A sleeper cell of criminals was uncovered last Tuesday at Fannin County Middle School.  Reports of FCMS Assistant Principal Tony Tichler’s kidnapping began Tuesday afternoon.  School officials and students involved pointed to one of the seventh grade teachers as being the likely culprit. Later that day, Fannin County Sheriff Dane Kirby made public the ransom note the school received.  In it, the kidnapper requested two weeks of paid vacation, $5,000 vacation bonus and no job-related retaliation for the incident.

The seventh-grade hall was cordoned off as a crime scene.

Kirby arrived at the school around 5:30 and informed FCMS students and administrators about the kidnapping.  He also described the violent crime scene.  He had found blood smears on the lockers in the seventh-grade hall at FCMS.  Kirby had questioned all of the seventh-grade teachers and received a written alibi from each.

Suddenly, 230  FCMS seventh-graders were on the case.  As some students read and compared alibis, other students tested crime scene swabs to determine the subject’s blood type.  Another team was engaged in lifting fingerprints from the crime scene and analyzing the handwriting on the ransom note.

FCMS Principal Keith Nuckolls was devastated by the news of Tichler’s kidnapping but was confident that FCMS seventh-graders would find the criminal and rescue Tichler.

Indeed, the students were ready for such as task.  For the weeks prior to the kidnapping, students had been studying crime scene analysis and forensics.  Fannin County Investigator Sgt.  JC Davenport and Deputy Scott Galloway had visited classes to prepare the students ahead of time by s and explain the ins-and-outs of crime scene investigation.

Around 6 pm, students were finished with their crime analysis and went into the library to share conclusions of individual investigation about the name and details of the perpetrator – 7^th grade teacher Natasha Anderson.

FCMS Assistant Principal Tony Tichler.

Tichler arrived back in the main hallway of FCMS around 6:30.  He said that Anderson and her accomplices treated him fairly during the kidnapping.  When FetchYourNews asked Tichler hove he felt about involvement of his own staff members in the kidnapping plot, Tichler said, “I feel underappreciated.”

Science teacher Jeff Weaver preparing the blood analysis kits.

The kidnapping and subsequent investigation were all part of FCMS’ STEM programs (Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics).  In these programs, students use information and skills from across all their subjects to learn how to make hypotheses and test them through investigation and tests, which are the core pillars of scientific thought.  For instance, seventh-grade science teacher Jeff Weaver walked students through blood typing and fingerprinting using vials of synthetic blood while the reading class worked on analyzing information in the alibis. FCMS’ Tuesday night program is representative of the types of STEM programs he wants the students involved in because it takes their knowledge from classes and makes them put together the knowledge in a way that is “outside the box” thinking.

Several local businesses helped the teachers pull off the kidnapping and feed hotdogs to hungry investigators.  Freeman Gas donated the propane for the grill and Tri-State EMC grilled the hotdogs.