New York: A six-year-old boy who was abducted while playing at a park in Oakland, California in 1951, has been reunited with his family after 73 years.
That’s the miracle experienced by Luis Armando Albino, thanks to an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings. Reported AP.
Albino’s niece in Oakland located her uncle living on the East Coast, with assistance from police, the FBI and Justice Department.
According to Albino’s niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin, her uncle — a father and grandfather — is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam.
After finding Albino, Alida reunited him with his family in California.
It was on February 21, 1951 that a woman lured 6-year-old Albino from West Oakland park where he had been playing with his older brother and promised the Puerto Rico-born boy in Spanish that she would buy him candy.
She went on to kidnap the child and took him to the East Coast. Albino ended up with a couple who raised him like their own son, the Bay Area News Group reported.
For over seven decades, Albino remained missing, but was always in the hearts of his family with his photo hung at relatives’ houses, his niece said.
Till the day of her death in 2005, Albino’s mother didn’t give up hope that he was alive.
Alida said in an interview with Bay Area News Group that her uncle “hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”
According to old Oakland Tribune articles, police, soldiers from a local army base, the Coast Guard and city employees had launched a massive search for the missing boy decades ago.
His brother Roger Albino, who was interrogated several times by investigators, stood by his story that a woman with a bandana around her head took his brother.
The first hint that Albino could still be alive came in 2020 when Alida took an online DNA test “just for fun.”
It showed a 22 per cent match with a man who eventually turned out to be her uncle. A further search at the time yielded no answers or any response from him, she said.
Then, earlier this year, Alida and her daughters began searching again.
On a visit to the Oakland Public Library, she looked at microfilm of Tribune articles — including one that had a picture of Albino brothers Luis and Roger — which convinced her that she was on the right track. She went to the Oakland police the same day.
Convinced that the new lead was meaningful, a new missing persons case was opened.
Albino, located on the East Coast, provided a DNA sample, as did his sister, Alida’s mother.
On June 20, investigators went to her mother’s home and told them that her uncle had been found.
Last week, Oakland police said that the missing persons case has been closed, but the incident of kidnapping remains a still-open investigation.