After the discovery that three women, who were abducted as teens, were imprisoned for a decade in a Cleveland home, the public is asking why no Amber Alerts were issued, particularly in the case of Gina DeJesus, and why. A look the qualifications for an Amber Alert, Gina’s case and two others that didn’t qualify.
Nancy McBride of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children explains how children have been able to successfully get away from their would-be abductors.
Snatched on June 5, 2002, at age 15, by a man who said God told him to make her his second wife, Smart was threatened, bound and raped daily for the nine months that she was missing. Her story is remarkable not only because she was found alive after so long, but because she ultimately would testifiy against her captors.
Police in Los Angeles are still searching for transient Tobias Dustin Summers, who is charged with entering a home on March 27, 2013, and abducting a girl, 10, at knifepoint from her bed. Police believe the girl was taken to an abandoned house and sexually assaulted for 12 hours.
On March 16, 2006, Joseph Smith was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the Super Bowl Sunday 2004 rape and murder of Carlie Brucia, 11, in Sarasota Florida. Carlie was reported missing within 30 minutes of her abduction. The case made national headlines when police released surveillance video showing the girl’s abduction.
Famous American aviator Charles Lindbergh, his wife and young son lived a peaceful life in New Jersey until March 1, 1932 when their world collapsed. The Lindbergh Baby, as he became known, was kidnapped from the couple’s home. His disappearance and murder became a media sensation and brought to the Lindberghs the attention they’d sought to avoid by moving into a secluded mansion.
Shannon Paulk was 11 years old when she disappeared from her trailer park in Prattville, Ala., on August 16, 2001. For two hopeful months, Shannon’s family and friends clung to the possibility that the young girl may be found alive. But that hope was shattered when rabbit hunters discovered Shannon’s body in a forest 17 miles north of town. More than a decade later, the case remains unsolved.
Samantha Runnion, a 5-year-old southern California girl, was snatched July 15, 2002, by a stranger outside her apartment while she played with a friend. Samantha went kicking and screaming, as her mother had taught her to do, but her efforts were for naught.
Etan Patz disappeared in 1979 and has never been seen since. Almost to the day 33 years later NYPD arrested Pedro Hernandez in connection to the kidnapping. Hernandez had never been seen publicly since the arrest. Until yesterday.
