http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.a...02933&nav=0Rce

Mother's day surprise; missing daughter found after 30 years

Updated: May 14, 2006 08:32 PM MDT

PONTIAC (AP) -- A woman who authorities say was kidnapped from Michigan as a child by her father 30 years ago has been found living in Arizona, her mother and sheriff's officials said.

On Mother's Day weekend in 1976, Laura Gooder's estranged husband Eric Douglas Nielsen picked up 21-month-old Genevieve Rachel Nielsen at her Oakland County home for an overnight visit. They never returned.

This Mother's Day weekend, a police officer arrived Saturday at Gooder's current home in Frederic with news that her daughter -- now 31 years old -- had been found, The Detroit News reported on its Web site.

Gooder's daughter had been raised under another name, which law enforcement officials declined to release, and grew up believing her mother had been killed in an auto accident, the newspaper said. "It is pretty surreal," Gooder, 53, told the newspaper. "I am keeping my fingers crossed and waiting for her to call."

On Sunday, Gooder told The Associated Press that she didn't want to speak about the case until she hears from her daughter. Eric Nielsen was incarcerated in Arizona under a different identity on an unrelated charge, authorities said.

A tip led investigators to visit an Arizona prison Thursday, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said. Bouchard said Gooder's daughter, who now has a child of her own,

was traumatized by the revelations. "She obviously was told something completely different from the father," Bouchard said. "She is devastated." Oakland County Detective Sgt. Dave Wurtz, who has headed the case since 1990, said Sunday that authorities weren't releasing

many details to protect Gooder's daughter, who he described as distraught. "This has been a terrible shock to her," said Wurtz, who returned late Saturday from Arizona where he met with Gooder's daughter.

Wurtz said authorities will work to extradite Eric Nielsen to Michigan. After her daughter's disappearance, Gooder eventually remarried and had three sons. Last year, U.S. Marshals joined the search for Gooder's daughter and a judge signed a federal arrest warrant charging Eric Nielsen with kidnapping. He had been wanted on a state kidnapping warrant since 1976.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...WS99/305140004

Mom's long search for her daughter ends
After 30 years, kidnapped child found in Arizona

May 14, 2006
BY JOHN BEBOW
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

In the one-stoplight town of Frederic, lots of people knew the tale of Laura Gooder, the woman who hadn't found her daughter, kidnapped three decades ago.

"She was searching, searching and searching," said Dawn Wakeley, a bartender at the Frederic Inn, 10 miles north of Grayling. "She was never going to give up hope."

Gooder doesn't have to search anymore.

Thirty years after her 21-month-old baby disappeared during Mother's Day weekend, Michigan authorities found the daughter, almost 32, in Arizona last Thursday.

Born Genevieve Rachel Nielsen, but now living under a different name, Gooder's daughter now has a child of her own, said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, whose department investigated the case.

"It's bittersweet," Bouchard said. Gooder "has complete joy and relief that her daughter is alive, but it is a painful reminder of the 30 years she was without her daughter on Mother's Day."

Reached at home Sunday, Gooder declined to discuss the case or any possible reunion, except to say, "Thank you for your concern."

Oakland County deputies pursued the case since Gooder reported in May 1976 that Eric Douglas Nielsen, her ex-husband and the girl's father, had taken the child from her Oakland County home for a visit and never returned. Nielsen switched to an alias and remained untraceable.

In recent months, Oakland County deputies teamed with federal marshals, and the new efforts led to a tip indicating Nielsen was in an Arizona prison on a 7-year sentence for aggravated assault, Bouchard said Sunday.

"He was due to get out at the end of the month, so that put some urgency on us," Bouchard said. "The daughter believed her mother had been killed in a car accident a long time ago."

Oakland County deputies conducted interviews in Arizona last week and notified the daughter that her mother was alive, living in northern Michigan, remarried and was a mother to three sons.

"The daughter is just reeling," Bouchard said. "She was shocked. ... Her whole life is a house of cards built on lies."

Gooder and her daughter have each other's contact information but, to Bouchard's knowledge, had not spoken as of Sunday afternoon.

"They're both just trying to come to grips with it," the sheriff said.

Authorities are withholding the daughter's name to protect her privacy. They're withholding Eric Nielsen's alias for the same reason and to prevent threatening their ongoing case.

Bouchard said Oakland County authorities will seek Nielsen's extradition on flight and kidnapping charges.

A Long Search Uncovers A Lost Daughter

"Hindsight is 20/20 and it cost me 14 years," said Scott Hunter

In Scott Hunter's eyes a daughter will make you cry.

"When they're taken from you, forcibly taken, that's a pain you'll never get over," said Hunter.

Hunter says he was driven to know if his little girl was, safe so he went searching.

"I knew I was looking for a 16 or 17 year-old white female," says Hunter.

Hunter had tried bounty hunters because he knew his ex-wife was in Arizona. When that didn’t work, he started using the Internet and dozens of search sites. One day he heard about the popularity of MySpace.com.

Remarkably, he found himself looking at a profile in the Phoenix area on MySpace.com.

"I said, I'm so sorry to bother you. My name is Clayton Scott Hunter and I have a daughter that's been missing since 1992, she would be about your age. Her name is Amanda Michelle, said Hunter.

That was last Wednesday, but this Wednesday morning he got a reply.

"There's a message on my site, "Are you my daddy?" Oh my God, have you been looking for me all this time," said Hunter.

We spoke with Amanda by phone this afternoon with her dad present.

"It was awesome, I was so happy. The first thing he said to me was, did you know I've been waiting 14 years to say I love you? I just wanted to cry, I was so happy," said Amanda.

Scott says 14 years of not knowing if the love of your life is alive or dead can take a toll. It's something he says he'll never take for granted again.

"There are guys who live down the street from their kids and they don't love them, and I don't understand that," said Hunter.

July 4 will mark exactly 14 years since Hunter had last seen his daughter.

But, also on this July 4 she is returning to Arkansas to spend time with her dad.

http://www.todaysthv...x?storyid=29072

http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=4963091&nav=0RbQ

Arizona prisoner to face charges in daughter's 1976 disappearance

PONTIAC, Mich. Michigan authorities are moving ahead with plans to prosecute an Arizona prison inmate accused of abducting his 21-month-old daughter 30 years ago.

Eric Nielsen has been serving time for felonious assault.

An Oakland County prosecutor says authorities will seek Nielsen's extradition next on a kidnapping charge.

He's accused of disappearing with daughter Genevieve during 1976 divorce proceedings.

The daughter was raised under a different name and told that her birth mother had been killed in a car crash.

Her mother, Laura Gooder, learned this month that Genevieve was alive and living in the Phoenix area.

Mother and Son Reunited After 39-Year Separation

By Barbara Clark, For The Kitsap Sun
June 3, 2006


She calls him "Ricky," even though he's almost 43 and goes by Richard.

"He's still 4 years old to me," smiles Gladys Evans, 64, of Collins Lake.

Evans isn't just being a doting mother. Until Wednesday, her mind's image of "Ricky" was frozen at the time he was a talkative preschooler with "baby cheeks." She spent much of her life trying to find him and his sister, a year older. Then suddenly, about a month ago, she got a strange phone call.

The man said, "It's June 12, not June 23."

Evans was mystified and almost hung up on what she thought was a wrong-number caller.

Then the cryptic message shocked her into reality. She was talking to her long-lost son, Richard Cain, now of Canton, Ga.

In looking for him, she'd given the wrong birth date to a search agency. He was born June 12, 1963.

The children's father " along with the kids " disappeared out of Evans' life when Richard was 4 and his sister, Deborah Johnson, was 5. This week, Richard walked off a plane at SeaTac for a reunion with his mother.

Along with seeing the adult "Ricky," Evans now has pictures of the three grandchildren she didn't know she had. Two are Richard's and one is Deborah's. Richard's 11-year-old daughter started a phone call with "Hi, Grandma" " two of the sweetest words Evans thought she'd never hear.

The saga of the search has the happy ending the North Mason woman could only imagine as she moved from place to place, taking such jobs as waitress, bartender and finally, nanny. Her mission was to find her offspring and make a living the best she could.

"I didn't have time to build a career," she said. "I was looking for my children."

She also didn't build a second family, remarrying once but long since separated from her second husband. Her odyssey took her far and wide: England, Alaska, Texas, New Mexico; anyplace she thought her ex-husband might have reason to go, based on his past life, things he once said or snippets she uncovered in local newspaper files or courthouse records.

So when a friend helped her contact Child Search, a Christian-based organization, it was without any real expectations. She gave information to an investigator in Houston, Texas, one fateful morning. By about 4 p.m. the same day, she got the call she'd waited 38 years to receive.

Cain says he had his opening speech planned: He was going to ask his mother what she was doing June 12 of the year he was born. But he learned of the date mistake, and blurted out the other message.

Child Search, like other agencies, won't give information about missing children directly to the parent. They let the child decide to initiate contact. Evans' daughter was found first, and she passed the phone number on to Richard. The daughter hasn't yet decided if she wants to meet her mother, but that hasn't dampened Evans' spirits.

Richard tried at various times to learn her whereabouts, with no success. After all those years, it was easy for Child Search because both Deborah and the investigator are in Texas, Evans says. And that's where the ill-fated and short-lived marriage began.

At the time of the disappearance, agencies and the public weren't much concerned about such situations, even though Evans had legal custody. Later, those who could help wanted money she didn't have. Child Search worked without charge, she says.

Ironically, the ex-husband and the children spent some time in Washington, along with other areas. But it was while Evans, who is originally from this state, was criss-crossing the county in other directions.

Mostly, the two children grew up in Texas " with three different stepmothers.

"I never knew what it was like to have a mom," Cain says.

But like Evans, he's philosophical about the situation.

"I think of it as buying a lottery ticket and thinking I've stuck it in my wallet, then finding out I dropped it someplace," Cain said. "But all along it was a winner."

In this case, the "winner" was found.

Cain, a technician with a medical respiratory equipment firm, is flying back to Georgia today after a whirlwind of sightseeing and visits with local cousins and second cousins. He's planning a return trip with his children.

Evans, who worked in the Seattle area as a nanny, never told her story to her clients because it was too sad. Helping raise other's kids filled a gap.

"There was a time when I was just sure I would never, ever find them," Evans says. "But I kept on truckin', kept on trying. I'm glad I never quit."

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...95ea29d6&k=379

Woman who vanished found alive in U.S.

Linda Grant, mother of three little girls, was last seen more than two decades ago. Her Port Moody family thought she had been murdered. Then came a stunning e-mail.

Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Linda Grant, one of 68 women listed as missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, ended more than 20 years of silence this week, contacting police and her family to tell them she is still alive.

"I didn't even know I was on that list until [Monday]," said Grant, who grew up in Port Moody and left the Lower Mainland in 1983 to begin a new life in the United States.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Grant said she found out she was listed as missing while she was surfing the Web on Monday to learn more about Robert (Willy) Pickton, the Port Coquitlam pig farmer accused of killing 26 women.

She said an American friend originally from Surrey "was telling me about this Pickton guy. I went on to the computer and there was Pickton. And then I saw myself."

Her photograph was staring back at her from the police poster of 68 women missing from the Downtown Eastside, said Grant, who lives in the southern U.S. and gets little Canadian news.

The slightly out-of-focus picture of the smiling blond woman, taken more than 23 years ago, indicated that Linda Louise Grant was last seen in October 1984.

Although Grant said she had not spoken to anyone in her family since 1984 after fleeing a home she described as troubled, she was startled to see her name on the poster because she wasn't aware she had been reported missing.

And she insisted she doesn't fit the profile of the other women on the list -- denying she has ever worked in the sex trade or done hard drugs.

She said that over the last two days, she has spoken to police officers with the Missing Women Task Force and members of her long-lost family, but noted everyone was skeptical that she was who she claimed to be.

The RCMP has not taken Grant's name off the poster yet, saying a police investigation must be conducted to prove the woman is no longer missing.

"We are trying to confirm that she is alive and well, but we haven't done that yet to our satisfaction," media relations officer Staff Sgt. John Ward said on Tuesday.

Grant turned to an American cold cases website for help on Monday, and the administrator pointed her to a missing women website that Wayne Leng has run since his friend Sarah de Vries disappeared from Vancouver.

Grant's daughter Dawn Grant had posted notices on Leng's website in an effort to find more information about her mother. Linda Grant got her daughter's e-mail address from the website and sent her a message Monday.

"I was cynical. I thought someone was pulling a prank on me," said Dawn Grant, 28, a telemarketer from Surrey who has a young son.

But Linda Grant said she was ready to prove who she was. "Finally Dawn started e-mailing me back and asking me questions that only I would know the answers to," Linda Grant said.

On Monday night, Dawn Grant, her 27-year-old sister Briana, her two aunts, an uncle and her grandfather participated in a teleconference call to Linda Grant to try to determine if the woman was for real.

"She knew the names of everyone in our family, our birthdays, the story of playing pool and the pool ball going through the window. Silly things that only my mother would know," Dawn Grant said.

"My Auntie Sue was very skeptical. She just kept asking questions and questions, and mom had all the answers -- even about her dental work."

Linda Grant said she wanted to answer the queries so her family would believe her. "My sister Susan asked me what colour my bedroom was as a teenager," she said.

Dawn Grant is convinced she has found her mother -- a woman she last saw when she was five or six years old. She has only vague memories of brushing her hair while the two sat together on a couch.

"This is just overwhelming. I'm so happy," Dawn Grant said, weeping Linda Grant broke down in tears on the phone when asked about everything she has missed during her 23-year absence from her daughters and the rest of her family. She said she moved in 1983, when she was 25 years old, to the southern United States -- "the furthest place I could get" -- after losing custody of her two young daughters, Dawn and Brandy.

She claimed she reached out unsuccessfully to one family member in 1984, and then decided to create a new life -- although the decision was a tough one to make.

"I love my kids," she sobbed.

When she left Canada, Linda Grant was pregnant with her third daughter, Briana, whom she gave up for adoption.

(Briana later tracked down a family member -- but not her mother -- and met with her biological family.)

Linda Grant said her life has been a happy one in the U.S., where she had a new family and owned a bar that she has since sold.

"It was so hard, but I got married and I had three more girls, and I thought that was God's way of getting me through it," said Linda Grant, who now works as a bartender.

After discovering her photo on the missing women poster, Linda Grant said she told her husband on Monday night and her three youngest daughters on Tuesday that she had left a life behind in Canada before moving to the U.S.

Dawn Grant said she grew up thinking her mother had abandoned her, but when she read about the serial killer investigation at the Pickton pig farm, she feared her mother was no longer alive.

"I was worried something bad had happened to her," Dawn Grant said.

Pickton is charged with killing 26 of the women on the list of missing, but more than 40 remained unaccounted for. The list had 69 names on it until May 2005, when police announced Tammy Fairbairn had been located in central Canada.

Linda Grant -- who police said was last seen in 1984 but wasn't reported missing until February 1996 -- was officially added to the list in July 2002, but very little was known publicly about her at the time. If she is removed from the list, that will lower the police tally of missing women to 67.

Leng, who runs the missing women website, also started communicating with Linda Grant online Monday and called the Missing Women Task Force to alert police to her claims. Leng is convinced the woman is telling the truth about her identity.

"This just made me so happy because often it's another dead body being found, it's often sad news. To get something so uplifting that somebody has survived -- that is such great news," Leng said.

Dawn Grant said she hopes other families of the missing women can also be reunited with loved ones. She said she would like to see her mother as soon as she can find the money to fly to the southern U.S.

"I've been waiting 23 years for this. I just want to see her," the emotional young woman said.

Linda Grant is also determined to see her oldest children and the rest of her family again.

"We are all going to meet together. I don't know where or when, but we will."

MEMO FOR HER MOTHER

One of the postings that Dawn Grant put on the www.missingpeople.net website in an effort to find her mother:

Thursday, May 25, 2006:

"My mom is Linda Louise Grant. She went missing 23 years ago and was last seen a block from the Pickton pig farm. I miss her very much and hope she is still out there some where. When I was a kid I always thought that she just abandoned me and when I heard about the pig farm I was hoping more than ever that she abandoned me.... I used to be mad at her for missing me grow up and for not being there when her first grandchild was born. But now I just hope she is still alive and safe and happy. I feel robbed as I imagine that all the families of the missing women do.... All I know is that I want my mother back and if she is still out there and you have any information about her please e-mail me ... even if you don't think it's important. I just want to know anything about her."

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?se...cal&id=4255488
Missing kids found after 6 years

June 9, 2006 - Taken from the home of foster parents, three kids are found living with an aunt

TOLEDO, Ohio -- Three children were found with their aunt six years after their mother duped their foster parents and abducted them, police said.

All three children appeared to be in good health. "They have been pretty well cared for. Their hygiene appears to be appropriate," said Rod Brandt, a spokesman for Lucas County Children Services. "We believe they've not been in school for several years."

Police did not know where the mother is living.

An anonymous tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led police to the children.

Derrick Martre, 15, Khadijah Martre, 13, and Zaimah Martre, 10, were found Thursday with an aunt. Authorities think the children recently returned to Toledo.

A federal arrest warrant was issued in November 1999 for Lalita Martre after authorities said she duped the foster parents who had custody of her three children.

She led them to believe she was a Lucas County Children Services employee who had come to take the children for an evaluation. The foster mother turned the children over to a woman later identified as their mother.

The children had been living with the foster family because children services said the mother and her husband were in jail and unable to care for the children.

http://wfrv.com/topstories/local_story_166083527.html

Jun 15, 2006 1:16 pm US/Central

Wis. Woman's Daughter Taken 10 Years Ago, Found

(AP) MADISON A Madison mother says she's stunned to find out the F-B-I has located her daughter -- ten years after she was taken from her by the girl's father.

The F-B-I is working to reunite the girl -- now 12 years old -- and her mother.

Helen Braun says she was in shock yesterday when the F-B-I called and said they found her daughter in South Carolina. The girl had been staying with her father's friend. The father, Danny Moran, was arrested in Roanoke, Virginia where he had been living for a short time under an assumed identity.

The girl was taken from her home in Tempe, Arizona in 1996.

Police say Helen Braun told them on the day her daughter disappeared, the two were heading out of their apartment when the phone rang. Braun said she turned to answer it and no one was on the other end. When she turned back to her daughter, she was gone. Braun got a call from Moran who said he had taken the girl.

A warrant was issued for Moran on custodial interference charges, and the F-B-I was called in on the case.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...idnap0615.html

Tempe girl found safe 10 years later

Sarah Muench
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 15, 2006 12:00 AM

A Tempe girl who had been missing for 10 years was found in South Carolina after FBI agents arrested her father, who was on the FBI's most-wanted list in Phoenix.

Rebekah Ann Braun, 12, was found unharmed Tuesday night in a South Carolina mobile home where she had been living with her father, Danny Arthur Moran, 57, and a woman who was also arrested.

"I'm ecstatic," said Helen Braun, 51, Rebekah's mother. She now lives in Philadelphia. "I was so in shock, I knew that I would always see her, that this moment would come, but how can you prepare for that?"

Rebekah had been missing since Feb. 24, 1996, when she was kidnapped at age 2 at 6:20 a.m. from her Tempe home in the 1700 block of East Don Carlos, near University and McClintock drives, police said.

The girl and her mother had headed out of their apartment when the phone rang and Helen went to answer it, while Rebekah continued out into the parking lot, police said. During a door-to-door search, Helen received a phone call from Moran, who reportedly told her he had taken their daughter. The two were never married.

Phoenix FBI agents collected information from family members and tips responding to publicity by media outlets, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and America's Most Wanted.

Agents arrested Moran, a computer technician on Sunday without incident at his workplace in Roanoke, Va., after receiving a tip from a woman who recognized him from a flier about the kidnapping, FBI officials said.

Moran had been commuting there from Donalds, S.C., where he and his daughter lived, said Deborah McArley, a Phoenix FBI office spokeswoman.

"Any capture is great . . . we're always thrilled. Some people tend to give up hope, but this case really shows that there's a reason why we put out publicity on stories," said Steve Katz, supervising producer of the television program.

Moran, who had served two years in prison in 1988 in Arizona, had been commuting to a job six months with the assumed name Jonathan Richardson, according to Virginia media.

Rebekah had been living with Moran and Lillian Jean Kitts, 52, who apparently met in Arizona, authorities said. Their relationship was not known.

Moran faces charges of custodial interference in Arizona and federal charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

When FBI agents arrested him, Moran refused to give any information on Rebekah's whereabouts, McArley said.

Helen Braun, who has no other children, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that she had moved from Tempe in 2001, but always kept in touch with the FBI.

Helen Braun said she is excited to see her daughter but doesn't know what to expect.

"I'm very guarded because I know that her little world has been completely blown apart," Braun said. "Emotionally she's very shaken. I'm not sure what her reaction would be to see me."

She said she is planning a reunion as soon as she can and is trying to round up the money to pick up her daughter.

The girl is now in protective custody, and Moran will be extradited to Tempe, McArley said.


Video: http://us.video.aol.com/video.index....pmmsid=1666890

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...623?hub=Canada

Van. woman missing since 1991 turns up in Sask.

Updated Fri. Jun. 23 2006 11:23 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff

The grown children of a woman once presumed missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside were reunited with their mother in Saskatchewan on Friday, 15 years after she first disappeared.

The family of Mary Florence Lands feared the worst when she went missing in 1991 after she fell on hard times and lost custody of her three children.

"I remember when we were in a foster home, we ran away and we went to go see her and she told us ... we weren't allowed to see her," her son Michael Lands told CTV Vancouver before he reunited with his mother.

"That was about the last memory we have of her," he said.

But from the moment her three children, all in their early 20s, arrived in Saskatchewan, any hard feelings seemed to evaporate.

"You look so handsome," a tearful Mary Florence said as she embraced her son Michael.

In October 2004, she was one of eight women added to the Missing Women's Joint Task Force list, which includes the 26 women that former Port Coquitlam pig farmer Robert Pickton is accused of killing.

"I never thought I'd hear from her again, seriously, I honestly thought that she was gone," her sister Marie Lands said Thursday.

"It was like torture not knowing where she was, nobody knew, nobody knew anything, where she went, when she left," Marie said.

Marie's common-law husband Brian Rafferty was shocked when he heard Mary Florence had ended several years of silence with a note posted on a Vancouver community centre bulletin board asking for her family to contact her.

"My first impression is ... somebody's playing a terrible mean joke here ... this isn't even funny," he said.

Mary Florence said she had been trying for years to contact her children.

She said they knew she had volunteered at the community centre "and that's why I kept leaving messages there since they were 18," she said.

She and her sister reconnected just a few weeks after Marie Lands received a letter from the Crime Victim Assistance Program and was granted the maximum $5,000 for pain and suffering related to her sister's supposed death.

Mary Florence told her sister she travelled to Alberta after she left British Columbia, and is now starting a new life on a farm in Cochin, Saskatchewan.

"Any heartache that I ever had, it's all gone, it's been lifted. She's alive and she's well," said Marie.

Still, the family is angry that the police weren't able to resolve her disappearance as she hadn't changed her name or her social insurance number.

"There's a whole bunch of places they could have checked, and they didn't check any of them," Rafferty said.

The discovery of Lands was made two weeks after news that police removed another name from the list.

Linda Grant, originally from Port Moody, B.C. learned she was on the list when she was searching the Internet for information on Pickton earlier this month.

She said she didn't know her family had reported her missing when she left British Columbia's Lower Mainland in 1983 and settled in the U.S.

The removal of Lands' name reduces the list to 66.

http://www.paradisepost.com/localnews/ci_4054776

Missing man found phones home to mom

By Trevor Warner - Assistant Managing Editor

Cyndi Cox is about as happy as a mom can be.

Two and a half years ago, her son Charles Debes disappeared. The family didn't know what happened to him, and the few vague clues they had led nowhere.

But on Wednesday, Cox got a call from Florida. It was her son. He was safe and sound, living in Pensacola.

"He said he was in the Internet, and he saw the Web site for Racing for the Missing and saw his picture on there," Cox said. "He said another one of his friends was on the Internet and came across his picture. He told my son, You need to call home.'"

On July 3, Jim Pettit II, a NASCAR driver, raced his car at the Altamont Motorsports Park with a picture of Debes decaled on the hood.

In a previous interview, Cox said her son's picture was chosen for the Race for the Missing because it reproduced well from the Internet site.

Cox said she talked to Pettit about locating her son.

"It is important to the NASCAR people," she said. "I talked to him and he was on cloud nine. He said, This is so awesome. We've been doing Race for the Missing for two years, and this is the first time anyone's been found.' It just goes to show that it just takes one eye to give people the hope and faith that they can find their loved ones."

Go to http://www.racing-west.com/news/stor...702/index.html to see NASCAR's article on Debes.

Cox said her son went to Florida to go to nursing school he had worked at a hospital in the Sacramento area before he disappeared but has since taken up house painting.

"He was there when (Hurricane) Katrina hit," she said. "They weren't hit hard, but there was a lot of wind and rain, and after everything, a lot of houses needed to be repainted."

She said the demand for painting has been keeping Debes busy enough that he is working toward buying his own painting business.

"He's always been a workaholic," she said. "He's said he's making $2,000 a week, easy."

According to Cox, Debes told her he didn't call for so long because he wanted to get make something of himself that would make everybody proud first.

"He said, I think about you every day, I talk about you, but I wanted to make something of myself before I contacted anyone, so you'd be proud of me,'" Cox said. "I said, What do you mean? We're always proud of you.'"

Cox said Debes told her he didn't realize his family was all wrapped up in a search for him.

But now that they found him, Cox has been calling everyone she knows.

"We've just been bouncing off the walls since he called," she said.

7/15/06

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...union0725.html

Detective's extra effort pays off
Woman united with daughter who disappeared 19 years ago

John Faherty
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 25, 2006 12:00 AM

Every day a police officer comes into contact with the worst parts of society.

Violent people, desperate people, hot people.

People who smell bad, people who have been hurt, people who don't like cops.

And Detective Chris Metelski sees the worst of the worst. In her 25 years with the Phoenix Police Department she has dealt with missing persons, which are heart wrenching, and she works in crimes against children, which are worse.

But every once in a while, a case comes along that makes it all worthwhile.

First some history.

In April of 1987 10-month old Maria Rodriguez was abducted and taken to Mexico. The baby's father, Frank Fernandez, was the only suspect.

Sylvia Rodriguez, Maria's mother, said he stole her at gunpoint.

Police worked the case, but nothing came of it.

Nobody up here ever saw Maria or her father again and the sad story of Maria Rodriguez became a cold case.

In 1997, 10 years after the abduction, Metelski picked the case back up.

The first person she called was Sylvia Rodriquez. She told the mother that the police were going to keep working the case.

"He stole this child away from Sylvia," Metelski said. "Her first words. The first time she went to school. She missed all of that."

When Metelski started working the case, she did so with her eyes wide open.

"You know that you may not solve a case like this. You know that there may not be a happy ending."

In fact, several times Metelski had to check into dead children who may have been the missing girl. None was Maria.

Over the years, the person who kept Metelski going was Sylvia Rodriguez.

"It was such an honor to work with Sylvia," Metelski said Monday afternoon. "How can you ignore the bravery of this woman, this mother?"

After realizing there was not much more to do on this end, Metelski decided the best course of action was to generate media interest in the story in Mexico and Central America.

Metelski had to cast a wide net because there was no way of knowing where she might find the girl or her father.

It was not easy, and it took a long time, but finally things started happening. A national television show ran the story. Newspapers picked it up. And then the right person saw the story. That person was Maria Rodriguez.

The young woman was raised by relatives, not her father. Her name had been changed. But Maria started asking questions.

Eventually, the young woman, now 20, called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Phone calls were made, DNA tests were conducted, and the truth was established.

Metelski remembers the first phone call she got when Sylvia had finally spoken with her daughter in March.

"She called me at 12:40 in the morning. The excitement in her voice on that cellphone call was amazing. I could feel her jumping around the room."

At that point, after all that work and all those years, did she still feel like a police officer talking to a crime victim?

"I was talking to a friend. I was talking to Sylvia. I am always going to be a cop, and Sylvia is always going to be a crime victim. But that night. On that phone call, I was talking to a friend."

Frank Fernandez remains on the loose, a fact Metelski calls frustrating.

As for Maria and Sylvia, it is impossible to know what will happen next.

Maria did not know she is an American citizen with a brother and sister living in the Valley.

She did not know about her own mother.

She grew up in Mexico. That is her country. She has a husband and a child of her own. Her life is about two hours south of Mexico City.

Sylvia and Maria will certainly have a relationship. In fact Sylvia is in Mexico right now visiting her.

"I just want them both to be happy," Metelski said. "Losing a child is such a burden. It is the most hateful thing. And now it's over."

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...DATE/607270435

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Man gets 7 months in abduction of daughter 30 years ago

PONTIAC -- A man who authorities say abducted his 2-year-old daughter three decades ago and led her to believe that her mother was killed in a traffic crash was sentenced Thursday to seven months in jail.

Eric Douglas Nielsen, 54, pleaded no contest earlier this month to a parental kidnapping charge and faced up to a year behind bars. A no contest plea in Michigan is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.

Nielsen was given credit for 43 days served and ordered to pay about $5,280 in restitution plus extradition costs, according to the office of Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Wendy L. Potts, who handed down the sentence.

Nielsen's lawyer had said the plea was made in the best interest of the family and was designed to help end the 30-year-old ordeal.

Nielsen, who had been living under an alias, was extradited from Arizona, where he was imprisoned on an unrelated assault charge.

Sheriff's deputies say Nielsen picked up Genevieve Rachel Nielsen -- who is now 32 -- at his estranged wife's Oakland County home May 8, 1976. It was to be only an overnight visit, but they never returned.

His daughter, who was raised under another name, was found in May by Michigan authorities.

Laura Gooder, Genevieve's mother, learned that month that her daughter was alive and living in the Phoenix area. Gooder now lives in Frederic, north of Grayling. Gooder remarried after Genevieve's disappearance and she has three sons.

They can run but they can't hide forever thanks to observant people.

http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/15224475.htm

Posted on Tue, Aug. 08, 2006

Mother on run with daughter apprehended in Canada after 3 years

Associated Press

NORRISTOWN, Pa. - A woman who has been on the run for three years with her daughter, in defiance of a custody order, has been found in Canada, authorities said.

Claudia Librett, 51, and her 6-year-old daughter, Rachel, had been missing since January 2003. They disappeared a day after a judge granted Librett's husband, Michael Marran, joint custody of Rachel, then 3.

The mother and daughter were picked up late Saturday night in Ontario, near Niagara Falls, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor told a news conference Monday.

Claudia Librett was being held by Canada immigration officials, and a hearing was scheduled before immigration officials Tuesday, Castor said.

The prosecutor said the child was in the custody of Canadian authorities. "I want the child reunited with her father and Claudia Librett in custody," Castor said. He said she faces charges of kidnapping, interfering with child custody, and concealing the whereabouts of a child.

An initial investigation indicated the mother and daughter had been living in a condominium complex in Niagara On The Lake for about two years.

A woman who had talked to Librett became suspicious, and checked out the Web site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. When she found photos of Librett and her daughter, she called the organization, Castor said.

In late 2004, the father, Michael Marran, put up a $25,000 reward hoping that it would lead to information about their whereabouts.

Marran, of Long Island, N.Y., last saw daughter Rachel in October 2002. Librett had alleged during custody litigation that he had sexually abused the child. Investigators concluded the allegations were unfounded.

A miracle in Missouri: Missing boys found alive

By Associated Press
Saturday, January 13, 2007

BEAUFORT, Mo. - BEAUFORT, Mo.- Two boys kidnapped four years apart and found in the same suburban St. Louis apartment smiled shyly but said nothing to media at two hug-filled news conferences Saturday, a day after they were rescued.

The boys' parents clung to them and focused on their joy at the shocking outcome, saying little about the 41-year-old man charged in the case or how the teens were treated.

The boys - 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, abducted more than four years ago, and 13-year-old Ben Ownby, taken after getting off his school bus Monday afternoon - smiled shyly and appeared at ease.

"I still feel like I'm in a dream, only this time it's a good dream, not the nightmare I've had four-and-a-half years," Hornbeck's mother, Pam Akers, said Saturday at an elementary school adorned with balloons and welcome-home signs.

Hornbeck's stepfather, Craig Akers, said he and his wife were in disbelief when they were reunited with the boy.

"There was that split second of shock," he said. "Once I saw the face, I said, 'Oh my God, that's my son."'

Hornbeck smiled often, his mother's arm draped around him, and seemed at ease. He was much bigger than pictures of the missing 11-year-old, his hair darker and longer.

Hornbeck and Ownby disappeared 4 years and 40 miles apart, though both were last seen in towns within 60 miles of St. Louis.

A routine search warrant led police to investigate the Kirkwood, Mo., apartment of Michael Devlin, an Imo's Pizza manager and part-time funeral home worker. He was charged with first-degree kidnapping and bail was set at $1 million.

Ownby grinned broadly as his mother recalled that soon after his return home, Ben immediately went to the computer to play video games.

"We're just ecstatic," Doris Ownby said. "Don't want to let him go out of our sight."

Authorities declined to offer further details about Devlin. FBI Special Agent Roland Corvington said federal charges were possible.

The key to finding the boys was a beat-up white pickup truck spotted by a schoolmate of Ownby's who got off the bus at the same time. The friend saw the pickup speeding away about the time Ownby vanished from the gravel road near his home.

On Thursday night, Kirkwood city police officers saw a white truck matching the description. They traced the owner, contacted the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, then searched Devlin's home Friday and found the boys.

There were no details about what police found inside the apartment or how or why the boys might have been detained. Franklin County Prosecutor Robert Parks said more charges are likely.

In Kirkwood, one of Devlin's neighbors, Rick Butler, 43, said FBI agents came to his door Thursday night and showed him a picture of Ben.

He said he had not seen the boy but had seen another boy he believes was Hornbeck. He said he saw no evidence that the boy was scared or trying to get away. He even saw Devlin and the teen pitch a tent in the courtyard.
BostonHerald.com - Around the Nation: A miracle in Missouri: Missing boys found alive

Case reminds House Springs mother of her ordeal

By Elizabethe Holland
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
01/14/2007

The tears are inevitable.

Even though after three dreadful years, Julie Coleman was reunited with her young daughter, news of anyone else going through her nightmare brings back "yet again" the pain, the uncertainty, the tears.

"I've been there," said Coleman, of House Springs, whose daughter, Taylor Hill, was abducted at age 13 months by the girl's father and found in New Zealand in June 2005, nearly three years to the day she went missing. "My first thoughts are always with the parents because I know what I went through and I know how difficult it was."

Even with a happy ending, the pain is hard to shed, Coleman said. Parents who have been through it can never leave it behind.

"They'll never get over that," she said. "Anytime a little kid is missing, they'll jump back to it. It's like your heart is right there."

The tears came most recently when Coleman was watching a television report about William "Ben" Ownby, the 13-year-old Beaufort boy who was found Friday in a Kirkwood apartment with Shawn Hornbeck, a 15-year-old Richwoods boy who had been missing more than four years.

In the report, broadcast before the boys were found, the Ownbys were shown stuffing fliers about their missing son into rain-proof packaging. It triggered a swell of emotion for Coleman.

"You're doing everything you can do," she explained, "even making sure that if it rained, somebody would still be able to see his picture."

The families share the pain, and the happy ending. But Taylor's mother and the two boys' families also share something else.

"They had a miracle, too," Coleman said. "They have their angels, just like I have mine."

For the boys' families, those angels were the people who saw and then found the truck believed to have carried Ben away, Coleman said. For her, it was a stranger by the name of Jeffrey A. Williams from Southern Illinois whose improbable run-in with Taylor's father in a pool hall in the Philippines cracked the case and brought Taylor home.

Coleman's ex-husband, Arlen Dean Hill II, pleaded guilty in June to eight federal charges, including aggravated identity theft, passport-related charges and international parental kidnapping. He was sentenced in August to almost four years in prison.

Since Taylor's return, Coleman has sought counseling for her daughter, who is now 5, but she and her husband don't push Taylor for details of what happened during those three years. If Taylor wants to talk about it, they listen and explore her feelings, Coleman said.
STLtoday - News - St. Louis City / County

How a little attention paid off in a big way for Ben

By Sylvester Brown Jr.
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
01/15/2007

The words "Ben is gone" invaded my thoughts Tuesday night as I talked to people in Beaufort about Ben Ownby, 13, one of their own, missing since Monday afternoon. A couple of times I caught myself asking about the boy in the past tense:

Did you know Ben? Was he a member of a Boy Scout troop? We had few facts: A teenage kid saw a white, rusted pickup, might have been a Nissan, speeding away from the direction Ben had last been seen. An Amber Alert wasn't issued until the following morning. By the time I rolled into town Tuesday night, Beaufort townsfolk and police had combed the vicinity by car, foot and on horseback. The boy hadn't been found.

Too much time had passed, I feared. The kidnapper would surely be hundreds of miles from Beaufort. "Ben is gone," the pessimist inside me repeated.

I can admit those thoughts now because the story has a happy ending. Not only was Ben found Friday in a Kirkwood apartment, so was Shawn Hornbeck, 15, the Washington County boy missing since Oct. 6 2002.

The discovery and the arrest of Michael J. Devlin, 41, of Kirkwood, have been described as the "Missouri Miracle." It is indeed. But perhaps another word describes the forces that led to these cases' unbelievable conclusion: simplicity.

I fought this word's seemingly insulting connotation until I looked it up: "Lack of ostentation or pretension: modesty, plainness, unassuming … "

Not to take anything away from law enforcement, the media or caring citizens, but basic, old-fashioned community action turned these cases around.

Mitchell Hults, 15, the unpretentious Beaufort lad who had gotten off the school bus with Ben Monday, took the time to note with a keen eye a white pickup speeding away from where he last saw Ben.

Friday night, a TV news person asked Hults how sure he was about the details he'd given authorities about the truck.

"One hundred percent," the jubilant youth simply answered.

The people I met in Beaufort didn't need an Amber Alert to mobilize. Keith Fritzmeyer, owner of Beaufort Auto, told me that he and a few friends hit the roads searching, an hour after Ben's parents realized their son was missing. Another man, Josh Dierberg, 21, got a call from his mother while traveling back to Beaufort from work, asking him to search the highway for a white truck. By the time I arrived, "Missing" fliers were everywhere and searchers were still putting them in strangers' hands.

Business as usual had stopped in Beaufort. I doubt that would happen in St. Louis or any other major metropolis. In our hurly-burly, get-up-and-go, grab-a-cup-of-Joe, never-move-too-slow world, how often do we note or act on the details — a suspicious car on our block, a child's face on a milk carton, a neighbor or co-worker who doesn't seem quite right?

The bizarre twist to this made-for-movie story is that of an Imo's Pizza employee who lived in a Kirkwood apartment complex with a boy missing for more than four years. Reportedly, Devlin's family members had no idea he lived with Shawn Hornbeck. No one living in the complex recognized the missing youth. Some of Devlin's co-workers, who knew he drove a white Nissan pickup, joked about the truck, yet made no connections.

No finger-pointing here. Who knew that children stolen from rural Missouri could be hiding in plain sight in suburban St. Louis?

Geoffrey Hadler, an unassuming resident in the Kirkwood complex, noticed the white truck. I saw him on TV, recalling how he approached Kirkwood police who came to the complex to serve a warrant on another tenant.

"I was like … does this not look like that white truck that's been on the news?" Hadler said. "Police kinda looked at it, and said, 'Yeah, it does.'"

Comments, published here, by Kirkwood resident Stephany Smith about her quiet, "middle class" neighborhood speaks to society today: "I think that puts blinders on our eyes sometimes."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...F?OpenDocument

Missing Moorhead teen shows up 4 years after disappearance

By The Associated Press

MOORHEAD, Minn. - A missing Moorhead teen has been found alive and well in Texas, four years after her disappearance.

Police said Amber Akerley initially was afraid to call her mother for fear she'd get in trouble for running away.

The family eventually changed their number, and when Amber did try to reach them, she couldn't find them.

Amber is now 19 and has a child. Police Detective Mike Detloff said she's been in contact with her family and plans to move back to Moorhead this summer.
Winona Daily News - 6.0

More good news this week...

Texas Girl Returns Home, Two Years After She Was Kidnapped

(January 10, 2007) - A young Houston girl is back home with her mother, two years after she was kidnapped.

According to court records, Sabrina Gonzales, 8, was kidnapped by her former boyfriend's mother who spent two years on the run, moving from house to house.

The girl, the records show, was forced to hide in bathrooms when people came to visit.

She was allegedly forced to care for the woman, and to answer to "Dora" or "Britney."

Police found the girl after raiding a house on Saturday and arresting her alleged abductor.
KWTX | Texas Girl Returns Home, Two Years After She Was Kidnapped

Madison Police Recover Girl Missing Since 2003
Police: Mother Turned Herself In

POSTED: 5:48 pm CST February 9, 2007

MADISON, Wis. -- Madison police solved a case involving a girl who was reported missing in 2003.

In August 2003, an 8-year-old girl was reported missing after she didn't return from playing with a friend.

Police said an investigation determined that the girl was abducted by her mother who had recently lost custody of the child and taken her to live in Mexico.

"This past week, her mom came back with her now 11-year-old daughter to Madison, and the mother reported herself to jail. Arrangements were made to have the child and father reunited and they are and they're living outside Madison," said Mike Hanson, public information officer for the Madison Police Department.

Chrystal Figueroa, 30, is being held in the Dane County Jail on federal and county warrants.
Madison Police Recover Girl Missing Since 2003 - News

Long-lost mom found by school

February 17,2007
Michael Barnett
Monitor Staff Writer

McALLEN  -  An 18-year-old woman has been reunited with her mother nearly 16 years after being reported missing.

The reunion came after Cynthia Sauceda tried to enroll in a McAllen high school.

She had lived in Mexico with her father since the age of 2, but had recently moved to McAllen to live with her paternal grandmother, school district officials said.

On Thursday, Sauceda told McAllen school enrollment workers that her father had changed her name to Cynthia Jasmine Gomez Herrera when they moved from Texas to Mexico.

"That raised a red flag with our people," said Cris Esquivel, police chief for the McAllen school district.

Sure enough, when officials entered Sauceda's real name and date of birth into the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database, they found a flyer with a photo of a 2-year-old who went missing from Houston on Sept. 5, 1991.

Esquivel said Houston police had already closed its investigation into Sauceda's whereabouts, so it's unclear if anyone will be charged with a crime in connection with her move to Mexico. Police in Houston could not be reached for comment Friday.

Both parents are Mexican citizens, but their daughter was born in Houston, said McAllen schools spokesman Mark May.

Cynthia knew she had been reported missing and has now been reunited with her mother, who came to McAllen.

"Now that the mother has located her, she may want to take her to Houston," Esquivel said.
The Monitor - McAllen, Texas

Missing Girl Found

Friday , February 16, 2007 Posted: 10:42 PM

McAllen - A Houston woman has been reunited with her daughter after 16 years.

Cynthia Marie Sauceda was allegedly abducted by her father when she was just 2 years old.

The two had been living in Hidalgo, Mexico, until the girl decided she wanted to come to the United States to attend school.

When Sauceda's grandmother tried to register her, a background check turned up she had been missing.

Her mother, Marisela Alvarado, drove all the way from Houston, Thursday night after hearing that her daughter had been found safe.

Alvarado says the two have met, and will spend more time together as they get to know one another, but it will take time to build a relationship.

A brave 6 year old saves her 2 year old brother and herself from a man man who took off with them in the car, after the mother unsuccessfully tried to fight him off.


The following is from nbc6.net.

6-Year-Old Helps Save Brother From Carjacker

POSTED: 12:56 pm EST March 1, 2007
UPDATED: 5:56 pm EST March 1, 2007

MIAMI -- A man may have gotten away with Atheysha Diaz's car, but he didn't take her children, thanks to a brave 6-year-old girl.

Diaz said she had just put her two children, 6-year-old Briana and 2-year-old Jose, into the back seat of her Acura on Thursday morning when a man appeared in her driveway and tried to get in the driver's seat of the car.

... skipping...

"I was trying to stop the car and he didn't let me. That's why I smacked him on the head with my book," the 6-year-old said. "I was trying to fight him because he was bad and he wanted to steal the car because he wanted a car to steal. That's why it's rude."

Please click on the following link for the full story.

6-Year-Old Helps Save Brother From Carjacker - Local News

Missing Girl Found in Mississippi

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2007 - 11:44 PM

A Burlington girl missing more than a year has been found in northern Mississippi in a run-down mobile home with her mother.

Authorities say the mother is accused of kidnapping the child and forcing her to use a fake name.

9-year-old Trashanda Waytes disappeared in November 2005, one month after a judge awarded her father custody of the child.

Authorities say they used a tip to track the girl to Byhalia, Mississippi, Tuesday night.

Her father Ron Waytes was traveling today to Mississippi to bring his daughter home, but authorities say he should prepare himself.

David Jolley, a U.S. Marshal, says the girl was going by a different name and denied she was taken from Iowa.

He says the mother, Charlotte Bassett, apparently forced her to use a fake name and the girl ended up believing her new identity.

Bassett is being held in custody without bond until she's returned to Iowa.

She is charged in Burlington with felony kidnapping and violations of a custodial child custody order.
Newschannel 12 | News - Missing Girl Found in Mississippi

Officials Find 9-Year-Old Iowa Girl Missing Since 2005 Living Under False Name Created by Mother

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa - A Burlington girl missing more than a year has been found in northern Mississippi in a run-down mobile home with her mother, who is accused of kidnapping the child and forcing her to use a fake name, authorities said.

Trashanda Waytes, 9, disappeared in November 2005, one month after a judge awarded her father custody of the child. Authorities said they used a tip to track the girl to Byhalia, Miss., on Tuesday night, and her father was traveling Wednesday to Mississippi to bring his daughter home.

Ron Waytes may be in for quite a shock when the two are reunited.

"She denied she was Trashanda Waytes," said David Jolley, a U.S. Marshal based in Memphis, Tenn. "She denied to officers she was the missing girl from Iowa the whole time, until her mother finally fessed up. ... Apparently the mother pressed it upon her that she follow this story - that the child go by the fake name. That's who she thought she was."

Trashanda was 8 years old when she was taken from her father. Ron Waytes was not immediately available for comment Wednesday afternoon.

U.S. Marshals and other law enforcement agencies tracked the girl to the mobile home, and her mother Charlotte Bassett was arrested at a nearby residence. Jolley said Bassett was also living under a fake name.
FOXNews.com - Officials Find 9-Year-Old Iowa Girl Missing Since 2005 Living Under False Name Created by Mother - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News