LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A 40-year-old Louisville missing persons case has been solved.
Monday, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said Michelle Newton was found alive in another state after being abducted when she was just 3 years old back in 1983.
Detectives in the custodial-kidnapping investigation said Michelle Newton called police after discovering her true identity and has since been reunited with her biological family.
Michelle Newton's mother, Debra Newton, is facing felony charges in connection to Michelle's abduction after she was identified through a Crime Stoppers tip.
A family member posted her bond in Kentucky, and she voluntarily appeared in Jefferson County for her arraignment, where Michelle and her father, Joseph Newton, were in attendance.
Debra Newton faces a felony charge of custodial interference, which carries no statute of limitations. That means the case can still be prosecuted, despite 40 years going by.
"This is the kind of case you see once in a law enforcement career," Chief Deputy Col. Steve Healey said in a news release Monday. "Detectives refused to let the trail go cold. Their work — and the courage of a Crime Stoppers tipster — brought a daughter home to her family after four decades."
The case dates back to April 1983. Michelle, a 3-year-old at the time, disappeared with Debra Newton — who said she was relocating to Georgia "to begin a new job and prepare a new home for the family."
The sheriff's office said the two vanished between 1984 and 1985 after a "final phone call" with Joseph Newton, Michelle's father. Debra Newton was once among the FBI's top eight Most Wanted parental-kidnapping fugitives and was at the center of a custodial-interference indictment and an FBI Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution warrant, according to a news release.
In 2000, the case was dismissed when the state couldn't reach Joseph Newton, the sheriff's office said, and in 2005 Michelle was taken off the national missing child databases.
The case was reexamined in 2015 when a family member asked for help from the sheriff's office, which worked with former Commonwealth's Attorney Tom Wine to reindict the case in 2016.
About ten years later, a Crime Stoppers tip from Marion County, Florida, "identified a possible match for a 66-year-old woman using a different name."
The sheriff's office said a U.S. Marshals Task Force detective compared a recent photo with a 1983 photo of Debra Newton and "confirmed their resemblance." Investigators tested DNA from Debra Newton's sister in Louisville, which came back with a 99.99% match to the suspect in Florida, according to a news release.
The sheriff's office said Michelle Newton was living under a different identity in another state when she contacted them after "discovering her true family history."
"She told us she didn't realize she was a victim until she saw everything she had missed," Healey said.
Michelle Newton was reunited with her father and extended relatives with the help of detectives from Jefferson County.
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