Just a normal home

61 Parkside Drive is a little unkempt. There’s minor damage to the green siding on the double-wide mobile home, a beat-up camper sitting in the driveway, and boxes stacked to the ceiling are visible from outside.

The home is tucked away between two others, barely noticeable to anyone passing through the park.

The thought that this innocuous dwelling could be the scene of a horrific crime has stunned local residents. Police finished searching the trailer last weekend, after its owner was arrested in connection with a dramatic kidnapping.

Gerard John Baumgarte, 56, faces charges of impersonating a police officer, kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and making threats with a firearm after a 16-year-old Penhold girl vanished for nearly two days last Thursday.

Baumgarte wasn’t known to police before last weekend. He’s a self-employed painter and motorcycle enthusiast who hardly attracted any attention from neighbours.

“He lived by himself, kept to himself. He’s a quiet guy,” said Doug Draginda, who lived next to Baumgarte for over two years.

Draginda said Baumgarte was a good neighbour, never making any noise or causing trouble in the park.

“We didn’t talk a lot. It was just a ‘Hey, how you doing Gerry?’ when I saw him after work,” he said.

Draginda said Baumgarte has an ex-wife living in Lethbridge and a brother in Benalto. Baumgarte’s mother moved to Red Deer from Blackfalds recently.

“He hung out with some motorcycle friends every so often but it was nothing crazy. He seemed completely normal,” said Draginda.

Details of the case are anything but normal. The girl managed to escaped a captor after 46 hours, fleeing to Bower Place Shopping Centre and calling for help on a pay phone on Saturday night.

RCMP say a man approached the girl dressed as a police officer, carrying a gun, with flashing blue and red lights in his car.

“He had some clothing that convinced the victim in this thing that he was an officer. . . . This poor girl, she’s in a situation where she thinks she may have done some traffic infraction, it’s dark, it’s at night and her mindset already is that this is a police car,” said Sgt. Patrick Webb.

Since Baumgarte’s arrest, 20 RCMP officers have been working with detachments across the province to make sure the incident is isolated. They’ve asked the public to come forward with any information regarding a man who may have posed as an RCMP officer in the past.

“We want people to be thinking about it. We can’t say that he did or didn’t do this before, but if we don’t look into it, that would be negligent. Certainly we’re going to be checking our own files at detachments­,” said Webb.

Additional details are hard to come by. Webb doesn’t want to say anything that might jeopardize the case, trial or victim.

“Yes she ended up at the mall. That’s sufficient for public information. The detail of that is for us to know and the bad guy to know. It has such a possibility of impacting the victim that we have to speak in generalities,” he said.

Cases of police impersonation are rare and usually don’t involve serious crimes, he added.

“Most of the time it’s a minor thing, it’s kids goofing around, or someone being stupid or someone bugging his wife in a divorce. . . . But it’s not that hard to find a siren. Go to Canadian Tire, go to Princess Auto. . . . It’s not like it’s something impossible to obtain, like a satellite. This is stuff that’s available in many different formats,” Webb said.

Baumgarte reserved his plea at a Monday court appearance. He’s scheduled to appear again today.

paarhus@reddeeradvocate.com