34 Years Later, Melissa Still Missing
Deanna Boyd
Fort Worth Star Telegram
__________________
Fort Worth, Texas (US):
Alta Apantenco packed away mementos of her eldest daughter long ago.
Her ex-husband, Jeff Highsmith, keeps the little girl’s photograph in his bedroom, where he can see it every day.
They are parents who have coped with the loss of their daughter in very different ways. What they share is a grief that few others know, grappling not with the untimely death of a child, but with a mystery that’s gone unsolved for 34 years. That’s when Apantenco says a woman who answered an ad she placed for a baby sitter picked up 21-month-old Melissa Suzanne Highsmith from the single mother’s south Fort Worth apartment and never brought Melissa back.
Now the abduction case has been reopened, and police hope modern technology may finally bring answers.
Apantenco, 57, now remarried and living in Aurora, Ill. Jeff Highsmith, 55, who also lives in Aurora, gets goose bumps imagining that he might someday see his daughter again.Toddler disappears Melissa vanished on a Monday morning.
A few months before, Apantenco, then 22, had returned to Fort Worth after separating from Highsmith, a musician.
A waitress at a downtown restaurant, Apantenco placed an ad in the Star-Telegram seeking a baby sitter for the toddler. Reply came from a woman who identified herself over the telephone as Ruth Johnson. The two made plans to meet at Apantenco’s job, but Johnson never showed up. The woman later called Apantenco again and convinced the young mother that she really wanted the job.
Apantenco agreed that Johnson could pick up the girl that Monday morning.When Johnson arrived at the Spanish Gate apartments on East Seminary Drive on Aug. 23, 1971, Apantenco was already at work.
The roommate handed the woman a pink dress, a pair of white sandals and some diapers for Melissa, and the woman and child left.Apantenco returned home from work and waited for her daughter to be brought back.
And that never happened.
feb 22, 2006
Deanna Boyd
Fort Worth Star Telegram
__________________
Fort Worth, Texas (US):
Alta Apantenco packed away mementos of her eldest daughter long ago.
Her ex-husband, Jeff Highsmith, keeps the little girl’s photograph in his bedroom, where he can see it every day.
They are parents who have coped with the loss of their daughter in very different ways. What they share is a grief that few others know, grappling not with the untimely death of a child, but with a mystery that’s gone unsolved for 34 years. That’s when Apantenco says a woman who answered an ad she placed for a baby sitter picked up 21-month-old Melissa Suzanne Highsmith from the single mother’s south Fort Worth apartment and never brought Melissa back.
Now the abduction case has been reopened, and police hope modern technology may finally bring answers.
Apantenco, 57, now remarried and living in Aurora, Ill. Jeff Highsmith, 55, who also lives in Aurora, gets goose bumps imagining that he might someday see his daughter again.Toddler disappears Melissa vanished on a Monday morning.
A few months before, Apantenco, then 22, had returned to Fort Worth after separating from Highsmith, a musician.
A waitress at a downtown restaurant, Apantenco placed an ad in the Star-Telegram seeking a baby sitter for the toddler. Reply came from a woman who identified herself over the telephone as Ruth Johnson. The two made plans to meet at Apantenco’s job, but Johnson never showed up. The woman later called Apantenco again and convinced the young mother that she really wanted the job.
Apantenco agreed that Johnson could pick up the girl that Monday morning.When Johnson arrived at the Spanish Gate apartments on East Seminary Drive on Aug. 23, 1971, Apantenco was already at work.
The roommate handed the woman a pink dress, a pair of white sandals and some diapers for Melissa, and the woman and child left.Apantenco returned home from work and waited for her daughter to be brought back.
And that never happened.
feb 22, 2006
