(CNN) –– Police went up and down the basement stairs multiple times Monday while searching a home in the Saugerties, New York, area. some trace Paislee Shultis, 6, who had been missing for more than two years.
About an hour and a half after the search began, a detective took a closer look at the wooden ladder. “He couldn’t identify it, but there was something on the stairs that was disturbing him,” Saugerties Police Chief Joseph Sinagra told CNN.
Detective Erik Thiele pointed his flashlight to where a stair met the riser, Sinagra said. Thiele saw what he believed to be a blanket and the police began to dismantle the ladder.
“And as they’re taking the steps off the ladder, they see a couple of feet,” the police chief told CNN. “Small feet.”
They were Paislee’s feet. She was hiding under the stairs with her mother, who does not have custody of the child, the chief said. And he added that the girl remained huddled in a nest of pillows, blankets and clothes, in what police described as a “dark and damp enclosure.”
Paislee Shultis is safe
Now the girl is safe, having been returned to her legal guardian and reunited with her older sister. But many unanswered questions remain as investigators try to piece together what she experienced over the last two and a half years.
The girl was unable to go to school and it was not clear if she had been to a doctor since she disappeared, the chief said. It is also unknown what impact living under these conditions has had on her.
The compound where Paislee Shultis and her mother were hiding is seen in this police photo taken at her home in Saugerties, New York, on Monday, February 14, 2021.
The mother, Kimberly Cooper, was arrested along with the father, who also does not have custody, and Paislee’s grandfather. They denied knowing where Paislee was when police executed the search warrant on him this week.
Cooper was charged with Interfering with Custody in the Second Degree and Endangering the Welfare of a Child, both misdemeanors, according to police.
Kirk Shultis Jr. and Kirk Shultis Sr. are charged with Custodial Interference in the First Degree, a felony, and Endangering the Welfare of a Child, a misdemeanor. Both were charged and released on bail, police said. The court ordered the three defendants to stay away from the girl.
The men’s attorneys declined to comment. Meanwhile, Carol K. Morgan, an attorney representing Cooper, said, “We should all wait until the facts are out. Everyone should be patient before drawing their own conclusions.”
‘They lied to us for two years’
Paislee Joann Shultis was reported missing on July 13, 2019 in Cayuga Heights, a town on the outskirts of Ithaca, about 165 miles west of Saugerties. Sinagra told CNN that Cooper and Shultis Jr. they lost custody of Paislee and her sisterand that a legal guardian was responsible for them.
Sinagra told CNN that the police had received several tips about the house and that they had been there a dozen times in the last two years. But each time, residents denied knowing where the girl was and instead were “contradictory” with police, Sinagra said. The police entered several times, but were not allowed to enter the sleeping areas or the basement.
“They lied to us for two years. Including the father who said that he had no idea where his daughter was,” the chief said.
It wasn’t until Monday that police were able to get factual information, not hearsay, that helped them obtain a search warrant, he told CNN.
In the basement, they found an apartment that included a bedroom with Paislee’s name on the wall, Sinagra said. She looked like she had fallen asleep in a bed.
“She’s here?” the officers asked, according to the chief. But the residents denied that anyone lived in the room, he said. “They said they had arranged the room like this in case Paislee ever came back.”
Paislee was hiding under the stairs only a meter or so away.