Surprising recovery

I received an email today from a relative of Seif Benkailly Mahssen, who held the distinction of being the oldest family abduction case profiled on the Charley Project. He was less than a year old when his Yemeni father ran off with him back in 1958. Frankly, I didn’t expect they would ever find him. But Seif’s relative says he’s been found alive and well in Yemen! I’m sure his mother must be so glad. I hope Seif is willing to reconnect with her.

If you don’t know how to use the internet, either learn or stay off it

About six weeks ago, a woman contacted me about a missing boy on my website. It was classified as a family abduction and she was listed as the abductor. She politely explained that she did, in fact, have custody of the boy, and he was getting a lot of flack at school and stuff about being listed as an abducted child online, and could I please remove his casefile? After verifying her statements, I complied.

Well, over the next month (last time last week) she sent me increasingly irate emails (bold print, capital letters, etc) demanding I remove her son from my website. I tried to explain I already had, but she seemed deaf to my explanations.

Finally, yesterday she clarified herself and I found out what all the fuss was about: she thinks for some reason that I run the 411 Gina site. Her son is still listed as missing on there. WTF? I have nothing to do with that site. I don’t even know the person who runs it. You’d think the @charleyproject.org in my email address might be some indication of which site I am actually in charge of.

So I have informed her that she is yelling at the wrong person, and I hope that takes care of the problem.

Jaycee Dugard’s abduction is horrible but really rare

I found this very sensible editorial pointing out just how uncommon cases like Jaycee’s are, and saying we need to focus more attention on the victims of parental abduction, who tend to suffer a great deal of psychological trauma even if they’re not physically harmed. (Case in point: poor Richard Chekevdia was held in a tiny room for two years and never let outside after his mom abducted him.) Of course instances like the Dugard case are much more shocking and titillating to the public. But if the public knew the truth about parental abduction and the harm it causes, they would probably be shocked.

Jaycee’s hometown threw a parade to celebrate her rescue. 2,000 people showed up. She wasn’t around to see it, though. She’s hiding out with her mom and kids, presumably getting reconnected. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if she went on to lead a more or less normal life. Most of the survivors of concentration camps did okay afterwards, marrying again, getting jobs, having more kids, etc.

A roundup of resolves

It sometimes happens that I get several resolved cases dumped on me all at once. Today is one of those days. We’ve got:

Alice Louise Donovan, 44, who was kidnapped from Conway, South Carolina on November 14, 2002. Her abductors were too thoroughly frightening young punks, Brenden Basham and Chadwick Fulks, who’d broken out of jail and gone on a multi-state crime spree of robbery, car theft, burglary, kidnapping and murder. The suspects were arrested two days later. They were later convicted of carjacking resulting in death in Alice’s case. Bone fragments found in Horry County, South Carolina in January have just been identified as Alice’s. Basham and Fulks are both on death row now. Another of their victims, a West Virginia college student named Samantha Burns, is still among the missing.

Michael Ray Larsen, 49, a transient who disappeared from Fort Bragg, California in August 2003. His skeletal remains were found near a homeless encampment in Fort Bragg last week, and were identified this week. There was no indication of foul play. It looks like he might have fallen off a cliff.

Tiairra Jo Garcia, 19, disappeared from Pasco, Washington on June 22, 2008. Her dirtbag boyfriend and three of his associates were charged in connection with her disappearance. The police believe Tiairra’s boyfriend accidentally shot her and then let her die without trying to get help for her. Tiairra’s remains turned up in Mount Rainier National Park. The boyfriend was sentenced to eight years in prison and one of his friends got one year for their roles in her death. It hardly seems to be enough.

Brody Shaun Shelton, 3, and his sister Logan Willow Shelton, 1, were kidnapped by their mother from Las Vegas, Nevada on March 19, 2004. The children have been found safe, according to the NCMEC; I have no other details.

Peres/Cozzi identity mystery solved

The saga is over: DNA testing established that Carol Ann Cozzi’s little girl is her biological daughter and not Bejohna Peres. Brianna has been returned to her mom. Thanks to Annie for pointing out the up-to-date article.

I guess it’s a good thing that the police and everybody did their jobs in this instance and followed up on a good lead towards Bejohna’s whereabouts. But it is really a shame what the Cozzis went through. The true crime goddess Ann Rule wrote once that crimes have a kind of butterfly affect that leads to all sorts of unintended unforeseen consequences, not just for the criminal and victim either. This is a perfect example: because a woman in Texas ran off with her daughter in violation of a court order, a woman in Canada was subjected to an intrusive police investigation and had her child taken from her.

Meanwhile, little Bejohna remains among the missing.

Bejohna Peres/Brianna Cozzi identity still up in the air

Earlier I wrote that the police think a little girl in Ontario, who is supposedly called Brianna Cozzi, is actually Bejohna Peres, who’s been missing from Texas since 2007. She was taken by her non-custodial mother. Well, the jury is still out on the child’s identity. They’ve taken a DNA sample and are waiting for results while continuing to investigate the case. Brianna was taken from her supposed mother, Carol Ann Cozzi, about a week ago, and Carol got a one-hour visit with her since then but nothing more.

Brianna apparently looks remarkably like Bejohna. I really hope she really is Bejohna and therefore wasn’t taken from her mother’s care without reason, but I kind of doubt it. “Yesterday, Carol Ann brought photographs of the child — who she says is a year older than Bejohna but bears a striking resemblance — and everything from birth certificates to social security cards to a driver’s licence to authorities in Hamilton.” Either this woman is very brazen, or she has access to an excellent forger, or she really is who she says she is.

I really hope those DNA tests come back soon.

Missing child Bejohna Peres possibly found in Canada

Bejohna Peres disappeared from Houston, Texas in 2007. She was three years old at the time and is believed to have been abducted by her non-custodial mother. Well, Bejohna may have been found in Ontario, Canada. According to this article (which misspells the child’s name as “Brejohna”), police have taken a little girl into protective custody and are trying to determine whether she is Bejohna. The little girl was in the care of Carol Ann Cozzi, who says she’s the child’s mother and her name is Briana. She gave the police a birth certificate to support her claims. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt about Cozzi’s identity. If the girl is Bejohna, how did she end up with Cozzi and where is her mother? This would not be the first time a parent abducted their child only to foist it on someone else.

The article contains additional info about Bejohna’s disappearance. She and her three siblings were in the care of their grandmother when their mother took all four of them. The three other children were found safe in Las Vegas, Nevada in November 2007, but Bejohna and her mother have yet to be located.

It’s not really clear why the police think Briana is Bejohna. I really hope she is. Otherwise, a mother and child have been separated needlessly and probably traumatized by the experience.

Sanchez children’s identity confirmed

Authorities have confirmed the identities of the three children’s bodies found in Richard Robert Sanchez’s car, which I mentioned in this post. Of course it’s his three sons. Richard Robert’s identification is still pending. We will probably never know if this was an accident or a murder/suicide, but due to the circumstances I’m guessing the latter.

Some of the comments on the aforementioned article are just dreadful. Some people are accusing Sanchez’s wife of murdering him and the boys and also framing him for the rape against her sister. Other people saying Richard Robert was a “great guy” who was driven to do all the things he did because of his wife’s infidelity. (One commenter actually said, I quote, “This had to happen.” I’m really hoping this person was being sarcastic.) Because of course, when a woman is unfaithful, a guy has to go out and rape her sister, and then kill himself and his kids, he can’t help himself.

I don’t know the personal situation of the Sanchez family. Perhaps the mother really did go out and sleep with every guy in town. But no matter what she did, she did not deserve this, and there was absolutely no justification for the father to go out and do what he did.

Terrible news

It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it looks like the children Daniel Sanchez, Christopher Sanchez and Richard Anthony Sanchez, as well as their father, have been found deceased. This Associated Press article, from the Unsolved in the News blog, is the only one I can find.

The brothers were abducted by their father, Richard Robert Sanchez, in 2001. This was considered a much more worrisome case than the typical family abduction because Richard Robert had been charged with raping his sons’ maternal aunt in front of her child. Well, on Thursday, police looking for another vehicle found Richard Robert’s SUV in a lake with four bodies inside. No prizes for guessing who they are. It looks like they died shortly after they were abducted. I think I’ll wait on the resolved notice till after confirmation, though.

I wonder if this was a simple motor vehicle accident, or a murder-suicide. We may never know. Those poor boys. Their poor mother. Another tragic example of how, contrary to popular belief, kids are NOT necessarily safe when their non-custodial parent snatches them.

So heinous on so many levels

The murders of Tyler Payne and his sister Ariana are the most horrible I’ve read about in a long time. Sickening doesn’t even describe it — there are no words to describe it. They disappeared in 2006 and Ariana’s body was found in February 2007 and the murderers have both been convicted, but I didn’t hear about any of this until a few days ago when someone sent me a link to a MySpace page about Tyler, whose body has never been found.

Both children were beaten severely by their father and perhaps his girlfriend, then locked in a closet and left to starve to death. Ariana’s body had twelve broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade and a compressed vertebra, and who knows what injuries Tyler suffered. Their father said Ariana died first and he left her body in the closet with Tyler for a week before he also expired. I cannot imagine the horror those children went through, particularly Tyler, huddled with his sister’s corpse in the dark. He was four or five when he died. Ariana was about three. Both kids look absolutely adorable in their pictures. Tyler looks a lot like my nephew Zachary did at that age.

To make matters even worse, this was totally preventable. I mean, child abuse deaths usually are, but these ones especially so. The kids’ mom had custody, and their dad stole them from her. She called the police to get them back, and the police called CPS who, in violation of the custody order, instructed the police to leave the kids where they were. *headdesk* One article quoted a police officer as saying something like, “If the mom had insisted, we probably would have gotten them or at least threatened to arrest the dad.” Nice try blaming the victim there. People shouldn’t have to INSIST that the police do their damn jobs. If the cops had recovered the children, or if CPS hadn’t butted in where they didn’t belong, both of them would be alive today. Tyler and Ariana’s mother settled a lawsuit with CPS, but I’m sure she would rather have her kids alive again.

Reina and Christopher had a two-year-old son together who was not abused. He was healthy and well-fed when his parents were arrested. Why the little boy was deemed worthy of receiving food and other necessities of life but his older half-siblings were not has never been explained.

The defendants, Christopher Payne and his girlfriend Reina Gonzales, don’t sound especially bright. Reina apparently consistently tests as mentally retarded. Ariana’s body was discovered in a storage locker when Christopher was dumb enough stop making the rental payments. After he was arrested, the only story Christopher could come up with is that his kids deliberately starved themselves to death because they missed their mom and he “did everything” to try to make them eat (everything except take them to a doctor or a hospital, I guess) but they died in spite of his all his heroic efforts. When a police officer asked Christopher if he thought he had killed his children, he said no, but that he “might have neglected them” by failing to seek medical attention for their malnutrition. Uh-huh. Keep digging, Chris. At his trial (Reina pleaded guilty and testified against him), the defense used the slightly more plausible theory that Reina had beaten and starved the kids without Christopher’s knowledge. They also said Christopher’s life should be spared because he’s a heroin addict and he had a bad childhood. It didn’t work, of course. He’s on death row now. Good riddance. The needle’s too good for types like him.

It’s a terrible world out there. I think I’m going to go look at Cute Overload now and try to forget this for awhile.