For the Lost Blog

I just received this notice from NCMEC.

Dear Poster Partner:

It is with great sadness and deep regret that we notify you that Duncan & Jack Connolly missing from Bloomington, IL, has been located deceased. Please discontinue dissemination of this poster.

Please remove and discard any posters on this case that you have placed in public view.

We greatly appreciate your part in our efforts to reunite families and look forward to your continued support.

Thank you for your support.

A family abduction. Another set of dead kids.

But it’s okay. They were with a parent.

NCMEC has recently changed the wording on their family abduction cases, from “abducted by non-custodial (relative)” to “allegedly abducted by (relative).” If it said “in the company of non-custodial (relative)” it now has removed the non-custodial bit. It’s a change I can understand. Defenders of parental abductors can get vehement, and I suspect this was related to lawsuit threats.

Doesn’t mean I like it, however. I don’t. I will continue to use “non-custodial” on the For the Lost site. If I find out there was no abduction, I’ll say that. However, I think that wording NCMEC has now takes away from the cases, as ninety-nine percent of the time there is no doubt whatsoever an abduction by a parent occured.

Go ahead, try to sue me for it. When your lawsuit gets dismissed (when, not if) I will countersue and you will be sorry. You have been warned.

Police say woman used different names, Social Security numbers

A Seacoast business owner has been arrested and charged with being on the run from crimes she allegedly committed in Arizona 12 years ago.

Police said Danielle Bascom, 50, was difficult to track down because she uses six aliases, three birth dates and four Social Security numbers. Investigators said she is also known as Paula and sometimes uses the last names Bruno, Bryce and McClain.

This is the only article I could find about Darlene Tolbert, and it’s about her mother and not her. It mentions the case was dropped, but nothing about where her daughter is now. I will keep looking but doubt I will ever find more information.

Recently there were two recoveries in family abduction cases not on the For the Lost site, those of Anna and Hopi Gray, twins abducted by their mother from Arkansas, and Karen, Laura, and Leigh Matusiewicz, abducted by their father and grandmother from Delaware. In both articles I have provided links to, there are comments on them. In both cases, a commentator insinuates that the parent must have had a good reason for running off. But in the Matusiewicz article, those people are far outnumbered by the ones who say the dad is scum and should be punished for his crime. I agree with the majority of commentators there. Their father was actually telling people that the girls’ mother committed suicide, and was not working where they were found in Nicaragua. I’m grateful they were found before the girls could fully grasp the implications of a death by suicide – suicide by a parent is known to be detrimental to the child, and if years passed and their mother who “killed herself” suddenly reappeared alive the psychological effects would be devastating.

And in the Gray article? Well, you probably have already guessed that most people say she must have run off for a good reason. The kids were found living in a van, filthy, and couldn’t tell the police when they had last eaten. While those conditions are fairly bad, I sadly accept them as one of those things that are all too common in these cases. But several of the commentators say, essentially, “I know it looks bad, but she might have had a good reason to do so…” With the circumstances they were found in, one might think that it was obvious they were not being protected from anything. And it’s still assumed. Because the abductor has two X chromosomes.

Am I one of the few who finds this deeply disturbing?

Jahi Turner has just gotten an age-progression. After seven years. That’s too long. I’m glad to see it, but he should have had one five years ago, and the one we have now should be an updated one.

I’m aware this does disqualify him for Jahi’s Pages, but as he is our inspiration for that section, he will remain up. I have made some changes and added the age-progression, however.

Francisco Javier Andrade Vega is the name of an eleven year old boy that was abducted from Baja California in 2000 by a convicted child molester. He remained missing until this year, when he was found safe in Chicago. He had no identity papers when picked up by police, but he gave them his name and he was found in the FBI’s database of cases.

Let me repeat this. He was found safe. After nine years. Missing from a non-family abduction. And there has been almost no press about this. The articles I have found that gave the above details are Mexican papers; I can find no English sources. If I didn’t know Spanish those articles would be unaccessable. And I live in Chicago. And I have heard nothing.

I rarely go on tangents about missing children publicity. I have accepted that there is a heirarchy, and that most of the cases I get involved with – family abductions, people who just vanish, older non-family abductions – are not ones that burn up the pages. And not all of it is based on race. However, in this case I can make no other conclusion but being based on race. He was abducted for nine years, and it would have been easy for his abductor to kill him once he stopped being useful. He would then have become one of the many unidentified individuals that litter the police records. But none of this happened. Him being found safe is as close to a miracle as was Shawn Hornbeck’s case.

So, I ask, why haven’t you heard of him? Why hasn’t almost anyone?