Shocking Stories Of Some Missing Children Who Were Eventually Found

In 2016, then-19-year-old Amina Ali Nkeki was rescued from the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram after being kidnapped two years prior. Nkeki was one of over 200 Chibok school girls who were taken by the Boko Haram in April 2014.

Nkeki was spotted and recognized by a member of the Civilian Joint Task Force, a vigilante group attempting to fight off the militant group. Nkeki was traveling with a member of Boko Haram who claimed to be her husband. He was taken into custody, and she was reunited with her family.

Two-year-old Elijah Wong and 7-year-old Donnie Simmons were found during a traffic stop a month after they were reported missing. The children had been abducted from different addresses by their mother, Antoinette Wong, and her boyfriend.

Donnie was reportedly taken at gunpoint from the home where he was staying. The couple had been linked to several bank robberies and were ultimately pulled over by a state trooper when their car was spotted swerving on a highway. The two boys were immediately taken into custody by Child Protective Services.

Julian Hernandez was getting ready to apply for college in 2015 when he discovered that the Social Security number given to him by his father did not exist.

Julian soon learned that he had been considered missing for 13 years after his father was supposed to take him to preschool but then fled the state of Ohio. Julian had been living in Alabama and was said to be “thriving” in high school.

He was reunited with his mother, and his father was arrested.

Eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted while walking to the school bus in Lake Tahoe, CA, in 1991. Phillip and Nancy Garrido had been in Dugard’s neighborhood when they saw the child, shot her with a stun gun, and dragged her into their car. They transported her to their home, where they kept her in a shed in their backyard for 18 years. During her captivity, Dugard was forced to have two daughters by Phillip Garrido while she was still a child.

UC Berkeley security officers conducted a background check on Garrido in August 2009 when he was seen acting strangely with two young girls who he claimed were his daughters. When the review showed Garrido had no children, investigators were called to search his home where Dugard was discovered. Garrido was sentenced to 431 years in prison, and his wife received 36 years to life.

Seven-year-old Steven Stayner was abducted in Meced, CA, on December 4, 1972, by a man named Kenneth Parnell. Stayner was held captive for eight years, and Parnell reportedly brainwashed him to believe his parents had given him away.

Parnell eventually kidnapped 5-year-old Timmy White, whom Stayner was able to escape with and go to police. Stayner told police that he could only remember his first name.

Kenneth Parnell was sentenced to only five years in prison. Steven Stayner returned to his family but tragically died in a motorcycle accident in 1989 at age 24.

In 2012, 35-year-old Steve Carter clicked on a website that featured cases of missing children. Carter had always known that he was adopted, but he soon found a photo of himself under the name Marx Panama Barnes in the missing children database.

Carter’s father had been looking for him for 30 years after he was kidnapped by his biological mother as an infant. When he was 4 years old, she put him up for adoption in an orphanage, then disappeared without a trace. DNA confirmed that Steve Carter and Marx Panama Barnes were the same person.

In 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom by a man named Brian David Mitchell. She was held captive by Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Ileen Barzee, for nine months until someone noticed their strange behavior and police raided Mitchell and Barzee’s home. Smart had been only miles away from her family’s home for most of the time she was abducted.

Mitchell was sentenced to two life terms for kidnapping and sexual assault, while Barzee received a 15-year sentence for aiding in the crime. Smart wrote a memoir about her experience and has been a contributor for ABC News.

Kidnapped in 2002 at age 11, Shawn Hornbeck was found more than four years later living in a St. Louis, MO, apartment with a man named Michael J. Devlin. Devlin had abducted Hornbeck while he was outside riding his bike before brainwashing and abusing the child for years.

After Hornbeck was rescued, authorities learned he had often been seen, albeit unrecognized, in public. He had a girlfriend, often walked around a local shopping mall, and once spoke with a police officer when his bicycle was stolen. He even posted on a website his parents had set up regarding his kidnapping, asking how long they would continue to look for their son. He signed the post “Shawn Devlin.”

Devlin was stabbed and wounded while awaiting trial. He has since been sentenced to three life terms.

Danielle Cramer went missing at age 15 in June 2006 and was found a year later – nearly to the day – in June 2007. Police had arrived at the West Hartford, CT, home of 41-year-old Adam Gault, whom they suspected of murder, only to find Cramer being held captive in a cupboard under the home’s staircase.

Gault, his wife, and his girlfriend were all arrested and sentenced to prison for the crime.

Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus were found in the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro in 2013, after more than a decade of being held captive. Knight disappeared first in 2002 at age 21, followed by Berry in 2003 at age 17, and DeJesus in 2004 at age 14.

Neighbors rescued them after hearing Berry’s screams. Castro later took his own life in prison.

On June 14, 2014, 12-year-old Charlie Bothuell’s father reported him missing. 11 days later, Bothuell was found in the basement of his home, and his father was confronted by Nancy Grace on live television.

Charlie Bothuell was underweight when found, and he showed signs of abuse. His father and stepmother were both charged with torture and child abuse. The young boy reportedly had to perform rigorous daily exercises or face punishment by being held in the basement.

Thirteen-year-old Gregory Jean Jr. was thought to have been missing for four years until he was found hidden behind a false wall in his Georgia home. Jean’s father, Gregory Jean Sr., and stepmother, Samantha Joy Davis, were arrested and charged with false imprisonment, cruelty to children, and obstruction.

The couple reportedly hid Jean in an effort to avoid paying child support to the teen’s biological mother.

In 1998, 14-year-old Natasha Ryan vanished from her home in Australia. When she was found alive in 2003, a man was already on trial for her murder. Leonard Fraser had confessed to murdering Ryan, and she was presumed dead. However, it was revealed that Ryan had purposely run away from home so she could be with her boyfriend, who was 21 at the time she ran away.

Ryan was fined $1,000 for causing a false police investigation, and her boyfriend spent a year in jail for lying about Ryan’s whereabouts. Ryan would reportedly hide in closets and only go out at night to avoid being seen.

Connie McCallister was a 16-year-old honor roll student when she vanished from her Wisconsin home in 2004. In 2013, she was located in Mexico, where she was married with three children. McCallister told authorities that she was drugged by her then-boyfriend and taken to Mexico in 2004. She described the relationship as abusive and eventually married another man.

McCallister was reportedly unsure of how to get home but eventually revealed her identity to a missionary in 2013. McCallister then made contact with her family and returned home after being missing for a decade.

Fifteen-year-old Tanya Kach thought she was developing a relationship with her school security guard, Thomas Hose, in 1996. Hose even offered to let her stay with him after she told him about having issues with her parents. Hose brought Kach to live secretly in the same house as his parents and son but kept her hidden from them for four years. She was forced to stay in his second-story bedroom and had to use a bucket as a toilet.

Hose later created a new identity for Kach and introduced her to his parents as his girlfriend who would be moving in with them. Kach was then able to leave the house with a strict curfew, but it took her another six years to escape with the help of a local grocery store owner in 2000.

Hose plead guilty to kidnapping and sexual abuse and was convicted to five to 15 years in prison.

Carlina White was just 19 days old when she was kidnapped from Harlem Hospital on August 4, 1987. Twenty-three years later, White found her biological mother, who had never stopped looking for her missing daughter. White said she had always felt that the family who raised her was not her true family.

Carlina White’s case is the longest known non-parental abduction in the US in which the victim was reunited with the family. Anne Pettaway, the woman who abducted White and raised her as her own, was sentenced to 12 years in jail on federal kidnapping charges.