Fake abductions: previous cases

by Guest 11.08.12 13:36

The Tia Sharpe case has prompted me to try to find out more about a case I remember from the 70s where a mother from South London claimed her two children had been abducted; she was subsequently charged with their murder.

I can`t remember anything else significant about the case although I think the mother was from an ethnic minority -possibly Singhalese or Tamil.

Web research has not provided me with any answers as obviously this took place when the internet was not in operation. But if this rings a bell with anyone please let me know!

by Guest 11.08.12 14:34

Funnily enough Alison I was thinking only recently of what might be the same case though it could have been in the 1980s and there are other differences.

There were two girls, one white and the other black or mixed race and I remember that they were 4 and 7 years old. The mother of the older one (I think her name was Tina) said they had wandered off in a park, I think. One of them was found in the park but the other one was found strangled under a bed in her own flat.

I cannot remember any details of the trial or what on earth motivated the woman to kill both her daughter and a neighbour's child.

by Guest 11.08.12 14:48

Thank you Jean. This must be the same case. I`ll see if I can find out anything else.

by Guest 11.08.12 14:57

I can still picture the woman being interviewed after the body of her friend's child had been discovered but before her daughter had been found. She didn't seem particularly anxious - it's hard to imagine what would be going through the mind of anyone else in that situation.

There was a dubious abduction of a baby from a parked car in 1990 - google Ames Glover and you should find something about him - he was never found.

I cannot at the moment think of any other case which happened in this country where abduction was put forward as the only option when there was no proof of that.

by Guest 11.08.12 15:25

I don`t know if the names Tina Vekeriya and Catarina Perreira Croft ring a bell with you, Jean, but both these girls died in Lambeth in December 1990. ( Ancestry.co.uk). I can find no website information on what happened but thankyou again for confirming that I was on the right track.

The Ames Glover case is v interesting. As you say, no evidence of an abduction. I wonder if this happened now whether a different view would be taken of it. Having said that, I imagine that many people are going to be cynical about abuductions even when they are genuine.

by Guest 11.08.12 17:54

My mind is usually full of names and dates from the past waiting to be dredged up again but those don't ring any bells at all. The year 1990 seems too late but it is possible as I discussed the case with my aunt who was still alive then.

It was at one time not unheard of for babies to be taken from their prams outside shops and there were two at more or less the same time in 1970, give or take a year. One was perfectly genuine and the baby (a boy called Jason) was found safe but the other (a girl called Lezane or something similar) had been killed by her father.

There's the odd abduction of babies soon after they're born in hospital - the most famous in recent years being Alexandra Griffiths from St Thomas' Hospital in London in 1990.

Another baby who was supposedly in a stolen car - Louise Brown (nothing to do with the world's first "test tube" baby of the same name) in the early to mid 1980s - was also killed by her father. He put on an impressive act I recall at a press conference begging for help from the public. Some things don't change!

by **tigger** 11.08.12 20:32

There was a true case of abduction in the late eighties, nineties? The baby was found in Burford, which is why I remember it as it was always my mid-journey stop to London. I think it was a young woman who'd wanted a baby or had a miscarriage herself and she passed it off as her own.

The baby was missing for 17 days. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

by Guest 11.08.12 22:08

Tigger, that case is one of those I mentioned - Alexandra Griffiths in 1990. It really was heart-rending seeing her mother on TV appealing for the return of her baby.

by Guest 05.11.12 15:08

Alison: better late than never. I've found the names of the two girls we were talking about in August. They were Tina Beechook and Stacey Kavanagh. They were killed by Tina's mother Mirella on 18th September 1985.

by **PeterMac** 05.11.12 15:20

Children
Shannon Matthews
April Jones
Tia Sharp
Caylee Marie Anthony
Bianca Jones
Joana Cipriano
Harmony Jude Creech
Dominik Takács
Leonardo Giovanni Sendejas
Riley Ann Sawyers
Marina Sabatier
Michael Daniel Smith
Alexander Tyler Smith
Keisha Weippeart
Zoe Evans
Ruth Breton
Jose Breton
Samuele Lorenzi
Jhessye Shockley

Adults
Fadi Nasri
Kirsi Gifford-Hull
Joanna Nelson
Sharon Malone
Lee Harvey
Rachel McClean

In every case they were reported as having been “abducted”, or as “missing”, or in
other ways someone gave false statements to police, and in every case they had
been harmed either by a member of their own family who had made that false
report, or by someone very close to the family and known to them.