11/30/22, 12:49 AM Missing daughter reunited with family after 51 years - BBC News

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Missing daughter reunited with family after

51 years
8 hours ago

Watch: A missing daughter is reunited after 51 years

By Bernd Debusmann Jr
BBC News, Washington

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11/30/22, 12:49 AM Missing daughter reunited with family after 51 years - BBC News

A DNA test has reunited a Texas woman with her long-lost family and ended
a mystery that lasted over 50 years.

Melissa Highsmith, 53, was abducted by a babysitter from her home in Fort
Worth in 1971 when she was just 22 months old.

Years of searching by the family yielded nothing - until DNA samples sent to
an ancestry website produced a match.

Long known as "Melanie", Ms Highsmith now plans to change back her name.

The mystery over the fate of Ms Highsmith began in August 1971, when her
mother, Alta Apatenco, hired a babysitter through an ad in a local newspaper.

The babysitter, suspected of kidnapping the baby, promised to take care of her
at her home.

She then vanished with the baby, sparking a decades-long hunt by the
Highsmith family, police and federal authorities. As recently as September, the
family was following up a tip that Ms Highsmith had been spotted in South
Carolina.

As the search went on year after year, Ms Highsmith - who went by the name
Melanie Walden - was unaware that anyone was looking for her. Initially, she
thought the family's efforts to contact her through Facebook were a scam.

A breakthrough in the case finally came on 6 November, when a DNA test on

ancestry website 23AndMe connected Mrs Highsmith's children with the
family, with the help of an amateur genealogist that helped them understand
the results.

"Our finding Melissa was purely because of DNA," the family wrote in a
Facebook post. "Not because of any police or FBI involvement, podcast
involvement, or even our family's own private investigations or speculations."

Ms Highsmith and her parents met for the first time on 26 November. In the
Facebook post, the family said that they conducted "further official and legal
DNA testing" and are awaiting "official confirmation for the naysayers in this
world".

"It's overwhelming," Ms Highsmith told BBC's US partner CBS. "But at the

same time, it's the most wonderful feeling in the world."

Ms Apatenco, Ms Highsmith's biological mother, said she "just couldn't

believe" that the family had been reunited after so many years.

"I thought I'd never see her again," she added.

No information has been given about the kidnapper. According to Ms

Highsmith, when confronted, the woman who raised her - with whom she has
been estranged for decades - admitted to knowing that she was the kidnapped
child.
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11/30/22, 12:49 AM Missing daughter reunited with family after 51 years - BBC News

"That just made it real," Ms Highsmith said.

While the statute of limitations in the kidnapping has long passed, the Fort
Worth Police Department said in a statement that it will continue the
investigation into the disappearance to piece together what happened.

In the meantime, the family says they are making up for lost time and getting
to know one another.

Ms Highsmith's sisters told the Washington Post, for example, that she plans
to redo her wedding to her current husband so that her biological father can
walk her down the aisle.

"My heart right now is just full and bursting with just much emotion," she told
CBS. "I'm just really, really happy."

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