Police: NY Boy Found Dead Wasn't Abducted

A caretaker's initial report that a 5-year-old boy was abducted from an Albany-area home before being found dead nearby hours later was false, New York police said Friday.

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple told local media at about 3 a.m. that the body of Kenneth White was found by a sheriff's K-9 unit conducting a search in the rural hamlet of Clarksville, 10 miles southwest of Albany.

Apple said the 19-year-old daughter of Kenneth's legal guardian told police two men wearing black ski masks entered a house in the neighboring town of Berne, pinned the woman to the floor and took the child at about 1:30 p.m. Thursday. She told police the men drove off in a pickup truck.

Apple told WGY-AM on Friday morning that investigators determined the teen's story was false. He said detectives were interviewing "a person of interest" who knew the boy, but Apple gave no other details.

Kenneth's mother lives elsewhere in New York and his father lives in Massachusetts, Apple said. NBC confirms the father lives in Worcester. Neither parent is the person being questioned by detectives, he said.

Apple said the boy has a twin sister and another sister.

News of the boy's death shocked residents in the rural hill towns west of Albany, described by Apple as a close-knit area where everyone knows everyone.

"It's horrific, it's heart-wrenching," Apple told the Albany radio station. "It's certainly not the ending we were praying for."

Kenneth lived in a red-and-white striped mobile home on a rural road in Berne. Police vehicles were parked outside the home Friday morning, blocking access to the road.