PA PA - Ke'Shaun Vanderhorst, 2, Philadelphia, 25 Sept 1995

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Paradise

Paradise

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The doenetwork site has very sketchy details as to what happened to him...here's the link:
http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/1201dmpa.html

Meggily Weggily's site has a lot more detail, and I found out more information:
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/v/vanderhorst_keshaun.html

Ke'Shaun was last seen at his residence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 25, 1995. His mother, Tina Vanderhorst, told her relatives and police that the Department of Human Services (DHS) had taken the child, but the DHS had no child by that name in their custody.
Tina had an alcohol problem at the time of Ke'Shaun's disappearance. Investigators searched her apartment and described it as filthy, cluttered and rat-infested. She had three other children who all died before they were a year old, two of them supposedly from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and the third child from pneumonia. Two additional children lived with their paternal grandmother at the time Ke'Shaun vanished. Police began reinvestigating Tina's children's deaths after Ke'Shaun disappeared, as it is extremely rare to have more than one SIDS death occur in the same family.
Tina eventually admitted that she sold Ke'Shaun to an unidentified African-American female for $500. She is described as being approximately 35 to 40 years old in 1995, 5'4 and 140 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. The abductor's ears are pierced. She may use the alias "Virginia Graham."
Neither Vanderhorst nor the unidentified woman have been heard from again. His mother pleaded guilty to child endangerment in connection with his case.​
​

He's such a beautiful little boy, and his story has always been one that has stuck with me. It breaks my heart to think about what might've happened to him. Maybe this "Virginia Graham" is still out there and is taking care of him. Anyone have any insight to this case?
 
I do not believe there was a 'Virginia Graham'. It just never felt right. There are articles that come up via google on paid or free trial sites, mostly Phila. Tribune, all from 1995. (Just a highlight, the free trial wants a CC)http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-2377094.html I find it hard to believe they found no evidence linking mom to his disappearance other than her changing statements. Long arrest record, as recently as 2008. Found nothing about any results re: the 2 previous SIDS deaths.
 
You know, back when I made the original post I was pretty naive. Considering the mom's history with her prior children, it makes it hard to believe that she would just "sell" him. It would be more reasonable to think that she harmed him in some way while she was under the influence of alcohol. I still think about him sometimes if I'm in the area, hopefully someday his mom will admit what really happened to him.
 
Sometimes it seems like this little boy was just forgotten, no news follow ups, seems like the investigation stalled in 1995 and that was that. I wish he was taken by a nice lady to love and care for him. But my heart says he's gone :(. KeShaun was one of the first I (tried) to research. Mom's arrest record and report of alcohol/drugs suggests to me she would not be able to hide evidence that well, who knows. Maybe someday she'll have a conscience attack, or a flashback.
 
:bump: Bumping for Ke'Shaun...I still think of him often.
 
Ke'Shaun's mother was arrested a couple of months ago in a different case.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/Woman-accused-of-fatally-stabbing-man-77-times-arrested-in-Mayfair.html?mobi=true

A 52-year-old woman accused of fatally stabbing a man 77 times in his East Germantown apartment, then setting his body ablaze last month, was arrested in Mayfair Thursday afternoon, authorities said Friday.

Tina Vanderhorst was taken into custody without incident at a female friend's apartment on the 2900 block of Benner Street at about 2 p.m. Thursday, said Jim Burke, assistant chief deputy for the U.S. Marshals Service's Eastern Pennsylvania field office.

She is accused of fatally stabbing Robert Lynch, 64, in his apartment on the 500 block of East Church Lane, then setting his body on fire on the morning of Sept. 12, police said.
Click to expand...

Vanderhorst has had trouble with the law in the past. In 1995, she was arrested on charges that she sold her toddler son to a stranger for $500, then used the money to buy crack cocaine.

Authorities did not know what eventually happened to Ke-Shaun. Vanderhorst, police have said, offered several explanations for her son's disappearance.
Click to expand...
 
well good lord , I hope outright murder will lock her away forever but probably not . I'm betting on 2-5 years
 
If LE had managed to send her to prison for Ke'Shaun's murder, this murder could have been prevented :( I don't believe for a minute that she sold him :(
 
looks like her trial won't be til September. Maybe they can offer a deal if she gives up info where Ke'Shaun is.
 
Unbelievable...and no follow up story that I could find either that would explain how she got out of a murder charge. This lady is like a cat, she certainly has nine lives when it comes to the law.


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I just read about this case in a book on missing persons in PA...what a sad story! I don't think that poor baby had a chance, and it doesn't look like he'll ever get any justice.
 
Nicole Weisensee and Joe O'Dowd, "Tot case eyes foul play," Philadelphia Daily News, 20 October 1995, 5.
Tot case eyes foul play_.jpg
Police had launched an investigation into the 2-year-old boy's disappearance after being informed that his mother, Tina Vanderhorst, had told two of her children that they wouldn't see Ke'shaun again.

Vanderhorst, 31, told police earlier this week that the Department of Human Services had taken Ke'shaun. A DHS spokeswoman said they did not have him in custody.

However, Lisa Coston, 28, who watched Ke'shaun at her day-care center on Willington Street near Master, said yesterday that Vanderhorst told her a different story two weeks ago.

Coston said Vanderhorst showed up on her doorstep about 1 p.m., had obviously been drinking and was very distraught over the recent breakup with her boyfriend, James Simmons.

When Coston asked her where Ke'shaun was, Vanderhorst told her his father had him. The father wasn't identified.

[...]

Vanderhorst stopped taking Ke'shaun to day care about a month ago because she became distraught over her breakup with Simmons and quit attending a cooking class, Coston said.

[...]

Police are looking for Simmons, who had lived on Allegheny Avenue near 16th. He left that address in August and owed about $1,000 in rent, a source there said.

[...]

Ellis Horton, 68, Vanderhorst's landlord, said he hadn't seen Ke'shaun in three weeks.

[...]

Three of Vanderhorst's children died as infants during the 1980s -- one of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and two of other natural causes. Yesterday, the medical examiner's office pulled the records of the three children to begin looking into their deaths.

Vanderhorst was arrested Monday for violating her parole. She had been in the Muncy State Correctional Institution on drug charges. Police said she had been caught with drugs.

Jere Downs, "Everybody knew the missing boy," Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 October 1995, B1, B4.
[part 1] [part 2]
Everybody knew the missing boy,_ pt. 1.jpg

Everybody knew the missing boy,_ pt. 2.jpg
Tina Vanderhorst used to drop the toddler off at Toot's produce stand where McCrary works on Cecil B. Moore Avenue. It happened two or three times a week.

"He would cry when he saw her walking away," McCrary said. "I just let him sit there."

A few minutes would go by before the boy would quiet down. Then, he'd wriggle down from a blue plastic chair and chase two cats around the store, under folding tables stocked high with cauliflower, green peppers, oranges and beans.

Ask about Ke-Shaun around the blocks surrounding the home of his 31-year-old mother on North 17th Street in North Philadelphia. There is scarcely a shop owner or neighbor who didn't watch the boy from time to time -- for a few minutes to overnight.

They got to know his likes and dislikes: McCrary knows that Ke-Shaun likes sugar-frosted tangerine candy and banana-flavored taffy. Kevin Roberts at Young's Market would quiet him with an orange-flavored freeze pop and lime Popsicles.

[...]

In her most recent story, Vanderhorst said the woman paid her $500 for Ke-Shaun. Vanderhorst described the woman as African American, 5-foot-4, of medium build, and wearing a cream-colored jacket, a maroon shirt and designer fingernails.

The latest story has prompted skepticism and fear among neighbors and shopkeepers who used to care for the child. Roberts says he is worried that something bad has happened to him.

"There have just been too many different stories," he said.

Vanderhorst would drop the boy off at Young's Market for up to 30 minutes at a stretch, Roberts said. He would let the toddler -- whom he called "Little Man" and "Little Shorty" -- run up and down the aisles of the bodega at 17th and Jefferson Streets, he said.

[...]

In early September, neighbors on Vanderhorst's block noticed that Ke-Shaun had climbed onto the windowsill of his mother's first-floor apartment, where he sat wailing for more than a half hour.

[...]

A week later, [neighbor] Cooper said, Vanderhorst left Ke-Shaun with a mother of three who lives down the block. It was supposed to be for 15 minutes, but the woman kept Ke-Shaun overnight. Cooper said she helped the neighbor persuade Vanderhorst's landlord to open up her apartment so they could get fresh diapers for the toddler.

Neighbors said that Ke-Shaun always wore clean clothes and never appeared to be hungry.

A gypsy-cab driver who asked to be identified only as June said he often hung out with Vanderhorst, as late as 2 a.m., drinking beer and partying in front of a Laundromat on Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

"I can't say nothing about how she treated him on the inside of her house," he said. "But outside, she was always kind to him.

It has been about a month since anyone in the neighborhood has seen the shy little boy, who would follow his mother up the street on a tiny red tricycle.

"He would smile at you as he went by," Cooper said. "But if you looked behind that smile, you could tell he was really sad."

Lea Sitton, "Rewards and posters yield little in search for boy," Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 November 1995, B2.
Rewards and posters yield little in search for boy_.jpg
Ke-Shaun's mother has told police that she gave her son to a strange woman, who then handed her $500. Tina Vanderhorst, 31, said she spent the money on drugs. She had been charged with endangering the welfare of a child, dealing in infants, and corrupting the morals of a minor. A preliminary hearing is set for Wednesday.

[...]

"I really do believe that he's alive," Kim Vanderhorst said. "I know my sister would never do anything to hurt that boy."

[...]

"It's a little odd we haven't heard something," said Police Capt. Jim Brady of the Homicide Division, which is handling the case.

[...]

The mother described the woman as black, 5-foot-4, and of medium build. She wore a cream-colored jacket and a maroon shirt and had designer fingernails. She drove a light blue four-door car, with a license plate beginning with "AL."

[...]

"The investigation is active," Brady said, "and if we were to get any information, we would certainly run on it." Still, time is an enemy.

"The longer it gets, the more difficult, and hope begins to dim."

Linda Loyd, "No-contest plea in a child-selling," Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 November 1996, B5.
No-contest plea in child-selling_.jpg
A woman who told police she sold her 2-year-old son to a stranger for $500 and then "went out and got high" on cocaine pleaded no contest yesterday to charges of selling an infant and endangering the welfare of a child.

[...]

"All I can say is that drugs take control of me ... I never meant to let this happen to my baby," Vanderhorst told police in a statement summarized by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Margiotti.

[...]

Vanderhorst was scheduled to go on trial yesterday. A jury was selected to hear the case when Public Defender Byron Houston announced that his client wanted to enter a no-contest plea.

[...]

"She is a danger to herself because of her drug involvement," Margiotti contended. "She is a danger to the community, as evidenced by what she has done with a 2-year-old child, one of the most defenseless members of our society."

[...]

Because police don't know what happened to Ke-Shaun, the charges against Vanderhorst were confined to endangering the child, rather than harming him.

Meanwhile, detectives have continued to look into the 1980s deaths of three of Vanderhorst's other children.

Linda Loyd, "'I did not sell my child,' Phila. woman pleads at sentencing," Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 January 1997, B2.
'I did not sell my child,' Phila. woman sobs at sentencing_.jpg
"I was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. I take full responsibility as far as being high," sobbed Vanderhorst, a former crack addict who was sentenced to 2 1/2 to seven years in prison for abandoning her son to a woman who came to her North Philadelphia apartment on Sept. 25, 1995.

"If I wouldn't have been high, my son would still be here," Vanderhorst told Common Pleas Court Judge D. Webster Keogh.

[...]

"Is he dead, or is he alive? I don't know," said the mother, sobbing. "Fifteen months have gone by ... I did not sell my child. I could sell my body. I could sell my possessions but not my flesh and blood, your honor. I love my baby."

[...]

Margiotti said four of Vanderhorst's seven children are known to be dead: a sickly child who died as an infant; a crack-addicted baby who died less than a month after being born in the 1980s; and two other babies who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

[...]

Vanderhorst gave birth seven times, and only two children survive "perhaps three, if you count Ke-Shaun," said the judge.

The other two children, who have never lived with Vanderhorst, live with a relative.
 
Bumping for Ke'shaun, thinking of him today. He'd be 30 years old, but I still feel like he's a baby.
 
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