A parent’s worst fear, their child goes missing. These stories encourage us to never give up hope in spite of the frightening tragedy of abduction.
There are several different types of missing children cases beyond abductions including runaways and lost or "thrown away" children. According to the FBI there are 88,040 active missing person records as of December 31, 2016, 38% are children under 18.
Tanya Kach
Tanya Kach, agreed to run away with a security guard at her school who she thought she was developing a relationship with at age 15. Thomas Hose brought Tanya to live in secret in in his second story bedroom where she had to use a bucket as a toilet. For four years his parents and son lived below her.
Hose later introduced her to his parents as his girlfriend who would be moving in with them after he created a new identity for Tanya. It took her another six years to escape with the help of a local grocery store owner. Hose plead guilty to kidnapping and sexual abuse, and was convicted to 5-15 years in prison.
Abby Drover
At age 12 Abby Drover was held captive in an underground cell for 181 days. In 1976, Donald Hay imprisoned her only yards from her own home. Held in handcuffs she was sexually abused, starved and tortured.
Abby was finally found Abby after Hay’s wife called the police, fearing her husband had committed suicide that. Donald Hay he spent over 20 years in the Saskatoon Psychiatric Hospital after pleading guilty although he was eligible for parole after 7 years. Hay died in 2012, never making parole.
Elizabeth Shoaf
At age 14, Elizabeth Shoaf was kidnapped by a man dressed up as a police officer in 2006. She was sexually abused repeated while being held captive for 10 days. Vinson Filyaw chained Shoaf up in an underground bunker that was less than a mile from her own home.
Elizabeth texted her mother when Filyaw allowed her to use his phone to play games. When Filyaw asked Elizabeth for advice when he realized the police were onto him. She told him to run. She was rescued after yelling for help.
Steven Stayner
In 1972, Steven Stayner was kidnapped while walking home from school in Merced, CA at age 7. 8 years later, Stayner and 5-year-old Timothy White who was also imprisoned escaped from Kenneth Parnell’s cabin. Parnell was sentenced to just seven years in prison after being charged for kidnapping but not sexual abuse.
Parnell was arrested again in 2003 after trying to coerce his caregiver into buying him a four-year-old boy. He died in prison after being sentenced to 25 to life at age 72. Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in 1989 at age 24.
Timothy White
In 1980, Timothy White was 5 years old when he was abducted by Parnell as he walked home from his Ukiah, CA.
Just two weeks later, White and Stayner, fled and hitchhiked to safety. At age 35 White apparently died of a pulmonary embolism in 2010.
Katie Beers
At age 9 Katie Beers was abducted by John Esposito he held her captive for 17 days in an underground bunker. During her imprisonment she was sexually abused.
Esposito he pleaded guilty to kidnapping charges after he turned himself in and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
Fusako Sano
On November 13, 1990 Fusako Sano, disappeared after watching a school baseball game in her hometown of Sanjō, Niigata Prefecture, Japan at age 9.
Kidnapped by Nobuyuki Satō who forced her into his car, and subsequently held her in the upstairs floor of his apartment for 9 years and two months. The house is only 55 kilometers from the location where she was kidnapped.
Shasta Groene
In May 2005, 8-year-old Shasta Groene was kidnapped along with her 9 year old brother Dylan from their Idaho home after Joseph Edward Duncan murdered her older brother Slade, her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Duncan raped and tortured the siblings after taking them to western Montana.
He then killed Dylan before showing up with Shasta at a Denny’s restaurant. She was saved after she was discovered at the restaurant. Duncan is now serving six life sentences in prison.
Carlina White
After birth, Carlina White was abducted from a Harlem hospital room in 1987. 23 years later she contacted the police after finding a baby picture that looked like her baby pictures on a missing children website.
She was reconnected with her birth mother in 2011. White said she'd never felt like she belonged to the family who raised her.
Elisabeth Fritzl
At the age of 18 Elisabeth Fritzl was lured into her own basement by her father Josef Fritzl in 1984. She was raped for 24 years and had seven of his children during her imprisonment.
In 2008, her ill 19-year-old daughter was taken to the hospital soon after police called the family in for abuse suspicions and she was released at age 42. Josef Fritz was sentenced to life in prison a year later.
Shawn Hornbeck
Shawn Damian Hornbeck was 15 when he was found in 2007 and reunited with his family.
He spent more than four years with Michael Devlin, passing as his captor's son in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri when he was abducted at the age of 11.
Jaycee Lee Dugard
At the age of 11 Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted from outside her home in South Lake Tahoe, California in 1991.
She was held captive with her two daughters she gave birth to in Phillip Garrido’s hidden compound of sheds. 18 years later Dugard and her daughters were found.
Natascha Kampusch
In 1998, Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped at the age of 10. She was held prisoner in Wolfgang Priklopil’s basement where he forced her to walk around half-naked as a domestic slave.
She was beat frequently and shackled to him as they slept. After she escaped 8 years later Priklopil committed suicide.
Elizabeth Smart
In 2002 Elizabeth Smart was 14 when she was abducted from her bed, raped and held captive for nine months by Brian David Mitchell on June 5, 2002.
On May 25, 2011, Mitchell was sentenced to life in prison nine years after the abduction.
Amanda Berry
Amanda Berry was a decade after she vanished a few blocks from her Cleveland home at the age of 16.
A decade later, she was found with two other missing women blocks from where she disappeared.
Gina DeJesus
Georgina "Gina" DeJesus was 14 when she went missing. She was found on May 6, 2013 along with Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight in Cleveland.
DeJesus was last seen in the Ohio city on April 2, 2004, on her way home from school.
Michelle Knight
Michelle Knight was last seen on August 22, 2002, when she was 21.
She also escaped from Ariel Castro’s house with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus on May 6, 2013.
Steve Carter
At 35 years old, Steve Carter discovered he was a missing person after an online search on Missingkids.com.
His biological father, Mark Barnes, reported him missing more than three decades ago after his mother, Charlotte Moriarty, took him for a walk and didn’t return. He had been adopted at age 4 from an orphanage in Honolulu.
Kimberly and Kelly Yates
Kimberly and Kelly Yates were found 30 years after they went missing. In 1985, their mother Elaine Yates kidnapped her. Kimberly was 3 years old and Kelly was 10 months old at the time of their abduction.
The family had been living in Houston under aliases names. Elaine Yates went by the name Liana Waldberg.
Sabrina Allen
Authorities found Sabrina Allen at age 17, 12 years after being abducted by her noncustodial mother from Austin, TX.
She was found in a town southeast of Mexico City and reunited with her father, Greg Allen.
Sabine Dardenne
Abducted while riding her bike in 1996, 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne was kept in in Marc Dutroux’ tiny basement, where she was chained and sexually abused regularly. After being held for 74 days she asked Dutroux for a friend.
His car was recognized when he kidnapped 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez. The girls were found two days after Dutroux had been arrested. Laetitia pent 6 days imprisoned with Sabine.
Erica Pratt
In 2002, Erica Pratt age 6, was kidnapped off a Philadelphia street by two men right in front of her friend, Rani Byrd. Rani ran to Erica’s grandmother to report what happened.
In an attempt to collect ransom money James Burns, and Edward Johnson, kidnapped Erica. They bound her wrists and ankles with duct tape and took her to a vacant house. Amazingly, Erica chewed through the tape, and broke a window to escape.
Elijah Wong and Donnie Simmons
After more than a month two-year-old Elijah Wong and seven-year-old Donnie Simmons were found after being reported missing in Louisiana.
Abducted from different addresses by their mother, Antoinette Wong, and her boyfriend, Donnie and Elijah were taken into custody by Child Protective Services when Antoinette’s car was spotted swerving on the highway.
Connie McCallister
16 year old Connie McCallister vanished from her Wisconsin home in 2004. McCallister told authorities that she was swept away to Mexico when she was drugged by her then-boyfriend when she was located in Mexico, married to another man with three children in 2013.
She was able to make contact with her family and returned home.
Danielle Cramer
In June 2006, Danielle Cramer went missing at age 15. A year later police had gone to the Adam Gault’s house in West Hartford, CT to arrest him as he was suspected of murder.
Instead they managed to free Danielle who was locked in a secret upstairs cupboard.