‘Your son is alive, we’ve found him’
last saw her son in 1987, when he went missing as a toddler. Decades passed with no word of him. A few days ago, a miracle: Jermaine, now 33, had been located
Thirty-one years.
Lyneth Mann-Lewis waited patiently to be reunited with her son, clinging to hope in spite of each passing day, month, year and decade with no news on his whereabouts.
That was until last Thursday, when staff from the Missing Children Society of Canada delivered the news that her son Jermaine — now 33, and who vanished from her life when he was just 21months old — had been located, more than three decades after his disappearance.
“Words can’t express what I felt,” Mann-Lewis told reporters at an emotional news conference at Toronto police headquarters Monday. “The words ‘your son is alive, we’ve found him’ — that is breathtaking.”
The astonishing reunion comes after a multi-jurisdictional investigation, including the Toronto police fugitive squad and the United States Marshals Service, that culminated in the arrest last week of Jermaine’s father, Allan Mann Jr., 66, in Connecticut.
Officials allege Mann Jr. abducted Jermaine during a court-ordered visit to Toronto in 1987, then illegally entered the U.S., where he assumed a new name for himself and his son, including obtaining bogus Texas birth certificates. Their last place of residence was in a suburb near Hartford.
Jermaine, meanwhile, had been told his mother was dead, said Toronto police Det.-Sgt. Wayne Banks, who is with the force’s organized crime enforcement and fugitive squad.
Police allege Jermaine’s dad abducted him and raised him in the U.S. under an alias. In 1989, Lyneth Mann-Lewis told a Star reporter ‘It is sheer hell’ not knowing the whereabouts of her son.
“They lived basically a life of lies as to who they were, what they did, unbeknownst to Jermaine,” Banks told reporters.
Mann Jr. appeared briefly Friday in federal court in Hartford, where he faces charges including making false statements. Local newspaper the Hartford Courant reported that Jermaine sobbed quietly in the front row, then left the courthouse without commenting.
Mann Jr. will later be extradited to Canada, where he will face an abduction charge, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders told reporters.
“I’m just grateful for the level of co-operation and collaboration,” Saunders said.
“When we look at policing in today’s environment, the importance of working with other agencies, the importance of having the ability of crossing borders really does lead to success.” Investigators had been looking for Jermaine since Mann-Lewis contacted the Missing Children Society of Canada (MCSC) just days after his disappearance, said the organization’s CEO Amanda Pick. Both Pick and Mann-Lewis sin- gled out the work of retired police officer Ted Davis, an investigator with the MCSC, who was relentless in his dedication to finding Jermaine.
Davis, who has worked with the missing children’s organization for 28 years, refused to give up hope.
“He made a promise to Lyneth and her family that he would do everything in his power to make sure that Jermaine was brought home,” said Pick. “And he did.”
Investigators from both Toronto police and MCSC have been probing Jermaine’s case for years, but a turning point came at a conference in 2016, during which the Toronto police fugitive squad, U.S. officials and Davis discussed the boy’s disappearance.
“As a result of this meeting and the investigation carried on by Mr. Davis and the United States Marshal service, leads came in,” said Banks.
According to a U.S. affidavit sworn in a Connecticut court, U.S. officials had homed in on suspected associates and friends of Mann Jr. by August 2018, one of whom provided the alias that he had been using: Hailee Randolph DeSouza.
Toronto police did not release the alias he’d created for Jermaine, citing a request for privacy “while he lives with the enjoyment of being able to be with his mother for the first time,” Banks said.
Investigators then scoured social media, as well as commercial and law enforcement databases, and found a father and son using the aliases who were living in Connecticut, according to the affidavit.
A forensic specialist with a U.S.-based missing children’s organization then analyzed a photograph known to be of Mann Jr. and compared it to the Connecticut driver’s licence held under the alias he was using, and determined they were “likely the same person,” the documents state.
“Modern technology has immensely helped in this case,” said Banks. “Once the potential suspect was identified, we used facial recognition through the U.S. and through Canada where Mr. Mann was positively identified.”
Shortly after getting the news, Mann-Lewis boarded a plane for a reunion with her son; she didn’t sleep through the night, then arrived at the airport hours early.
“I grabbed him and squeezed his head, I want to feel if he’s real,” she said, describing the first moment. “I touched him, I said ‘Oh my God, my baby.’ ”
In return, her long-lost son remarked: “You have my eyes,” Mann-Lewis said.
The time she and her son had together was spent answering and asking questions and just being together, she said. She went grocery shopping and prepared a meat dish for him, at which time she learned just one of many new facts about her son: he’s a vegetarian.
“He said, ‘You know what mommy, cook the chicken, I’m gonna eat the chicken,’ ” she said, laughing.
It’s not immediately clear whether her son will stay in the U.S. or move to be closer to his mother, though Mann-Lewis said if she “had her way” she’ll be near him always.