Man Admits Role in Girl’s Kidnaping : Crime: He tells police he staged a break-in to make it appear someone else abducted his fiancee’s daughter, 8, who told authorities he raped her.

FULLERTON —  A handyman, arrested in the rape and kidnaping of his fiancee’s 8-year-old daughter, admitted that he took the girl to a motel and then concocted a phony story about a break-in and abduction from the family’s apartment, police said Saturday.

Robert Leroy Granger, 34, was being held in the Fullerton City Jail on $50,000 bail on suspicion of kidnaping, sexual assault and rape.

The child was found safe late Friday in the Silver Moon Motel in Anaheim after a frantic daylong search.

“I just thank God she’s alive,” said the child’s 29-year-old mother.

Fullerton police said that Granger admitted that he staged the break-in at the two-bedroom apartment he shared with the child, her mother and her brother to make it appear that someone else had abducted her.

Detective Kevin Hamilton would not say if Granger had confessed to raping the child.

“He was trying to cover his tracks,” Hamilton said. “Even though his story about the break-in sounded really far-fetched, we approached it as real because you can’t rule out anything. His story really unraveled when we found the little girl.”

On Friday afternoon, about 20 police officers using bloodhounds searched the neighborhood surrounding the 88-unit apartment complex in the 2400 block of West Orangethorpe Avenue where the girl lives. But they couldn’t find her.

The child told police that she was raped at her apartment and then taken, taped and gagged, to the motel. She was told not to leave the room. But after seeing her picture on television during a late-night broadcast, she told police she ran to the room next door for help.

Hamilton said that Granger admitted tying the child’s arms, legs and mouth with duct tape, putting her inside a laundry basket, covering her with clothes and a blanket and smuggling her out of the apartment.

“I didn’t want to believe any of this until I heard it from my daughter,” her exhausted mother said Saturday morning. “I’m shocked and devastated. I haven’t slept all night. I want to be there when he goes to court. I want to see him sentenced. I’d like to see justice.”

She said that when Granger drove her to her job in Los Angeles on Friday morning, “everything seemed normal.”

“He must have just kind of snapped,” she said. “It’s like he had a second personality or something. I don’t know. I don’t think he knows.”

She said Granger had been caring for her daughter and 10-year-old son all summer during the times she was at work. She said she and Granger met through a mutual friend in Whittier about seven years ago.

“We got engaged two months ago and were planning to get married,” she said.

The woman, who is expecting another child in two weeks, said Granger had been acting as her delivery coach. She said he is not the father of the unborn child.

The pair had been platonic roommates for three years, she said, but moved apart 2 1/2 years ago. She said they then became romantically involved and had been living together for the last six months.

The woman described Granger as a “Jack-of-all-trades” who worked sporadically as a handyman but was prevented from holding a full-time job because of a “rare liver disease he’s had since he was 16.”

Granger originally told police that he last saw the girl asleep about 10 a.m. in her mother’s bedroom. He told police that when he checked the bedroom again about 11:30 a.m., he saw that she was missing and found signs of a break-in.

Apartment manager Barbara Rawlings said Granger told her that he had been across the street doing laundry and had noticed the child missing when he returned. He told the woman that the bedroom window screen had been cut.

In addition, jewelry, a handgun and a portable safe were missing from the apartment. Hamilton said that Granger had taken the items to a local pawnshop sometime Friday.

Granger told police that he searched in vain for the child around the complex until 1:30 p.m., when he called the child’s mother. She arrived home an hour later, and they called police at 2:30 p.m.

“I was angry with him that he hadn’t called me right away when he noticed her missing,” the mother said Saturday.

Police said they were skeptical of Granger’s version of events after interviewing the girl’s brother, who was inside of the apartment at the time of the abduction and alleged rape.

“That’s what keyed us that something was wrong,” Hamilton said. “The brother is a very smart 10-year-old, and he told us that there were a lot of things that Granger was doing that were not a part of his daily routine, such as leaving the apartment to do laundry. He told us a lot of small things that added up to some big suspicions.”

About 6 p.m. Friday, police asked Granger to come to the station for questioning. He was still being questioned when the child was found.