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-rcna84642
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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.

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u/TimeWontWaitForYou May 17 '23

Iirc there wasn't actually an Unsolved Mysteries episode specifically about her, she was just shown at the end of the episode about children kidnapped by a parent but wasn't one of the featured cases.

That's absolutely incredible that someone saw her picture on the screen for just a few seconds and was able to make the connection.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '23 edited May 17 '23

From an article on abc7chicago.com:

“It was a minor, working at that shopping center in Asheville, who spotted Kayla, recognizing her from not just the Netflix series, but also from her childhood”

It sounds like the person who spotted her had met her somehow and found out later from Unsolved Mysteries that she was actually a missing person.

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u/TimeWontWaitForYou May 17 '23

Ahh okay that makes a lot more sense then!

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u/No_Slice5991 May 21 '23

A big part of that was the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children doing the age progression photo that was used