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Kidnapped Kid Turns Up 18 Years Later
She was eleven when she disappeared, and her family hasn’t seen their little girl in eighteen years – until now.
A girl last seen eighteen years ago when she left her California home to catch the school bus has reportedly popped up, now twenty-nine and hoping to reconnect with the family who lost her.
The story of Jaycee Dugard is especially unbelievable in the wake of the semi-scandal a few months ago when a New York man convinced himself that he was the long-lost son of a Michigan family. The man, Stephen Barnes, submitted to DNA testing and found out he had never been kidnapped – he was truly his “real” parents’ child. But it opened up old wounds for a family who has spent some fifty years waiting for the return of their missing child . . . and made the media revisit other old cases and the distinct lack of news for them.
Unfortunately, when a child goes missing for a lengthy period of time, they’ve found they just never come back.
Except Dugard. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the girl (well, woman – she hasn’t been a girl in years) walked into the police department in Concord, Calif. and told them who she was.
She’d last been seen on June 10, 1991, when a gray two-tone sedan made a U-turn on her street as she was walking out to meet an early morning bus to school. A man and woman inside the sedan grabbed the girl while her stepfather watched horrified from inside their house. The sedan took off, and her stepfather grabbed a bicycle, attempting to give chase.
Over the years, police have interviewed a number of suspects – including a couple currently on death row for the rape and murder of another girl and the couple responsible for the kidnapping of one of the rare recovered kidnapees, Elizabeth Smart. There are now two people in custody, although police have not released any names.
Dugard’s mother and stepfather are obviously kvelling, telling reporters they’re on their way to meet with the woman who claims to be their daughter. They’ve already spoken with her on the phone, a call facilitated by the FBI.
It may be time to change the last sentence on the report on Jaycee Dugard kept up by the Charley Project, an information clearinghouse for cold case files on missing kids. It reads “Jaycee Dugard remains missing.”
Maybe not.
UPDATE: Here’s what Jaycee has been through in the intervening years.
More on missing kids:
Fearmonger Alert: Pre-Register Your Kid for an Abduction
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5 Comments
[...] sort of wish it had stayed that way. Jaycee Lee Dugard, the little girl who resurfaced as a full grown woman of twenty-nine yesterday in California has apparently been through unspeakable horrors – including becoming a mother to two [...]
UPDATE: Where Has Jaycee Lee Dugard Been for 18 Years? | Strollerderby commented on Aug 28 09 at 10:18 amManjari commented on Aug 28 09 at 7:40 amWhat a story! It’s great that she’s been found.
It’s so disturbing, though, that a registered sex offender can live so freely as to have a secret compound in the backyard to hold prisoners, rape them, and abuse the resulting children. If authorities had been checking on him regularly, how did he get away with that?
Bluster commented on Aug 28 09 at 8:24 amI just read an article this morning – the 28th – that said she had two children by the kidnapper, who is not the convicted child molester. There is, apparently, more unfolding news to make this story more weird than it seemed early on.
Amelie Griffiths commented on Jul 12 10 at 11:36 amCold Case looks like CSI just like anyother detective tv series`,’
nikki meier commented on Jul 11 11 at 1:30 pmwow what kind of monster would do that to a adorable little girl
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