Found 19 years on, boy abducted by his grandparents
A BOY who vanished when he was five has been found 19 years later living close to his grandparents.
It is believed that Richard Landers was taken by his paternal grandparents in 1994 because they feared a custody judge would limit their access to him.
When he vanished from Wolcottville, Indiana, he had been due to spend a week with his mother, who had just married.
The boy, whose father played no part in his upbringing, appears to have lived with the grandparents for most of the subsequent time.
Detectives tracked him down to Long Prairie, Minnesota, 680 miles from his original home. He is now married and expecting a child of his own. He admitted to police he knew his real name even though he had been living under an alias.
Mr Landers’s mother, Lisa Harter, screamed and was ‘jumping up and down for joy’ when she learned that her son had been found. ‘She is the happiest woman on Earth,’ said her husband Richard Harter. They hope to be reunited with him soon.
Mr Landers was found after Mr Harter went to Indiana State Police with the missing child’s social security card. Officers soon discovered that the social security number was being used by someone in Minnesota with the same birthday as Mr Landers but a different name.
When local police in Minnesota tracked down the man, he admitted he was Mr Landers. His grandparents were living in a nearby town, also under false names. Police declined to say whether the couple would face charges.
Indiana State Police Sergeant Ron Galaviz said: ‘He appears to be well-adjusted, there was no indication or signs of any kind of abuse over the years. It just appears that his grandparents raised him as their own child over these last 18 years.’