For the Lost Blog

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.

Missing children from Louisiana found

Two children missing for the last two years were located Tuesday by deputies at a Star Valley home with their noncustodial mother, living under assumed names.

On Monday, the Gila County Sheriff’s Office received a call from the Webster Parish Sheriff’s Department in Louisiana who said they had been searching for the children, 14 and 11 years old, for the last two years, and they were believed to be in the Star Valley area with their mother, Barbara Collins.

The first case in the article was one where the children were found living in a tent with their mother, and the tent was scattered with drug paraphernalia. The second case is of the Collins girls, where there was concern the eldest girl, who has spina bifida, was not receiving medical attention. While I am somewhat surprised there were two family abduction cases found in the same area, the conditions are sadly something I am used to at this point. I hope all the children involved can now begin to recover from this situation.

Mother and daughter reunited after twelve years

After 12 years of losing her daughter to international abduction by the child’s father, Janet Greer’s moment finally arrived.
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With anchorman Chris Cuomo from “Good Morning America,” at her side, Greer entered her daughter’s world today. It was one she’d been cut from for a dozen years, because Sarah “Dowsha” Elgohary’s family refused to let Greer to see her own child.
The Egyptian courts and leaders refusing to intervene on Janet’s behalf.

Finally, the day she’s dreamed and fought so hard to see materialize, has dawned.
Greer went to Egypt, where she saw her daughter today.

I find it interesting that as soon as Sarah learned her mother was not dead she wanted to see her. I have speculated that if an abducted child is told the parent is dead they are more open to a reunion when the opportunity presents itself. If the left-behind parent is still known to be alive, the abductor must present alienating circumstances that justifies the kidnapping instead of letting the child think the parent is dead and reunion impossible. I have no way of looking at this empirically of course. Stories like this one are what makes all the sweat and toil poured into family abduction cases worth it.

The lost/injured missing individual presents an interesting dilemma. By “lost/injured missing” I mean those whom there is no doubt they have perished as a result of some accident or disaster. In some cases, it is unlikely a body will be recovered, and in some it is almost impossible.

So are these people still missing? Their whereabouts on one hand are unknown, but what happened to them is not. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with still listing them as missing. While a few deluded family members might see this as hope their loved one is still alive, most know there is no such chance. But this still provides some sort of tangible evidence that they did in fact go missing. And in the unlikely event remains are discovered, they can be identified. There is no harm in saying the person is missing, no more than listing a known murder victim as missing if no remains have been found.

Cases of missing children on the NCMEC site are sorted into different categories. To get a rundown of the ones that are used, For the Lost has a glossary. One thing they all have in common, however, is that they are usually permanent. Cases are rarely moved from one classification to another. This is a concern. Some are much more likely to capture people’s attention, such as Non-Family Abduction as opposed to Endangered Missing. Since on the posters the classification is at the top, that can be all that is required to make someone look harder. Or not.

To be fair, there are cases where it’s pretty clear what happened to the child. There was a note or conversation that stated the child was running away, they were not returned after a visit with a non-custodial parent, they were witnessed being abducted by a non-family member, they got lost at the beach. If one of these is not clearly applicable, the term Endangered Missing is used. (Teenagers are the exception. Unless there is clear evidence they didn’t leave on their own, it will be called an Endangered Runaway case.) Time will often make things clear. If a child vanishes in their neighborhood, they could have left on their own, gotten lost, or been abducted. If the child is sufficently young, the first can be ruled out quickly. If there is no clear sign of the child getting lost, that rules out the second. There are several disappearances of young children that were at first ambiguous but later were concluded to be non-family abductions. NCMEC typically does not re-classify them, despite this. The one re-classification that is used is when runaways gone for a significant period of time are changed to Endangered Missing. While for the most part this is a prudent change, it is also worth noting that many runaways are located several years after they have vanished. Is this system of guessing foolproof? No. Jane Puckett went missing in 1977, and was classified as a non-family abduction, yet she was found safe only a few weeks ago.

In my opinion, Endangered Missing is best used when there is a true mystery involved – if nothing can be concluded from the circumstances or the person just vanishes. And if later on different evidence is uncovered, then changes should be made.

Boy Abducted by Father in August

An 8-year-old Burlingame boy allegedly abducted by his father in August and taken to Mexico has been reunited with his mother, a police sergeant said Thursday.

Maxim Yu’s father Jason Yu was supposed to meet Maxim’s mother in Detroit on Aug. 19 but never showed up with the boy, according to Burlingame police Sgt. Ed Nakiso.

Maxim’s mother then notified authorities, including the Burlingame Police Department. For months Maxim remained missing until the state department received information he was in Mexico, Nakiso said.

His mother traveled to Mexico where she and Maxim were reunited. They returned to the Bay Area on Saturday, according to Nakiso.

While Mexico is a popular destination for abducting parents, in this case it was a very bad choice. Two people of Chinese descent in Mexico are going to be very noticeable. I’m happy they did not go to Taiwan like expected, because the chances of Maxim coming home then would be about zero. I wish he and his mother the best in re-adjusting.

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?