Mother and son to be reunited after Canadian arrested in U.S. over 1987 abduction of toddler
A Brampton mother will be reunited with her child 31 years after her estranged husband vanished with their son during a court-ordered visitation.
Canadian Allan Mann was arrested Friday in Connecticut, where authorities said he and his son had lived under aliases in a quiet suburb.
U.S. federal agents said they found Allan Mann Jr. in Vernon, Conn., after receiving a tip from a relative that he may be living in Connecticut under another name.
It was not immediately clear where Lyneth Mann-Lewis’s now-adult son, Jermaine, was when Mann was arrested. Officials said they notified Jermaine Mann’s mother that her son had been identified and located.
The Missing Children Society of Canada had been working with Mann’s mother for years, having taken on the case only several days after he went missing in 1987. The investigation had been a joint effort and over the years involved international and multiagency co-operation.
“After taking his son away from his son’s mother, this defendant is alleged to have lived a lie for the last 31 years in violation of numerous U.S. laws,” said Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham.
A joint news conference will be held on Monday at Toronto police headquarters, where members of Mann’s family, the Toronto police and the missing children’s society will be making their statements.
In 1989, Lyneth Mann-Lewis told the Toronto Star that living without her son was “sheer hell.”
“He was my only child, I felt everything for him,” said MannLewis, who was only 31 at the time of her son’s abduction. “Not a day, not an hour, not a minute goes past that I don't think of Jermaine. This is killing me inside.”
On June 24, 1987, her husband was supposed to meet her at an Islington Avenue variety store to return Jermaine to her custody. When Mann disappeared with their son, so did any chance Mann-Lewis had at happiness, she said.
Their son, Jermaine, was just 21 months old the last time his mother held him, and was described by Mann-Lewis as a happy little guy with big, bright, brown eyes who loved grapes, gave a glad-to-be-alive little shake when he got new shoes — and strutted to the stereo.
Allan Mann appeared briefly Friday in federal court in Hartford.
The Hartford Courant reported his son, Jermaine, sobbed quietly in the front row with his head in his hands and left the courthouse without commenting. Jermaine Mann had been told his mother died decades ago, the Courant reported.
Jermaine’s father is detained on charges including making false statements in transactions with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. It wasn’t immediately clear if he has a lawyer who could respond to the allegations.
Allan Mann, who has dual Canadian and Ghanaian citizenship, was found living under the name Hailee DeSouza in HUD-subsidized housing in Vernon, about 19 kilometres east of Hartford, federal officials said.
After running off with his 21month-old son, Allan Mann entered the U.S. — where he had relatives — and obtained fake identification for himself and his son, including bogus Texas birth certificates, officials said.
An arrest warrant affidavit prepared by a HUD special agent does not fill in the gap between 1987 and 2018. It says in August, U.S. marshals interviewed several of Allan Mann’s relatives and friends, including the family member who pointed authorities to Connecticut and his alleged alias.