hopes of establishing a line of communication with Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
"I beg of you to contact him personally, and ask him or one of his senior staff members to call Paige ... to discuss a proper and just solution to this matter," the e-mail states. "Otherwise, I see Paige leaving Minnesota with or without me."
