I just got word that Zachary and Chelsea Smith have been found safe. They were 9 and 6 when they were abducted by their mother, Elizabeth Stratton, from California in 1997. Stratton had leveled a lot of abuse charges against the children’s father, all of which were found to be baseless, and then she took the children and joined the criminal organization Children of the Underground, which helps hide abducting mothers who claim their children were abused. Zachary is now 22 years old and Chelsea is 19.
They told the FBI they wanted nothing to do with their father. I’m not surprised. They must have been alienated against him a great deal over the years. Young children are so impressionable. Robert and Katherine Baskin, also family abduction victims (by their grandfather) were made to believe that their grandfather was their father. And Katherine was eight and a half at the time of the abduction. So yes, even at the relatively advanced age of nine, Zachary could have been made to remember and believe things that never happened and are not true.
You can see this heartbreaking YouTube video where the father reaches out to his children, pleading them to contact him. Perhaps they will eventually. Hayden, Chandler and Rebekah Clark, whom I wrote about earlier, at first didn’t want to contact their father but later they did reconcile.
The Charley Project Blog 
I cried when I saw the video.
How very very sad. I hope there is some sort of closure to this case. How many times have we seen “legit” parental kidnaps being slung as good for the kids and is not…what has gone on all these years…no matter the reason the kids have no clue what went on.
Where did you find that the Clark children have now reconciled with their father? Do you know if their mother has been extradited yet? I know they let Eva Marie Fiedler’s mother out on bail.
Annie Keller for forthelost.org told me. I think she might have found out via Facebook. She’s way more involved in family abductions than I am. She’ll probably reply to this message herself and tell you.
Yeah. It was on the facebook pages of the dad and the aunt, including a video of Chandler and Hayden with their dad, watching old videos of them as children.
ok thanks
Meaghan,
What happened to the Baskin children’s grandfather? Did he go to prison?
No idea.
So I guess Faye Yager was involved with this… that’s a messed up situation. I hope the kids can realized what happened and contact their father. He sounds like he really misses and loves them
So I’m assuming that their mother must have warpped them against their father? That’s the only conclusion that I can think of.
She’d pretty much have to. She can hardly say, “Your dad’s a very nice guy who loves you very much, but I don’t like him so I’m going to have you running all around the country as fugitives changing your names all the time and never going to school to get back at him, if you don’t mind.”
You people have no clue! Do you honestly think if these children were not at risk, there was no domestic violence, the man was a great father she would choose to abandon a normal and perhaps comfortable life and go underground where she will be on the run for the rest of her life, always looking over her shoulder – panic when she sees the police, piss in her pants when the children run a temperature and she has to go to the doctors, having the children and herself learn countless new names etc etc????
Life in the underground couldn’t be life in a palace or an improvement to her existence before her decision to flee.
Sweethearts – Particularly the ladies here – pray your partner never abuses you or your children and you find yourself in the family courts! If you do, you will know exactly what happened to Zachary, Chelsea and their mother! You get laughed at, mocked and your evidence suppressed or ignored, lies and false reports levied against you until you cease to recognise the woman they are describing to be the woman you knew you were and that you ex very well knows you are! But whom he chooses to malign and vilify to his own ends!
Pray – You never step into the Family Courts of the western hemisphere – I mean US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the whole of Western Europe!
Custody of abused children are being handed to their abusers daily in our family courts – the family courts is where abusers laugh and our children cry and the mothers are silenced, threatened and thrown into jail without a trial!
Pray – You never find yourself and your children in the family court!
Lastly remember that the video you watch is only his side of the story. If you really want to know the truth, delve into the court papers – what were the allegations, what were the supporting evidence. Whilst you are at it, remember that Domestic Violence and child abuse are the most private crimes of all times!
I wish you luck!