A woman who was kidnapped in Connecticut as a toddler, has been found alive and living in Mexico more than 25 years later.
Andrea Michelle Reyes, now 27, was allegedly abducted by her mother while living with her father in New Haven in 1999 – when she was just 23 months old.
Reyes was taken by Rosa Tenorio, her non-custodial parent, to the city of Puebla, which has a population of more than 1.5 million people and is located southeast of Mexico City.
The New Haven Police Department announced the development on Tuesday, March 4, in coordination with Othram, a forensic laboratory in Texas.
A felony warrant for custodial interference was issued for Tenorio in 1999, following the abduction, and Reyes’s father searched tirelessly for her and her mother for years – to no avail.
Several computer-generated age-processed images of Reyes have been produced over the years, charting what she may have looked like as she grew up. The missing person case details were also entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
The search eventually took officials to Mexico, though Reyes’s exact whereabouts remained a mystery.
In 2023, the New Haven Police Department began to reinvestigate the case. Eventually, a woman claiming to be Reyes contacted her father, and the Othram DNA lab later confirmed that the two were related.
The identification of Reyes marks the seventh case in Connecticut where officials have publicly identified an individual using technology developed by Othram. According to the company, Reyes continues to live in Mexico.
“Whether it is unidentified human remains, the identity of a suspect in a crime or, like in this case, confirming the identity of a woman who has been missing for decades, we do the same thing every day – we find answers for families,” said Kristen Mittelman, chief development officer for Othram.
“This case was part of our Project 525, an initiative launched last year to get to the truth for families and give certainty to law enforcement in their pursuit of justice.”
The discovery of Reyes comes shortly after a similar case in Atlanta, in which a 7-year-old boy was allegedly kidnapped by his mother in 2017, and found last month in Colorado.
Abdul Aziz Khan, now 14, was found in Denver on February 23, years after he was allegedly taken, also by his non-custodial mother.