For the Lost Blog

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POLICE in three countries are hunting for six-year-old twin girls after their father who had snatched them from their home in Switzerland threw himself under an Italian train, reports said today.

Italy’s ANSA news agency said helicopters, mounted police and tracker dogs were searching around Cerignola in the southern region of Puglia for Alessia and Livia Schepp.

Their father Matthias, 43, committed suicide at Cerignola station yesterday.

It’s another family abduction. Maybe their father didn’t kill them beforehand. I really hope he didn’t. I was hoping this year would be free of such things. If someone else has them, I hope they get returned to their mother. No one needs this kind of pain.

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A former Fairfax County resident who allegedly flew with her children to Moscow two years ago, in violation of a custody agreement with her ex-husband, is now facing kidnapping charges.

Federal prosecutors say 46-year-old Aziza Mirzoeva took her two children to Canada to visit her son from a previous marriage in December 2008. They were scheduled to return to Virginia on Jan. 20, 2009, but the trio flew to Moscow instead.

Although I found this article about the Mirzoev boys earlier in January, for some reason I never posted it here. It did resolve my wonderment that Russia extradited her – she was apprehended in Germany. Their father indicates that he doesn’t want her to be prosecuted, but the authorities are going ahead with it anyway. While I understand his desire to not get his ex-wife in legal trouble, the fact is she committed a federal crime – international parental kidnapping. Very few people are even apprehended for it, and sometimes an example needs to be made. The chances she will get any real jail time is small because almost no parental kidnappers do. The crime is usually minimized.

I coasted on the good feelings of Jaycee Dugard’s recovery for several months, so to start the year with the news that Carlina White, abducted from Harlem Hospital in 1987, has been found safe is very good news indeed. Carlina found herself on NCMEC after she noticed her “mother” had no birth certificate for her and she did not resemble her. It is also reported that she has a younger brother, who I hope the authorities will also check to make sure he is not an abducted child. Carlina’s case is of course different from Dugard’s in that almost all authorities involved thought she was still alive and abducted by someone who wanted a child, which is a common motivation in infant abductions. Since there was a possibility she was involved in a black market adoption (along with Christopher Dansby and Shane Walker, also young children abducted from New York in the same time period) I hope that this may lead to them coming home as well.

Danyela and Deyan Perisic were both shot by their non-custodial father when authorities came to arrest him. Deyan was killed and his sister critically injured. This is sadly not a new phenomenon: Deirdre Crowley and Rebecca Aramburo were both murdered by their abducting parent when the authorities found them. (I will not state the string of curse words I said when I got the recovery notice from NCMEC informing me of Deyan’s death.)

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Playa Del Rey – Two brothers who allegedly kidnapped their three sons from Playa Del Rey and took them out of the country in 2008 were arrested in the Netherlands and the boys were found safe, federal authorities announced on Friday.

George and Jean John Silah have been fugitives since they disappeared with the three boys on July 2, 2008.

This is one of the many articles I found about the Silah boys. Most simply detail that the authorities were looking for them abroad and the boys were believed to be endangered because of unsavory business dealings of their fathers. Their mothers have headed to the Netherlands to be reunited with them, and I hope it all goes well.

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A Pennsylvania woman wanted on an FBI warrant for allegedly fleeing parental kidnapping charges lived for as long as two years with her daughter, under assumed names, with the Intercessors of the Lamb religious group in Omaha.

And after a friend of the Intercessors spotted a wanted poster at a Walmart store, the then-director of the group, Mother Nadine Brown, allegedly directed someone to drive the woman, Carolyn Casey-Keyvani, and her child to California, an Omaha archdiocese official and a former Intercessor said.

This article is the only one I have been able to find about Caroline Keyvani. In it it says that her mother claimed her father was going to send her to Iran to become a sex slave. While that is not remotely credible to most people, it demonstrates the warped mindset of many parental abductors, as well as being a potential sign of mental illness. I hope Caroline is doing well at home now.

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INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Three children from Indiana are reunited with their mother after missing for more than 2-1/2 years.

“It is the most wonderful thing that I could ever imagine,” said Leeanna Dinkens, the children’s mother.

Dinkens talked to 24 Hour News 8 over the phone Saturday morning after reuniting with her children Sierra, Jasmine and Jaden.

I was sent this article about Jaden and Jasmine Cummins and Sierra Emberton. They were located in Mexico, apparently, which is where they were expected to be. Jaden and Jasmine apparently no longer speak English. Their mother has also re-married. The conditions they were living in were typical of family abductions – they slept on cots or on cement floors and they didn’t know what a bathtub was. I wish them and their mother the best in reuniting.

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To Jennifer Aguilera-Hurtado, the U.S.-Mexico border is still as porous as a screen door, the illicit traffic between the two countries breezing through despite stretches of wall and wire, patrols of National Guardsmen and Minutemen, Arizona ire and the cruel heat of an endless desert.

“Every day, you hear about how many people are crossing the border illegally,” she says. “It’s always in the news.”

She’s not so much concerned with what or who is coming into the United States, though, but who is going out: Children, hundreds of them, snatched up and sneaked across the border by one parent against the wishes of the other and in violation of custody orders.

“This is the border crisis you never hear about,” she says.

Mexico has the highest number of international parental child abduction cases from the United States, according to the U.S. State Department. Right now, there are just under 600 open cases involving almost 900 children illegally taken by a parent into Mexico, a State Department official says.

Two of those children are Aguilera-Hurtado’s. Hannah is 3 and Teresa will be 8 on Wednesday, and their mother will be 1,535 miles and a world away in Albuquerque for that birthday.

This is an article I found about the Aguilera-Hurtado girls. Apparently their father who abducted them is broke and can’t fight more in the Mexican courts, but the kids are still in an orphanage, much like Liam McCarty. I’m not sure there’s much more I can say about the ridiculousness of that.

Police Say Woman Wore Disguises After Fleeing With Children

A nationwide search for a New Hampshire mother wanted on a custody offense has come to an end.

Erika Ahearn was arrested in Florida. Police said she has gone by different names and changed her look to keep her children hidden.

Investigators said her cell phone and debit card use allowed police to track her down.

This article which I just recently found about the Rowe children indicates that their mother was also wanted on gun charges and was apparently considered armed and dangerous. I didn’t know this before posting the case, but am glad it was resolved without incident. That information alone is another indication of family abduction not being a harmless crime.

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ST. LOUIS – An Alaska woman suspected of kidnapping her daughter two years ago was arrested in Missouri during a routine traffic stop after police noticed she and her young passenger appeared far too nervous for only missing a license plate, authorities said Tuesday.

Mary Joe Burgener, 44, of Wasilla, Alaska, was being held in Lincoln County while she awaits extradition, Troy Police Chief Jeff Taylor said. Her 13-year-old daughter, Noel Tara Burgener, has been reunited with her father in Alaska.

This article about Noel Burgener states that they were in fact in Missouri, which a commentator on this blog stated they were. Whether or not this person did in fact see them, it is good Noel is back home and I wish her and her father the best in reuniting.