When children go missing, it’s a true tragedy.
While some stories end with a mystery, the majority don’t. Missing children are usually found and brought home, but with a story to tell.
Here are some of the most interesting (and maybe a bit startling) stories of missing children who all had one thing in common – they were eventually returned home.
1. Amina Ali Nkeki
Amina was a young girl who was captured by a militant group in Nigeria named Boko Haram. She, along with 200 other Chibok girls, was taken back in 2014.
Two years later, a member of the Civilian Joint Task Force (a local vigilante group trying to save people in the region) noticed the girl and asked some questions. The man she was traveling with claimed to be her husband but they soon realized that this was, in fact, Amina.
While on her way to being reunited with her family, her mother saw her from across the room and knew immediately who she was, shouting “Amina, Amina!”
2. Elijah Wong and Donnie Simmons
Elijah Wong, a two-year-old, and Donnie Simmons, a seven-year-old, were reported missing in Lousiana in 2016.
They had been gone for two months when a random traffic stop in Arizona resulted in the Officer learning that the abductor was wanted for multiple robberies.
The abductor turned out to be their mother who had taken them from their foster homes by gunpoint.
3. Xiao Yun
Xiao Yun is an interesting case. Xiao went missing back in 2005 and it wasn’t until ten years later that she was finally found – at an internet cafe playing video games.
She had left her home after a fight and decided to use a fake ID to play games in internet cafes all across the Zhejiang province. For 10 years she had played the game CrossFire in the cafe living on handouts.
4. Julian Hernandez
Julian was proclaimed missing for 13 years… totally unbeknownst to him!
He had been living with his dad for more than 13 years under a false name after his dad took him to preschool and never returned.
It was only when he tried to apply to colleges he learned that the social security number he was using wasn’t real. And when he looked into it, he discovered that he had been listed as missing for over a decade and his father had tampered with records.
5. Jaycee Lee Dugard
Back in 1991, 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard went missing while walking to the school bus in Lake Tahoe, California.
Philip and Nancy Garrido had been lurking in the area, hoping to find a girl like Jaycee to abduct. They took her and kept her in a shed for 18 years. During her captivity, she gave birth to two daughters by Phillip Garrido.
She was finally found in 2009 when a background check showed that the two girls Phillip was with weren’t his. Officers searched the home and found Jaycee living in the back. He was sentenced to 431 years in prison.
6. Steven Stayner
Stayner was only 7-years-old when he was kidnapped in 1972. He was taken in Merced, California by Kenneth Parnell.
Over the course of 8 years, Kenneth abused, tortured, and brainwashed Stayner into believing his parents had given him away. He was even able to enroll the child in school after his brainwashing.
Stayner escaped when Kenneth took another boy and tried to do the same thing. The two escaped together and were eventually picked up by the police. All Stayner knew about himself was his first name, Steven.
Steven was returned home but then killed only a few years later in a motorcycle accident at the age of 24.
7. Steve Carter
Steve Carter decided to click on a story that detailed unsolved missing children’s cases back in 2012. He was looking through the files and saw a photo that looked exactly like him.
He always thought he was adopted from an orphanage in Hawaii, but the boy in the photo was named Marx Panama Barnes.
Turns out, Carter’s father had been looking for him for 30 years after he was kidnapped by his biological mother and subsequently put up for adoption.
8. Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped back in 2002 when was only 14-years-old. She was taken from her own room by a fundamentalist Mormon man named Brian Mitchell who wanted to make her his second wife. Brian and his wife kept her tied to a tree in their backyard for nine months less than 20 miles from her house.
She was found after they took her to parties with a veil. When people started to ask why she was wearing a veil, the rouse was discovered and investigators were called.
9. Richard Wayne Landers, Jr.
Richard Wayne Landers, Jr. has one of the longest abduction timelines on our list.
At five years old, Wayne was kidnapped from his homeless mother by his paternal grandparents. He had lived with them since birth, but they did not have formal custody.
After they fled from Indiana to Minnesota with the boy, he was given a new name. He still defends his grandparents to this day for doing what they did.
10. Shawn Hornbeck
Shawn Hornbeck was kidnapped in 2002 when he was 11-years-old while riding his bike near his house.
He was taken by a man named Michael J. Devlin.
When Hornbeck was eventually found, people in the town realized he had been living around them without anyone knowing. His abductor had brainwashed him and was eventually stabbed to death in prison.
11. Danielle Cramer
Danielle Cramer went missing in 2006 when she was 15-years-old.
She had been locked in a secret cupboard upstairs and was found when they went to arrest her abductor, Adam Gault, who also happened to be involved in a murder trial.
Once in the house, the officers found and freed Cramer after a year of living in the cupboard.
12. Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus
These three girls went missing in 2002, 2003, and 2004, respectively.
They were held for over a decade by Ariel Castro in his Cleveland, Ohio home and helped each other survive.
The three girls were finally found after their screams were heard by neighbors. Castro committed suicide in prison.
13. Charlie Bothuell
Charlie Bothuell was 12 when he was reported missing in Detroit, Michigan back in 2014.
Almost two weeks later, TV host Nancy Grace announced to the boy’s dad on live TV that his son had been found in HIS basement.
Bothuell was abused, and his dad and stepmom were charged with child abuse and torture.
14. Gregory Jean, Jr.
Gregory Jean, Jr. was a 13-year-old boy who had been missing for four years.
He was finally found hidden behind a false wall in his parents’ Georgia house in 2004. His dad and stepmother were charged with child cruelty and false imprisonment.
The saddest part is that no one was really looking for the child. The police didn’t know he was missing, while child services did and just didn’t know where to look. His father and stepmother apparently committed the crime in order to stop paying child support to the boy’s mother.
The boy was only found when he sent his biological mother a Facebook friend request as a cry for help.
15. Luke Shambrook
In 2015, Shambrook, an 11-year-old autistic boy, went missing when his family went camping in Victoria, Australia.
After 4 days and 4 nights, the young boy was seen by a police helicopter flying overhead. He was about 2 miles away from where he was last seen and in really bad condition.
He fully recovered, however, and showed how tough he was!
16. Natasha Ryan
Natasha Ryan went missing from her home in Australia when she was 14-years-old. At the time, other girls had gone missing in the area and were identified as the victims of a serial killer.
Ryan was actually found alive the man was on trial for her murder – after confessing to doing it himself!
It turns out Ryan was actually hiding out at her boyfriend’s house. She had been assumed dead for five years.
17. Carlina White
Carlina White wasn’t taken as a teenager… or even a toddler!
She was abducted when she was 19-days-old when she was snatched from a New York hospital back in 1987 by Anne Pettaway, who reportedly dressed as a nurse to kidnap her. Pettaway raised the baby into adulthood, but White became suspicious about her background and began researching missing kids.
White ended up reuniting with her biological parents in her 20s – they had never stopped looking for her. Pettaway was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
18. Connie McCallister
Connie McCallister was a 16-year-old student who went missing from her home in Wisconsin back in 2004.
While she called her mother a few days later, she refused to say where she was.
Years later, McCallister told police she was drugged at a party and taken to Mexico by her boyfriend. While the two married and split up and McCallister married again, she said she was trafficked to Mexico and the area she lived in was impoverished and she didn’t have the resources to contact anyone for help.
She was able to get back on American soil after she told a missionary her story and had him reach out to authorities state-side.
19. Tanya Kach
Tanya Kach was only 15 years old when a security guard at her school named Thomas Hose lured her to his home and forced her to live in a bedroom upstairs from his parents without them even knowing.
She used a bucket for the bathroom and was hidden for four years before escaping to a neighbor’s house to ask for help.
Hose was convicted of abuse, kidnapping, and sexual assault, but is scheduled to be released in 2022.
20. Robert Hutton
For our final person on the list, it’s a doozy! Robert Hutton went missing in 1972 after he told his mom he was traveling across the country from New York to California.
He was 21-years-old when he disappeared and had been traveling through the area where serial killer John Wayne Gacy was active. Authorities assumed he had been killed.
Turns out, he became involved with “the lifestyle of the 70s” and ended up having trouble tracking his family down.
It was 41 years before they all reunited!
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