For the Lost Blog

The untold tale of family abductions: Three girls missing, an international hunt

Christine Belford agreed to let her ex-husband take their three daughters to Disney World for a two-week vacation. In August 2007, the Delaware mother kissed her little blond girls goodbye.

Those two weeks were unsettling for Belford, then 34. The couple went through a bitter divorce in 2006 which resulted in joint custody of the children. Belford said when the girls were with their dad, they were always difficult to reach.

Two days into the trip, Belford connected by cell phone with her oldest daughter, Laura, then 5. Already homesick, chubby-faced Laura cried as her father checked them into a hotel room.

“I want to come home,” Laura pleaded with her mother.

But Laura and her sisters wouldn’t return to their Delaware home for 19 months.

Of course, to anyone who follows this blog, tales like this are hardly untold: they’re dealt with on an almost daily basis. The fact her kids lost weight and didn’t get medical treatment is also something I am no longer shocked by. The article mentions he’s facing thirty years in prison, but he’s also facing charges of bank fraud in addition to international parental kidnapping. He has thankfully pleaded guilty. And the eldest daughter is still dealing with issues from being told her mother was dead, which I predicted. My hopes for this bringing the problem of family abduction to the greater public is still there, but my realism tells me there will probably never be such a case.

Child abducted to China by father

In New York, he had been an absent father and abusive husband who worked erratically at makeshift jobs. But his calls and e-mail messages from China, where he had gone in the fall of 2007 to teach English, promised his estranged wife that everything had changed. Their little girl deserved the chance to grow up in a two-parent family, he told her, and he sent them airline tickets to join him.

The day after they arrived in Beijing in January of this year, said the wife, Olivia Karolys, the husband, Rodrigo Karolys, took them shopping in a mall far from their hotel, and told her to get her hair done. She watched his reflection in the salon mirror as he held Lenora, then 2 ½.

Then suddenly they were gone.

This is a very long article, but worth reading. I’m glad to see Lenora back home from a place that typically does not extradite. I know of a few cases where children are abducted to China, and perhaps this is a good omen. (I’ll say the abductor keeping an online journal where he bragged about such things was an act of extreme stupidity, however.) Someone on a forum I belong to stated after reading this story it was all done because the dad had kidnapped the child. The implication, of course, is that is the only situation where the law will act. To an extent this is true. I have not seen as many cases where mom reports the kids abducted and the police claim to have their hands tied as is the case where the genders are reversed. Also, as I have said before, people tend to assume mom abducted for a good reason. In both circumstances, however, there are many cases where law enforcement acts right away and starts to look for the child and kidnapper. The biggest problem is the minimization of the effects of parental kidnapping. This effects law enforcement and the public equally. I hope that this article, along with high profile cases that are currently in the news, can bring some desperately needed light to the issue.

The missing infant Shannon Dedrick, whom I wrote about before due to her bizarre connection to the disappearance of Paul Baker, has been found safe. She was apparently under the bed of Paul’s stepmother (Susan Baker), in a box. The stepmother is being charged along with the mother of Shannon. I’m still not sure the mother was fully involved – both of Shannon’s parents are developmentally disabled, and it’s possible that the mother was hoodwinked in some way. After all, kidnapping is a far more serious charge than taking an abandonded baby or buying an infant.

I hope that there is some new effort to locate the remains of Paul with this new publicity.

I posted the link to the article about the recovery of John Calhoun before, but didn’t read the comments until later.

And was stunned by this comment.

The FACTS are the mom & son did not have to come back. They did and that tells me there is more to this story. The article alone reads a mother was forced to relocate to 2 countries and cultures to keep her son safe. She is a great mom until the sperm side can prove her guilt.

Let me get this straight. The mom’s wanted. She turns herself in, and the dad is assumed to be the bad guy until shown otherwise? I know that when a mom abducts her kids, people will defend her more than a dad who abducts, but the outrageousness of this comment still stuns me.

The amount of times I have now read a comment on the news stories devoted to the recovery of Richard Chekevdia that says “she must have had a very good reason” baffles me. She kept her child inside for two years. In a tiny room. No one would be defending a male abductor. Is it really so ingrained in people that mothers always do best for their children that they will excuse anything they do? And are there more than a handful of kidnapping cases where mom doesn’t say she did it to protect her kid from their evil abusive father?

I suspect the answer is “no.”

I have just received word Richard Chekevdia has been found safe. According to this article, he has spent the past two years in a hidden four by twelve room. To give you an idea how small that is, it’s only slightly larger than a two person Smart car. He was not allowed to go outside. I’m used to bad treatment of kids in these cases, but these circumstances still stun me. I have resolved his case. The new case on the site is that of Sean Morrow.

Only a short few days after I write a post about him, Luca Principali is found safe. His mother turned herself in to the police. I’m glad about this. One can only wonder if this is in the trend of the honesty I touched on previously – if you flat out admit you took the kid for spite there’s less justification for keeping them away from the other parent on your part. I wish him and his father the best in re-adjusting.

DNA confirms it. And she has had two children with her kidnapper. I’m disgusted, but not really surprised.

Considering there are several other unsolved abductions in the general area, I hope these people are looked at.

I am sure by now everyone’s seen this story. Didn’t stop me from saying to myself “Oh my God.” This is Shawn Hornbeck, Elizabeth Smart, Natascha Kampusch, and Francisco Andrade Vega cubed.

I would be lying if I said that Jaycee would be okay from now on. But her family and friends don’t have to wonder anymore. Even if she had been found dead, that would be a plus. This is even better.

Mother arrested; children taken into custody

BENTONVILLE – A more than decade-long search ended Thursday night when Showana Kissinger was arrested at a residence outside Quinton, Okla.

She and her two children disappeared on Dec. 13, 1997, during a custody dispute with her husband, David Kissinger, of Siloam Springs.

The children – Taylor Rae Kissinger and Dylan Lee Kissinger – were taken on the day their father’s parents were to pick them up for Christmas vacation.

In this case, the fact that the children were snatched before a visit with their paternal grandparents speaks volumes about the true motivation in this case. Whatever the father was alleged to have done has no bearing on what his parents would do. Therefore, the kidnapping is about making sure her ex’s family was spited, just like in so many other cases. Twelve years is a long time to be seperated, but hopefully the Kissinger children can have a relationship with their father now.