A girl who was abducted when she was just aged three has been found alive more than 42 years later – having no idea that she was a victim in the first place.
Michelle Marie Newton, now 46, was allegedly abducted by her own mother from Kentucky, US, in April 1983.
She spent the rest of her life with a different name, and no idea she had been in the national missing-child database, or that her parent had been on the FBI’s ‘Top eight Most Wanted parental-kidnapping fugitives’ list.
The missing girl was told in November of her previous life and has since reunited with her father, after more than four decades apart.
Michelle’s mother Debra Newton left home with her daughter claiming she was moving early as part of the family’s plans to relocate to Georgia.
However when father Joseph Newton arrived in the US state, Debra and their three-year-old daughter were gone.
According to a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office press release, there was a ‘final phone call’ sometime between 1984 and 1985 before ‘both mother and daughter vanished.’
A desperate search for the girl began and flyers went up suggesting areas of Georgia where she might be.
The mother was named in a custodial-interference indictment and was included on the FBI’s ‘Top eight Most Wanted parental-kidnapping fugitives’.
The case was dropped by Kentucky in 2000 when they could no longer reach the distraught father.
Michelle’s name was taken off the national child missing database five years later.
The investigation was reopened in 2016 at the request of a family member and a grand jury re-indicted Debra in 2017.
Then investigators received a Crime Stoppers tip off that the mum had been spotted in Florida going by a different name, according to the press release.
Officers compared a recent photo of her to an 1983 image and ‘confirmed the resemblance’ the sheriff’s press release said.
The tip led the police to her home in The Villages, Florida, on November 24, where she had been living in a retirement community as ‘Sharon Nealy’, WFTV9 reported.
As the police cars rolled in to Debra’s drive, a friend jokes ‘They’re coming for you, Sharon!’ – which indeed they were.
She was arrested by officers, who then went to daughter Michelle’s door to break the news.
‘You’re not who you think you are. You’re a missing person. You’re Michelle Marie Newton,’ they told her, Michelle told WLKY.
She was stunned to find out she’d been living under a false identity her whole life and called up Kentucky authorities to tell them she never realised she was a victim.
Then, a reunion was planned with her dad who been searching for her for 42 years.
Josephtold WLKY: ‘She’s always been in our heart. I can’t explain that moment of walking in and getting to put my arms back around my daughter.
‘I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything. It was just like seeing her when she was first born. It was like an angel.’
Michelle and Joseph were both present as Debra was arraigned on a felony charge of custodial interference.
The mum was released on bond posted by a family member.
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