Most Famous Child Kidnappings We Can’t Forget

These stories tell the cruelties of child kidnappings but also the heroic acts that led to putting systems (like the AMBER Alert) in place to help missing child

It’s a certain kind of horror story, one that’s all too easy to translate to your own life, if you’re a parent. The child at the bus stop. The one who was riding her bike. The teen, or the infant, asleep in bed.

While the equation is more or less the same — an innocent child, met with evil or greed — the results vary. Some return scarred but alive. Many don’t. And still others don’t make headlines at all. Perhaps the only silver lining is that the kind of kidnapping or child abduction we fear most, by a stranger, is the exception. They account for less than 1 percent of all missing children.

Still, these are the stories we just can’t shake. Not only do they tell the cruelties of child kidnappings but also the heroic acts that led to systems (like the AMBER Alert) now in place to help missing persons.

Jayme Closs

Kidnapping victim Jayme Closs, second from left, appears with her family and supporters to receive a “hometown hero” award from the Wisconsin Assembly on May 15, 2019, in Madison, Wisconsin. Scott Bauer / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: Oct. 15, 2018

Date Found: Jan. 10, 2019

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Jeff Baenen / AP Photo

“It was the situation every parent fears — and one that experts say is exceedingly rare: a targeted attack on a child by a total stranger,” wrote Matt Furber and Mitch Smith in The New York Times. The disappearance of 13-year-old Jayme Closs, and the murder of her parents, in their rural Barron, Wisconsin, home, baffled law enforcement when it happened on Oct. 15, 2018.

Then, after 88 days, Closs escaped captivity and got help from a woman who happened to be walking her dog nearby. Closs had been held by 21-year-old Jake Patterson, a local loner who painstakingly planned her abduction after seeing her at a middle school bus stop. Patterson has since pled guilty to homicide and kidnapping.

Amanda Berry

On May 6, 2014, Amanda Berry is photographed in Washington on the anniversary of her escape from a Cleveland home where she and two others were held captive for a decade. Cliff Owen / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: April 21, 2003

Date Found: May 6, 2013

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Christina Milton, 8, left, shows a piece of artwork she made from a photo of her cousin, Amanda Berry, that she cut out of a missing person poster in Elizabethton, Tennessee, on May 8, 2013. Patrick Murphy-Racey / AP Photo

On May 6, 2013, three separate missing persons cases were solved at once, when Charles Ramsey heard a woman screaming for help, broke down the door of the shabby house next door in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood and let the woman, Amanda Berry, call 911.

Berry was one of three abducted women being held captive by Ariel Castro in his basement. She disappeared the day before her 17th birthday and was featured on “America’s Most Wanted.” During her captivity, Berry gave birth to a daughter, Jocelyn. Castro was confirmed as the father. After pleading guilty to 937 different charges, Castro hung himself in prison. The home on Seymour Avenue — known as the “House of Horrors” — has since been replaced with a garden.

Michelle Knight

In this Aug. 1, 2013, file photo, Michelle Knight sits in the courtroom during a break in the sentencing phase for Ariel Castro in Cleveland. Tony Dejak / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: Aug. 23, 2002

Date Found: May 6, 2013

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Michelle Knight smiles during an interview in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 26, 2014. Tony Dejak / AP Photo

Michelle Knight was another one of the women held by Castro. She disappeared when she was 21 years old on the very day she was scheduled for a court appearance to gain child custody of her son, Joey.

When she was found, authorities admitted that they had spent less time in search of Knight since she was technically an adult and they believed she had run away due to frustrations from the custody battle.

Gina DeJesus

This Feb. 24, 2014, file photo shows Ohio Gov. John Kasich, from left, introducing Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight during his State of the State address at the Performing Arts Center in Medina, Ohio. Tony Dejak / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: April 2, 2004

Date Found: May 6, 2013

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

On May 6, 2014, kidnapping survivors Gina DeJesus, left, and Amanda Berry are honored at the annual National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Hope Awards dinner in Washington. Cliff Owen / AP Photo

The third woman in the Castro kidnapping case was Gina DeJesus, who went missing at age 14. She was the only one who had a connection to Castro.

She was friends with Castro’s daughter, Arlene, who she was reported as being the last person to see DeJesus before her disappearance.

Jaycee Lee Dugard

On May 7, 2013, Jaycee Lee Dugard and her mother, Terry Probyn, appear with their Hope Award at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children annual Hope Awards in Washington. Cliff Owen / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: June 10, 1991

Date Found: Aug. 26, 2009

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Three temporary tents are set up next to a shack where authorities are digging and searching in this area next to a backyard of a home in Antioch, California, where authorities say kidnapped victim Jaycee Lee Dugard lived. Paul Sakuma / AP Photo

In 1991, 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped from a school bus stop on a South Lake Tahoe street in California, right in front of her stepfather. She was held for 18 years in a series of tents and sheds in the backyard of a ramshackle Antioch, California, house, during which she gave birth to two daughters, having been repeatedly raped by her captor, Phillip Garrido (a registered sex offender).

Dugard was 29 years old when Garrido’s parole officers unearthed the truth about her identity, and Garrido and his wife admitted their crimes. Dugard had been held captive less than 200 miles from her childhood home.

Elizabeth Smart

Elizabeth Smart attends the “I Am Elizabeth Smart” panel during the A&E portion of the 2017 Summer TCA’s at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on July 28, 2017, in Beverly Hills, California. Richard Shotwell / Invision / AP

Date of Disappearance: June 5, 2002

Date Found: March 12, 2003

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Elizabeth Smart arrives at the federal court house for the closing arguments in the trial of Brian David Mitchell on Dec. 9, 2010, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Colin E. Braley / FR123678 AP

Elizabeth Smart was just 14 years old when, in 2002, she was taken by knifepoint from her own bedroom in a neighborhood of Salt Lake City, her younger sister asleep next to her. The perpetrator? Mormon religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell.

He and his wife, Wanda Barzee, had prepared an encampment in the woods nearby, where Smart was tied to a tree, abused and repeatedly raped, over the course of nine months. In March 2003, Smart was with Mitchell in a Walmart in Sandy, Utah, when someone recognized her from an episode of “America’s Most Wanted” — and called the police.

Amber Hagerman

Glenda Whitson holds a picture of her granddaughter, Amber, 9, along with flyers advertising for the whereabouts of the missing child on Jan. 15, 1996, in Arlington, Texas. Bill Janscha / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: Jan. 13, 1996

Date Found: Jan. 18, 1996

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Pallbearers carry the casket containing Amber Hagerman out of the First Methodist Church in Arlington, Texas, on Jan. 20, 1996. LM OTERO / AP Photo

In January 1996, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was riding her bike in the parking lot of a grocery store in Arlington, Texas, when an unknown kidnapper snatched her and drove away with her in his pickup truck. Her body was found floating in a creek five days later.

Law enforcement teamed up with media to rapidly disseminate information about the abduction — a system that would become the AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert, which is still in use today.

Polly Klaas

This is a 1993 file photo of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma, California, whose body was found in December 1993 in nearby Cloverdale. AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: Oct. 1, 1993

Date Found: Dec. 4, 1993

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

This Dec. 5, 1993 file photo shows seven-year-old Lizeth Lopez holding a candle and a photo of Polly Klaas in Petaluma, California. AP

On Oct. 1, 1993, Polly Klaas was abducted from a slumber party in her own home in Petaluma, California. She was 12 years old. The intruder — Richard Allen Davis — had a knife.

He tied up the two other girls, took Polly, then strangled her and left her dead body atop a pile of trash in nearby Cloverdale, California. Davis confessed to the crime in December of that year and led investigators to her body.

Adam Walsh

John and Reve Walsh appear before a House Judiciary subcommittee on Missing Children on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 18, 1981. John Duricka / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: July 27, 1981

Date Found: Aug. 12, 1981

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

John Walsh talks about his son, Adam, whose photo is displayed, and his murder during a press conference in Hollywood, Florida, on Dec. 16, 2008. AP Photo

Fans of “America’s Most Wanted,” which ran for 25 seasons on TV, know the story of 6-year-old Adam Walsh. He was abducted while shopping with his mother at a mall in July 1981. She had left him alone for 10 minutes in the toy department — and then he was gone. His severed head was discovered weeks later in Vero Beach, Florida.

Adam’s father, John, became a passionate voice in the missing children’s movement, pushing for the Missing Children’s Act of 1982 and other legislation, and also hosting “America’s Most Wanted.” In 2008, police declared that Ottis Toole, a convicted serial killer, had killed Adam. Toole died in prison in 1996.

Etan Patz

In this March 26, 1981, file photo, Julie Patz, mother of Etan Patz, speaks on NBC-TV’s “Today” show in New York. David Pickoff / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: May 25, 1979

Date Found: Never

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

A newspaper with a photograph of Etan Patz is part of a makeshift memorial in the SoHo neighborhood of New York on May 28, 2012. Mark Lennihan / AP Photo

It took nearly 40 years to solve the case of Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who walked to a bus stop, two blocks away from his home in New York City, for the first time by himself in May 1979 — and was never seen again.

Patz would become one of the first missing children to appear on the side of milk cartons, which heralded a new era of vigilance and fear with respect to missing children. Pedro Hernandez, the man convicted of Patz’s murder in 2017, was 19 years old when Patz disappeared and had no criminal record.

Patty Hearst

Patty Hearst, her fate in the hands of the jury, leaves the federal building in San Francisco, on March 19, 1976, after the judge turned her bank robbery trial over to the jury for deliberation and verdict. AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: Feb. 4, 1974

Date “Found”: April 3, 1974

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Patty Hearst has a big smile as she faces a news conference in the San Francisco federal building on Nov. 19, 1976. AP Photo

A certain type of kidnapping is less about murder — and more about money and notoriety. Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, one of the richest men in the U.S., was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California, home in February 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a renegade Marxist group that wanted to topple capitalism in the country. (The SLA didn’t ask for a traditional ransom but for the Hearst family to give $70 worth of food to every needy Californian, costing about $400 million — which they more or less did).

Famously, Hearst, then 19 years old, joined the SLA — a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome. She made the announcement on audiotape on April 3, 1974, and was soon after seen robbing a bank in San Francisco under her pseudonym, “Tania.” Hearst was eventually freed when she was arrested for a slew of illegal activities, about 19 months after she had been taken.

John Paul Getty III

John Paul Getty III answers newsmen in a local police station in Rome after questioning by a magistrate on Jan. 25, 1974. Claudio Luffoli / AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: July 10, 1973

Date Found: Dec. 15, 1973

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

John Paul Getty III, escorted by an unidentified police official, arrives at Rome police headquarters on Dec. 15, 1973, after his release. Giuseppe Anastasi / AP Photo

In 1973, Jean Paul Getty’s grandson, John Paul Getty III, was abducted in Rome when the boy was 16. Famously, the elder Getty refused to pay the $17 million ransom (though he could easily afford it) because he believed it would mean his other 13 grandchildren could become targets. And that’s even after the kidnappers cut off one of John Paul’s ears and mailed it to him.

The grandfather finally negotiated a deal to get him back for $2.9 million, of which he paid $2.2 million and lent the remainder to his son, who was to repay him with 4 percent interest.

Frank Sinatra Jr.

The slender 19-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr. speaks with newsmen after his abductors freed him early on Dec. 11, 1963. AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: Dec. 8, 1963

Date Found: Dec. 11, 1963

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Singer Frank Sinatra gets together with his son, Frank Jr. on Sept. 12, 1963, at the Americana Hotel in New York. AP Photo

Frank Sinatra Jr. was not close with his father, Frank Sinatra Sr. But the elder Sinatra nevertheless paid the $240,000 ransom demanded by Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, who abducted the then 19-year-old Sinatra from a hotel in Lake Tahoe, California.

However, the kidnappers botched the plan and released the younger Sinatra before receiving the funds.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.

This is a 1932 photograph of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., shortly before he was kidnapped on March 1 from his parents’ new home at East Amwell, N.J. AP Photo

Date of Disappearance: March 1, 1932

Date Found: May 12, 1932

The Story Behind the Kidnapping

Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., Betty Gow, Betty Mowat Goway

Baby Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. is taken for a stroll in his buggy by his nurse Betty Gow at the summer estate of his grandfather U.S. Senator Dwight W. Morrow at North Haven, Maine, on July 30, 1931. AP Photo

In March 1932, Charles Lindbergh, the famous pilot, was also pressed for ransom for the return of his 20-month-old son, Charles Jr. The baby has been abducted from his crib in the family’s second-floor nursery in East Amwell, New Jersey.

The ever-increasing demands for ransom were paid; however, the baby was found in a shallow grave that May, less than 5 miles away from the Lindberghs’ home.

The Ones Whose Names You Don’t Know

This undated photo provided by the Milwaukee Police Department shows Noelani Robinson, a 2-year-old girl who was found dead on March 16, 2019, after the arrest of a man suspected of fatally shooting her mother in Milwaukee. Milwaukee Police Department via AP

It’s worth noting that while stories, such as these, dominate headlines and news feeds, plenty of kidnappings, missing and abducted children — particularly girls and boys of color — aren’t reported in the press. In fact, the FBI estimates that more than one-third of missing children are black.

Because of the stark imbalance in attention, Derrica Wilson, a former police officer, and her sister-in-law, Natalie Wilson, started the Black & Missing Foundation in 2008. Through its efforts, the foundation has helped recover more than 300 missing persons in the past 11 years.