News
Thursday January 18, 2007
West Virginia children still missing
by
Brad McElhinny
Daily Mail staff
Rather than hope, the recent discovery of a Missouri boy who had been missing four years just raised more questions for Shirley Day.
Day, a 74-year-old Wyoming County resident, has her own heartbreaking mystery. Her granddaughter, Natasha Alexandra Carter, has been missing for seven years. Alex, as she was called, is one of three West Virginia children who have long been listed as missing by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Shirley Day has been watching news reports about 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck. The boy was found this week after being abducted while riding his bike in 2002. Adding to the mystery: Hornbeck apparently hung out with friends, had a cell phone and rode his bike around alone. His abductor held down two jobs that frequently caused him to leave his apartment.
"I can't understand why he didn't get in touch with his family," Day said. "It makes you wonder, doesn't it? I know what that family has gone through. But you know something, that child will never be the same."
The story resonates with Day, who wonders all the time why her granddaughter can't or won't pick up the telephone and call her.
Alex was 10 years old when she went missing on Aug. 8, 2000. Authorities said they believe she was taken by her mother, Susan Gail Carter, after a contentious custody hearing. Susan Carter and Day's son, Ricky Lafferty, were in a brutal fight to keep Alex.
"She really got into it with the mediator," Day said. "Then she told Ricky he would never see Alex again. She got in the car with a man she later married. Alex was in the car. They had the windows rolled up. They wouldn't let Ricky talk to them."
The car rolled away, and that was the last time Alex's family saw her, although no one knew until later just how final the parting would be. There was another hearing in September. Susan didn't show up. Her lawyer told the judge he didn't know where to find her.
At first, no one but the family seemed to be alarmed.
"The authorities acted like because her mother had taken her everything was all right," said Day, who was a Wyoming County magistrate for two years in the mid-1980s and who also was a licensed practical nurse, an insurance agent and ran a beauty shop.
But by November of that year, a felony warrant for kidnapping was issued for Susan Carter.
<snip>
Like Shawn Hornbeck, Alex Carter was old enough when she disappeared to know her family's telephone numbers. Day has fading hopes that the girl still might call some day. "In the winter, when she was first gone, I would get up in the night and look out on the porch," she said. "I thought she might have come home and was lying on the porch. You think of everything in the world."
More at the link
http://www.dailymail.com/story/News/+/2007011819/West+Virginia+children+still+missing/
Thanks to LisaInWV for bringing this article to my attention.
