Sources:By Mark Reynolds Times-Union staff writer

By: Mark Reynolds

Obscured by mounds of earth and tufts of grass, the concrete septic tank basically was invisible from the road, even to motorists who cast more than a passing glance toward the barren lot in late May.

A green vinyl chair, brush piles and an assortment of empty drink cans littered the small tract in the same Interlachen subdivision in Putnam County where investigators, helicopter pilots, FBI agents and even bloodhounds had failed to find the missing 12-year-old boy who was entombed inside the dried-out tank.

Dawn Bachman apparently had never walked the site, but both the tank and the boy crept into her consciousness as she slept. In her dream, the tank was "dark" and Jerry Alley Jr. was sitting inside.

"I was just looking in there at him," Bachman told a detective, the day after her vision pinpointed the location of the homicide victim inside Interlachen Lakes Estates on May 29. "He didn't look like he was hurt or anything,"

The phantasm, recently revealed when hundreds of legal papers became public, may not arm prosecutors with much ammunition against the teenager charged in Alley's May 26 kidnapping and strangling. But the detailed account of how the 24-year-old woman dueled with both the dream and her own instincts, and then solved the mystery adds yet another strange twist to the Putnam County episode.

The mother's images of Alley were interrupted by the piercing cries of her baby boy about 4 a.m., but they haunted her through the day, according to records of Bachman's conversations with police.

Initially, say the records, Bachman assumed authorities had searched the area sufficiently -- Alley's track actually had taken a K-9 team straight to the parcel -- but at the grocery store that night, she saw a picture of the lost boy.

"I just kept feeling the urgency to go out there or to call somebody and tell them to go look at that septic tank," Bachman was quoted as saying.

"I felt bad and stuff," she said.

She recalled thinking, "Well, you know, I'll just go have a look."

As a little girl, Dawn Marie Bachman apparently was affected by dreams that sometimes foreshadowed real-life events.

At 17, her father sent her to a psychologist who failed to diagnose the situation, the records say.

"It's happened all my life," she told police, counting about 20 such occurrences.

She once dreamed her mother would telephone her after the two had not spoken for about two years; her mother called that afternoon.

She once dreamed her sister-in-law was pregnant; a telephone call later that day confirmed her dream.

"I don't know why this stuff is coming to me," she told police, "but it has."

When contacted by telephone by the Times-Union last week, Bachman declined to answer questions, saying she didn't want to heap any more pain on Alley's grieving family.

However, she then made a brief statement, saying she had turned away some 70 reporters, many of whose uninvited questions showed misunderstanding.

"I'm not a psychic," she said. "It doesn't happen to me all the time." Bachman said the Bible likens psychic beliefs to witchcraft, but her dreams are something else. "When we're not in sin and we're receptive to God," Bachman said. "He will talk to us."

Children played in tank

At least some of the thoughts inside the woman's head probably came from things she learned after she married Mark Bachman.

Her husband once inspected the vacant parcel with his brother, who was considering buying it.

About three months ago, he came home talking about how the neighborhood's playful children had turned the lot's hidden septic tank, about 7 feet deep, into a fort.

He explained how the children could climb into the tank from an opening.

"I don't remember exactly what he said," she apparently told the police, "but I knew it was there after that."

She noticed children playing and riding bicycles, but she never identified them as Jerry Alley Jr., whom she never met.

By the time she went to church, apparently on May 28, Bachman knew about how Alley had ridden his bicycle off into a mystery on May 26, terrifying his family and starting a massive police search.

She recalled saying a prayer for the boy in church.

And before she fell asleep on the night of the dream, she had seen his picture in one of the many fliers circulating through the small town. She had read about Alley in the newspaper.

He was on her mind when she went to bed that night.

Had to see for herself

The records are unclear about exactly when Bachman had the dream. Some parts say it was early Sunday morning, while other sections clearly indicate it occurred the same day Alley's body was discovered. Neither Bachman nor Putnam County prosecutor Gary Wood agreed to an interview that would clarify the issue.

Bachman determined it was time to follow up on the dream on May 29, after she left the grocery store and headed toward Lakes Estates on Florida 315.

She drove to the ramshackle lot at the corner of Carr Street and Evans Avenue. Farther down the road, where Evans meets Junior Lake Drive, she cruised past some volunteer firefighters near a parked vehicle and then returned to tell them about her dream.

Firefighter Chris Pellicer accompanied her to the lot and the tank.

Its opening was covered with wood.

"He went around it like the long way instead of just going around to the hole, and he was kind of looking," Bachman recalled. "And then he pulled a board off, and then he pulled another big board off. ... And then, he ... just started saying swear words ... and 'Oh, God,' and 'Oh, Jesus.'"