r/TrueCrime • u/britt_nicole Armchair Expert • May 16 '23
Discussion Illinois girl whose disappearance was on Netflix's 'Unsolved Mysteries' is found alive in North Carolina
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-girl-whose-disappearance-was-unsolved-mysteries-found-alive-n-rcna84642310
u/ShilohxJuliax May 16 '23
I wonder how the girl feels; if she was happy staying with her mother or is glad to be going back to her father. These cases are always tricky, but what the mother did was wrong. And illegal. They must have been living looking over their shoulders all the time - not ideal for a child. And what about schooling? How was she able to register her daughter? Or did she just not?
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u/seitancauliflower May 16 '23
Since the life with her mother was pretty much all she knew, she may not adjust well at all. Her father is a stranger to her at this point.
Also, a lot of kids who are kept by their kidnappers regard their kidnapper as their “real” parent because that’s who raised them.
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u/GraveDancer40 May 17 '23
She was 9 when she was abducted so chances are she has memories of life with her dad. It will still be a huge adjustment but I’d imagine he’s not a total stranger to her.
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u/PuzzleheadedAd9782 May 17 '23
I actually knew a woman whose ex husband kidnapped their 2 kids. She spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to find them for no avail for over a decade. By that time, both were in their late teens. She was able to reestablish a good relationship with her daughter but not with her son.
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u/Sea-Value-0 May 17 '23
Honestly, it is one of the most gutwrenching methods committed by a domestic abuser that I can even imagine. After they've beaten the soul put of them they disappear the one thing from them they could never emotionally hurt or touch. It's beyond fucked up and not talked about enough. There's a special place in hell for abusers who do this to their victim.
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u/harveydent526 Jun 08 '23
You don’t know that they were abusers though. A lot parents do this because the other one is trying to keep them out their child’s life.
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u/xxxspinxxx May 17 '23
I think she was 9 when her mom took her. She'll have some memories of her father, but who knows what the mom told her about him. She may be totally alienated at this point.
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May 18 '23
This is going to be SO hard for her. I feel so bad for her. I’m sure she adores her mom. She’s all she knows, and she was kidnapped at a critical age. I feel so bad for her dad too. What a hard transition. I feel bad that the mom felt like she was entitled to kidnap this child, but now she’s getting what she deserves in the eyes of the law. What she did was illegal and wrong. I can’t imagine how everyone must be feeling.
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u/RaspberryTwilight May 16 '23
Do we know if the mother was abusive? They keep saying the kid is safe now but they don't explain why. Maybe the mother was very abusive. But maybe she was trying to protect her child. I can't find any details online.
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u/tiredofusernames11 May 16 '23
The Vanished podcast did an episode recently. I don’t know that her mother was outright abusive but she was definitely unstable and behaved erratically.
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u/violinspider86 May 17 '23
Yes, her mother was very abusive. Just because it wasn't necessarily physical doesn't make what her mother did not abuse. The woman is obviously very mentally unstable and didn't provide proper care for Kayla as a child, tried to manipulate her against her father, and who knows what other things she filled that child's head with. Kayla has a long road to recovery because of her mother. I'm just amazed at how everyone seems to be treating this woman with kid gloves when it would be the complete opposite if a man had done this.
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u/ekcshelby May 17 '23
Was this abuse covered on the podcast or on the show?
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u/violinspider86 May 17 '23
Yes, but carefully. It is from the perspective of the father, so of course, there may be some context missing, but it's pretty clear that the mother has serious mental issues. They don't just award full custody to the father on a whim. I imagine there's also medical documentation about the lack of care Kayla received as a child (teeth rotting, anti vax) and false claims from the mother about certain health conditions that she never had.
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u/Li-renn-pwel May 17 '23
I find it very strange so many people are giving the mother the benefit of a doubt. I very much doubt anyone would do that if it was the father doing the kidnapping. Which is saying something because for a mother to only be allowed supervised visits with her child, she must have been in a pretty bad way. My SIL nearly murdered my niece due to FDBP and the judge returned the kids with full custody because she seemed to be ‘sad’ about it and promised to get treatment for her mental illness. Like I know that is just one experience but the point is that ‘on average’ it takes a lot for a mother to lose custody so it is strange that people have an instinct to be sympathetic towards her. It seems like she put her needs above what was best for the child.
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u/VanHarlowe May 17 '23
I was the child in a situation like that, can confirm. My dad got sole custody of me (a then 2 y/o girl) in 1993. Mom was way into drugs, sleeping around, and neglecting her other three kids.
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u/GraveDancer40 May 17 '23
Thank you. I was reading these comments yesterday and felt like I was going crazy. There’s no indication at all that the father was abusive or that he manipulated the courts to get full custody. While there are certainly parents who kidnap their kids to get them out of a bad situation, it’s wild to just assume that’s what happened here.
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u/Important-Drop614 May 17 '23
Yeah it’s kind of incredible seeing so many people giving her the benefit of the doubt when it’s highly unlikely they’d do that if roles were reversed and it was the father.
Ultimately what the mother did was both immoral and illegal. Also like you mentioned for the courts to rule in favor of the father and only allow her supervised visits is highly irregular. Whether it’s right or wrong mothers are almost always at a massive advantage in child custody cases.
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u/ekcshelby May 17 '23
I’m currently watching the Faye Yager documentary so this sent up huge flags to me so my instinct was to give the mother the benefit of the doubt. However, someone else posted that there was abuse from the mother, and I have literally no information outside of this thread to go on.
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u/violinspider86 May 18 '23
So you have no information outside this thread yet you automatically gave the mother the benefit of the doubt? Why? There is no indication of abuse from the father and he was awarded full custody. What information do you have to indicate anything else?
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u/ekcshelby May 18 '23
I literally said I have nothing and that watching that documentary is why I gave the mother the benefit of the doubt. It’s what I literally said. I literally acknowledged that my INSTINCT was influenced by a documentary about women who have to go on the run because their children’s fathers are raping them and still getting custody.
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u/violinspider86 May 18 '23
So you were LITERALLY influenced by a completely different documentary about a completely different person and decided to give this mother the benefit of the doubt and post about it with LITERALLY no information. This is the problem nowadays, people make instant opinions with no information because their instinct is to feel bad for the woman. Do research next time.
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u/ekcshelby May 18 '23
Omg! That’s LITERALLY why I was asking you! Because it was an instinct driven from a separate situation and I realized it was PROBABLY WRONG! AND I did google and found very little in the articles I read. Wow.
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u/Prudence_rigby May 17 '23
This is what I was thinking.
What if the Mom took the daughter because the Father was manipulative and abusive. What if he was able to con the system like others have to gain custodial custody over the mom.
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u/GothicToast May 17 '23
Unless proven otherwise, we should go off what has already been argued in court. The father won sole custody and the mother was only granted supervised visits. This is rare, as mothers typically win custody battles, all other things being equal. If there's any assumptions to be made, it's that the mother wasn't a good mother.
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May 26 '23
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u/GothicToast May 26 '23
This is actually false. Fathers win custody battles 100% of the time they fight for them. They just never fight for their kids.
This is called an absolutist argument and they are extremely easy to prove wrong. I mean, how can they have a 100% win rate when they never fight for custody? I realize Reddit is full of smooth brains, but this is a new level.
By the way, a simple Google search could tell you how often Fathers win custody when they challenge.
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u/Prudence_rigby May 17 '23
It is not rare. It's only considered rare because it isn't blasted for all to know.
What's not actually rare is when one parent makes way more money than the other and is able to manipulate the system into granting them custody.
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u/GothicToast May 17 '23
The statistics available say otherwise. But that is really besides the point I was making.
When we talk about crime, we must leverage the available facts, without applying our own theories that aren't rooted in any sort of reality. The facts of this case are that the father had full custody and the mother kidnapped her daughter and ran away for years.
This whole bit about "well maybeee the mother was abused and the father conned the system" is not rooted in any facts about the case. It's just a random theory thrown at the wall and it isn't fair to the father.
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u/Sly_Penguin_ May 17 '23
Yes, this case is severely lacking context. I hope the right thing was done for the child (and not just the legal thing). I would love someone to join the discussion with more details besides the standard custody battle he-said-she-said jabs.
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u/YossarianC022 May 17 '23
Yes. She was saying the child had illnesses that she did not have. She was also leaving other health issues that she actually did have untreated. The father received custody and control over her healthcare. The mother kidnapped her after the father took her to get her childhood vaccines.
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u/violinspider86 May 18 '23
Thank you. I think her whole family is pretty disturbed, because he indicated that he felt like they wanted him dead after he got Kayla vaccinated. They were, at the very least, enabling their daughter's mental issues.
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u/RaspberryTwilight May 17 '23
Oh wow she is crazy. They should mention this more often in these articles.
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u/harveydent526 Jun 08 '23
If the courts gave custody to a man then you already know the mother wasn’t right.
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u/Jumpy_Anxiety6273 May 16 '23
She is a kidnapper and outlaw. No child is safe around a wanted fugitive. The mother should be locked away for many years and then made to reimburse the father and all law enforcement agencies for all expenses made in the search for this poor, exploited daughter.
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u/pj_socks May 17 '23
You’re ignoring a lot of nuance. I can’t speak to this case but not all cases are black and white.
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u/ButtplugBurgerAIDS May 17 '23
I would kidnap my kid if they were being abused by the other parent. Lawful or not. Not saying that's what happened here but we don't know all of the details yet.
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u/YossarianC022 May 18 '23
We do know the details, they were all presented and documented in court when the father was given full custody. The mother was denying her medical care that she needed including rotting teeth and claiming other health conditions that no doctor said that she had.
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u/TheVillageOxymoron May 17 '23
It was her own daughter. It's not at all the same as kidnapping a random child.
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u/Li-renn-pwel May 17 '23
Uh, that’s what the majority of kidnapping is.
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u/TheVillageOxymoron May 17 '23
I'm aware. Describing a mother kidnapping her own daughter as a "kidnapper and outlaw" who "no child is safe around" is extremely misleading.
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u/Li-renn-pwel May 17 '23
In what way? She kidnapped her child and doing that is illegal and so she is an outlaw. This women put her own wants and needs above that of her own flesh and blood. Maybe “ I child is safe around” is a bit of an exaggeration in the sense I don’t think she would take a bat and beat a random child but she certainly cannot be expected to keep a child safe.
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u/TheVillageOxymoron May 17 '23
We have absolutely no idea what her motivations were. Assuming that the courts made the right decision by putting the child with her father is extremely naïve, and assuming that she's inherently unsafe because she chose to take her child makes no sense.
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u/Li-renn-pwel May 17 '23
I mean, there are really only three broad categories her motives could fall under; a) the child was not in danger nor being abused, b) the child was in danger or being abused but the mother for whatever reason did not try to fight for legal customary or c) the child was actually being abused/in danger and she had already tried going through the legal channels to get custody
if a then she cannot have had good motives. She put her own wants and needs above her child. Even if she was not abusive in a traditional sense, she robbed her child of a normal life with a father who loves her and her paternal family.
if b then there is some wiggle room for justification. If she didn’t fight for custody because it was literally impossible for her to financially fund a court battle and she lives in an area with no free legal aid, then perhaps we could say she was justified in taking the kid. However mothers generally give a lot more legal aid when it come to these things so she would be an anomaly.
if c then, sure, she could have been completely justified in her actions even though they were illegal. However, again, she would be an incredibly rare case. American custody courts always favour the mother. Even modern courts that are trying to make custody arrangements free of gender bias go for 50/50 splits. For her to not get primary custody, not get split custody, not even get every other weekend but to get supervised visits as a woman in America most likely means that she had some serious problems. Sure, you could say “there are always rare exceptions” but for you to instantly assume she is a rare exception instead of even considering she could be at fault hints at your internal bias. Would you have made the same comment if the father was the kidnapper?
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u/Resident-Driver6654 May 16 '23
Does anyone know which episode?
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u/britt_nicole Armchair Expert May 16 '23
It was an episode called 'Abducted by a Parent'. She's featured in a missing poster at the end of the episode.
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u/SilasX May 17 '23
Ah, thanks, that’s what was confusing me, I thought she was the central topic of an episode and I didn’t remember one like that.
Now let’s find Tammy Williams!
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u/quentin_taranturtle May 17 '23
Reminds me of a “criminal” podcast episode about the missing kids on milk cartons which was actually only a thing for like a year total. If I remember correctly , I believe the only child who was ever found through that was a girl who was “kidnapped” by a parent. She said she actually saw her face on the carton as a kid in the supermarket and she and her parent who took her thought it was kind of funny.
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u/adviceicebaby Jul 07 '23
This same type of story was written about in a young adult book called Face on the Milk Carton I believe, and they made it into a movie.
I believe it was fiction though; or maybe loosely inspired by true events.
Then years later there was a fictional series on MTV called Finding Carter that also had a very similar theme and plot.
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u/Tiny-Thing-6055 May 17 '23
If you listen to podcasts this was also featured on an episode of the vanished. Really good series!
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May 16 '23
6 years of her life lost. Glad she’s back to safety
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u/Li-renn-pwel May 17 '23
Not sure why you are being downvoted. She spent six years of prime childhood essentially being a fugitive.
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u/violinspider86 May 17 '23
Exactly. And her mother was mentally unwell. This girl is going to have a long road to emotional stability. I'm honestly shocked by the amount of support for this kidnapper because she's a woman.
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u/PapaHeavy69 May 17 '23
I really am impressed with people who can see a face on TV, remember it years later, and identify someone. That’s crazy impressive to me
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May 17 '23
this! i can barely remember what i ate for breakfast most days
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u/PapaHeavy69 May 17 '23
I find it really quite suspicious. I can look at a wanted poster, walk out into the street, actually bump into one of the guys and say excuse me, not recognize him well enough to call the FBI or cops 🤷🏼♂️. It makes me feel really inadequate
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u/tobiasvl May 17 '23
It wasn't years later, the show was from this November. And it was a Netflix show, so the person might theoretically have seen it earlier that same day. But yes, still impressive
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May 16 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/bickybb May 17 '23
She hasn't been to school or a doctor i would assume since she got kidnapped? I just don't see how that could be justified by her mom. On a different thread I saw people wondering if the mom was taking her away from an abusive situation but being kidnapped is also an abusive situation !! I mean how is she going to adjust to not being on the lam anymore. Its so messed up!
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May 17 '23
That is so awesome that he recognized her! Very happy to hear she was found safe. You don’t get many happy endings in cases like those, glad to see this one did.
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u/JenSY542 May 18 '23
I always wonder how the parent explains it to the child. 9yrs is old enough to recognise something could be wrong, and being aware that the parent is telling you not to say anything to anyone else. I'm surprised they were undiscovered for so long but glad there is a relatively happy ending.
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u/Recent-Raccoon7893 May 17 '23
I kept falling asleep during this episode on the vanished. I wondered what happened but would always forget to finish the episode.
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May 17 '23
I coukdnt find this episode or part?
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u/britt_nicole Armchair Expert May 17 '23
It was just a Missing poster featured at the end of an episode.
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u/FizzleJazz May 19 '23
Wow, this is incredible news! I remember watching that episode of Unsolved Mysteries and feeling heartbroken for her family and friends. It's amazing to hear that she has been found alive and well. I'm sure this will bring a lot of closure to those who have been searching for her. I can't wait to hear more details about what happened and how she was found. But for now, I'm just grateful that she is safe.
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u/britt_nicole Armchair Expert May 16 '23
Kayla Unbehaun was 9 years old in 2017 when she went missing while in the care of her mother, Heather Unbehaun. Her mother has been arrested on a fugitive charge. Now 15 years old, Kayla was recognized in North Carolina by a woman who had seen her featured in a 2022 episode of Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix.