“The FBI is the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world, pursuing the most dangerous criminals.”
“When a baby is stolen from her mother’s arms… I’m helpless and I have a baby out there that’s helpless.”
“The bureau mobilizes. We were trying to find out exactly who this person was and why this person kidnapped Jasmine. The longer it takes, the less likely you are to have that break.”
“I never imagined the nightmare that I was walking into.”
“It’s the night before Christmas. A tired 21-year-old, Marcela Anderson, gets out of a cab in front of a bus station in downtown Chicago. She struggles with her luggage and two daughters, three-year-old Alicia and 16-month-old Jasmine.”
“The bus was supposed to leave about 9:00, 9:30, but I missed my bus that I was supposed to get on. I was late and I had to wait for the next one which wasn’t going to be till after 10:00.”
“She and the girls have just flown in from visiting Marcela’s family in St. Louis. Unable to get a flight straight to their home in Milwaukee, the final leg of the journey has to be by bus.”
“Marcela wasn’t planning on being alone, but the girl’s father backed out of the trip at the last minute. This was the first time I ever had to travel by myself with them.”
“As Marcela tries to juggle the kids and her bags, a homeless man approaches and offers to help.”
“I was kind of leery about that, being a female with just two little kids, but I couldn’t hold the baby in the backpack and then string along at least. Yeah, so I allowed him to help with the bags. I didn’t think anything was going to happen.”
“Inside, every inch of the station is bustling with holiday travelers. Marcela and her makeshift porter fight the crowd and find a spot in line.”
“I noticed a lady who was kind of just walking around the bus station. It was packed. She approached me and gave me a compliment as to how beautiful my children were and more so focused on Jasmine.”
“Thank you.”
“After she paid her compliment, she went on about her way and I didn’t think anything else of it.”
“Moments later, the woman reappears by her side and introduces herself as Christine.”
“Are you guys headed to Milwaukee?”
“She asked me if I was going to Milwaukee cuz I was in the Milwaukee line, and I said yes. She said that she had a daughter coming in from college for the holidays and that if I was comfortable enough, she would be willing to give me a ride to Milwaukee.”
“That’s okay. Thank you.”
“Marcela politely declines, thanking the woman for the generous offer. As time ticks by, the girls get more and more sleepy. Alicia is trying to break free of her mother’s tight grip.”
“Once again, Christine appears and kindly offers a ride.”
“She came back and pressed the issue again about being easier to ride in the van with just us versus having to sit on the bus for another hour or so to get back to Milwaukee.”
“Exhausted, Marcela considers her girls, who are up way past their bedtime. Two hours or so. The young mother decides to accept the offer.”
“She was a female and she said she had a daughter, so she could imagine the stress that I was going through trying to keep everything together. I did feel a little bit of relief.”
“The group makes its way to the ticket counter so Marcela can get a refund. Christine offers to take the baby.”
“She asked if she could hold Jasmine cuz she was getting antsy and I was kind of shifting her back and forth from arms and I let her. But she was standing off to the side where I could see her, still trying to hang on to Alicia.”
“Marcella frequently looks back at Christine who is fussing lovingly over little Jasmine.”
“When I turned to sign for the tickets, she had started walking off. I told her to wait, just wait, it’s only going to take me a second. And she shouted, ‘Oh, my daughter’s getting off the bus. I’ll be right back.'”
“And as soon as I turned around, she had already turned the corner and was gone.”
“Hey! Hey! Help!”
“I’m screaming, ‘Help!’ She took my baby! They got my baby! Everybody’s looking but she was gone.”
“Panicked, Marcela weaves through the crowds in the packed station frantically searching for her daughter.”
“I’m more and more scared, like where’s my baby? I don’t know what to do. She took my baby.”
“But there is no trace of Christine or Jasmine. They have simply vanished in a sea of people.”
“I handed her off to a lady I didn’t know who I thought was helping me and she took off with her. Help! My baby!”
“Chicago Deputy Chief of Detectives Joseph Ganderski is home with his family wrapping Christmas presents when he gets the call that a child has been abducted from a bus station.”
“We’re going to try and do our best, damnest to find this baby and find out what happened.”
“At the bus station, Marcela does her best to give detectives a description of Jasmine and the woman who took her.”
“She was wearing a black leather coat that was about mid-length. She had blonde hair, blue eyes. Jasmine had on white Velcro tennis shoes with a blue sweat outfit and a pink hooded coat, and her hair was curly at the time, and I remember she had one purple earring and one white earring, cuz I couldn’t find the match.”
“Officers face an uphill battle trying to find other witnesses. There’s people coming in and leaving from all over, all over the country. Police turn their attention to the homeless man who was acting as a porter.”
“He tells detectives that the woman was Hispanic or white, between 35 and 40 years old, and around 5’2 or 5’4. He also adds an important detail: she had a large tattoo on her neck.”
“Marcela agrees and believes the tattoo may say Christine or Christina.”
“Being a female having a tattoo on your neck was very important because it narrowed down. A woman had a tattoo on her neck that would raise a red flag.”
“Marcella tells investigators that she last saw Christine headed for an exit. The bus station is just a short distance from a major interstate that leads all over the country. Detectives fear the woman is long gone but scour the area for any sign of Jasmine.”
“Uniform personnel that were available on duty that night conducted a search of every possible thing in the four-block area. I mean dumpsters, garbage cans, uh, sewers, washrooms, the bus station itself.”
“Meanwhile, Marcela and the porter head to the police station for further questioning. The desperate mother doesn’t want to leave the depot.”
“Miss Anderson was very, very distraught. She was in tears. Uh, she was exhausted. She was beating herself up about leaving the kid with someone else, even though the person assured her that it would be okay.”
“I just wanted help and she seemed like she was going to give me help.”
“I never imagined the nightmare that I was walking into.”
“With no leads to go on, Ganderski and his team have their backs against the wall.”
“You are always chasing the clock because if the person isn’t found right in that immediate area, you have to assume that it’s spreading out farther and farther from that initial point. It’s like a nova, and boom, things start to speed away in in many different directions.”
“It’s imperative that investigators immediately get the word of her disappearance to everyone.”
“That was our overall strategy, to get out as much information as possible to as many databases, as many organizations that dealt with missing [children].”
“The Chicago Police Department turns to the one law enforcement agency whose reach extends across the country: the FBI.”
“Seven-year veteran and violent crimes special agent, Nanette Durley, wastes no time.”
“At this time, we have no idea where Baby Jasmine is. If Baby Jasmine is still in Illinois, if Baby Jasmine is with the individual who kidnapped her, or did she sell Baby Jasmine to somebody else cuz she needed the money? We had no idea.”
“You start to put together different scenarios in your head and none of them really make sense. Why does a woman come in there and grab a baby?”
“As Christmas Eve comes to a close, Marcela heads to a nearby hotel with her daughter Alicia but without baby Jasmine. She tries to relax but instead spends the night fighting off panic.”
“Her baby is with a stranger and she has no idea what they’ll do with her child.”
“I try not to let my mind wander to the negative point of ‘what if.’ The worst would happen, what if they killed her?”
“When 16-month-old Jasmine Noles is snatched from a busy bus station on Christmas Eve, agents scramble to figure out who took her and why. The offender knew how to prey on Marcela.”
“Marcela is 21 years old. She could see that she could see that Marcela is stressed with two children. She could tell that Marcela is by herself. This woman totally scammed her into handing over her child.”
“The only description authorities have is of a woman named Christine with a neck tattoo. She offered to hold Jasmine, then took off with her. They can only guess what her motive is and whether she is working alone or with someone else.”
“We came up with the assumption that this was somebody who could not have a child, somebody who had a need to have somebody in her life, or to produce somebody to keep their boyfriend in a relationship. That was the assumption that we were going on.”
“But what if they’re wrong? Within 24 hours if the victim is not recovered, unfortunately a lot of times that the victim ends up dead.”
“As Christmas Day dawns, there is an emptiness in Marcela’s heart.”
“All I could think about was I just wanted her back. I wanted her to be safe. I wanted her to be with her family, the people that she knew.”
“Marcela is even more frustrated that she’s been able to provide so little information to detectives.”
“I wanted to help out so bad because I wanted to find my daughter, and I didn’t know which way to go or what to do. I felt helpless and the only thing I could picture is this little baby’s face, just calling me and holding her hands out for me.”
“One person agents want to question is Jasmine’s father. He backed out of the family trip at the last moment, citing his fear of flying.”
“Was there some problem between him and Marcella that might have led to the kidnapping? We wanted to make sure that by following that angle investigation, that his story checked out.”
“Strangely, the father is hesitant to travel to Chicago or talk to agents in their hometown of Milwaukee, but after some encouragement from Marcella and other family members, the father agrees to talk to authorities.”
“It’s not that he didn’t want to come. It’s just he felt like they were looking at him as a suspect. He got upset that they would even think that he would do something like that with his own daughter. His story checked out, so now we continue, move forward with just unknown stranger-danger kidnapping type thing.”
“Police shift their focus once again to the man who helped Marcela with her bags. Officers know that he’s homeless and tries to make money as an unofficial porter at the bus station. Could he have agreed to help the kidnapper for a few extra bucks?”
“After hours of searching, they locate the man and bring him to the station.”
“Thank you for coming in.”
“It’s important to rein someone to make sure that there was something that they didn’t forget in the initial interview.”
“The man willingly submits to a polygraph and passes. Investigators rule him out as a suspect.”
“In his interview, he reiterates that the woman who took Jasmine had a tattoo written in cursive on her neck. At that time, not too many females had tattoos that were cursive on their neck. It was a great lead that we were able to follow up on.”
“The tattoo becomes the main identifier as detectives and agents troll through databases and flood the public with information.”
“We wanted to get the story out to the press because we felt someone had to know this woman, what she may have been about, if she was working with anyone. Someone had pieces of the puzzle.”
“On Christmas Day, Marcela bravely faces the cameras, begging for a holiday miracle.”
“My name is Marcela Anderson. I’m 21 years old and Jasmine was kidnapped yesterday and I really want her back. I love my baby. I don’t even know if she’s friendly, but she belongs at home with her sister and her father and her mother. Please just bring her back, wherever she is. Please.”
“I was very emotional and crying and kind of at a loss for words, not knowing quite what to say. But I knew I had to reach out to her and try to get the point across that she needed to bring her back.”
“It was absolutely critical for Marcela to speak again to give it that human element. This is the mother, this is the baby.”
“Almost immediately, hundreds of leads flood the FBI’s tip line from as far away as Oregon, Arizona, and North Dakota.”
“We have to identify what we think are the most plausible leads and track those down and follow those up as soon as possible.”
“One promising call reports that a woman with blonde hair on a Chicago-bound bus seemed fascinated by the children on board. She even grabbed the arm of a boy that wasn’t hers and tried to get off with him, but the mother [intervened].”
“Was this the same woman that took Jasmine?”
“Police explore the lead, but no one from the station remembers seeing her. Another call comes in about a woman who works at a Chicago drugstore who has a tattoo on her neck.”
“I want to know where you were.”
“Oh, I was at my parents’ house.”
“How long did you stay?”
“Um, her alibi is solid. She’s not the abductor.”
“Then a cab driver who frequents the bus station says the sketch looks like a woman he knows who has a tattoo of a rose on her neck. He tells detectives that he sometimes sees her on the south side of Chicago near the city colleges. Authorities dispatch a car to try and track her down. Each lead turns into a dead end.”
“We were at that point just grasping for straws, hoping that something really solid, really specific, like ‘here’s this woman coming into my house or our family with this child that who is this child?’ But we got none of that.”
“With every hour that passes, the chances increase that this ordeal will end in tragedy for Jasmine and the family.”
“People say that after 24 hours, going into 48, the likelihood of that child coming back goes down. But that was the furthest thought from my mind. I didn’t want to have to think about that. As time goes by, the longer it takes, the less likely you are to have that break. We’re always worried about not getting that break.”
“What does Christine plan to do with baby Jasmine, and can the FBI find her before it’s too late?”
“The hardest part was not knowing what the outcome was going to be. It was the scariest feeling.”
“After watching her toddler disappear in the arms of a woman she thought was a good Samaritan, Marcela Anderson spends her Christmas holding press conferences, pleading to get her daughter back.”
“Jasmine was kidnapped yesterday and I really want her back. I love my baby and I know she’s…”
“The relentless interviews are an agonizing process but one that must be done. Each minute that passes is a minute baby Jasmine could be closer to death.”
“I had to be strong. I had to get the information out cuz I needed to get my baby back.”
“More than 100 FBI agents and local law enforcement spend their holiday working, even the smallest lead, desperate to uncover any shred of evidence that might help bring baby Jasmine back home.”
“Everybody was working crazy hours and we still had nothing to sink our teeth into, like, this is the break that we need.”
“K9 teams are brought in to try and follow Jasmine’s scent at the bus station. Law enforcement canvasses the area, going door-to-door and handing out flyers to hotels, businesses, and residences. But Christmas night comes and goes with no sign of Jasmine.”
“At that point, I didn’t have a sense of time. Just thinking about all the different possibilities scared me: who she was with, who she was around, were they changing her diaper? Was she eating? Was she crying? How were they consoling her? It made me feel helpless. There was nothing more investigative-wise we could do to bring baby Jasmine back.”
“13 miles away in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, Illinois, Detective William Feifer is sorting through some paperwork when his phone rings.”
“Uh, there’s a female at the window that wants to talk to you, uh, possibly about the kidnapped child.”
“Standing before him is an anxious woman who identifies herself as Patricia Harris.”
“I ask her what kind of information she has.”
“She hands me a picture and says she believes that this child is the one that was kidnapped from the bus station in Chicago on Christmas Eve.”
“Feifer takes the picture and compares it to the image of Jasmine on the flyer circulated by the Chicago Police Department. The resemblance is uncanny.”
“I was kind of surprised. Okay, thank you.”
“We walk into my office and I begin to interview her as to what she knows.”
“Patricia tells Detective Feifer that her son, Dwallis, who is on probation for drug charges, and his girlfriend, Sheila Matthews, had come to visit for the holidays. They brought with them Patricia’s first granddaughter, Patricia Rose, whom she had never met. But from the beginning, Patricia felt something was off.”
“They arrived at her house, then Patricia asked where her grandchild was.”
“Where is my granddaughter, you know, I want to see her.”
“Sheila stated that her mother had the child and that she was coming in Christmas Eve, and that she would have to go to the bus station and pick her up.”
“Patricia learned that Dwallis had yet to meet his daughter, to whom Sheila supposedly gave birth while he was in jail. The evening became stranger once they arrived at the bus station. Patricia drove them down to the bus station. A short time later, Sheila came running out and jumped in the van.”
“Go! Go! Drive! Go! Go! Go! It’s clear! Go, please!”
“And Patricia asked her, you know, what the problem is.”
“Hurry! Go!”
“She made a comment that her ex-husband was chasing her and that we need to go.”
“The chances of going to a bus station at that time to find a biracial baby, it was unbelievable that she had that luck.”
“Patricia tells Detective Feifer that she thought it was an odd coincidence that Sheila’s ex was at the bus station as well. She also noticed the child arrived without any bags. To confuse things even more, the baby with Sheila didn’t look like the same child she had seen in a photo months before. Sheila’s behavior became more erratic as the night went on.”
“Sheila decided to start taking the clothes off the child. She took the jacket and threw it in the garbage.”
“You sure? Just leave it! Just leave it alone!”
“Patricia said, ‘Don’t throw it away. We’ll just clean it.’ So Patricia took the jacket out and just held on to it. Sheila was also resistant to taking family pictures. Then Sheila abruptly left with the baby.”
“Dwallis told his mother there was some kind of mix-up with the person watching their dogs, so around 5:00 on Christmas Day, they drive back to West Virginia. It wasn’t until they left that Patricia turned on the news and became suspicious.”
“Patricia started putting pieces together, then she saw an update on the Jasmine case and that’s when she decided to talk to the police.”
“Before she leaves the station, Patricia gives Detective Feifer another important detail: Sheila has cursive tattoos that say ‘Leo’ and ‘Aquarius’ on her neck.”
“Patricia hands over the pictures and the baby’s coat that she dug out of the trash. She also produces a piece of paper with the address and phone number in West Virginia where the couple said they were headed. Feifer immediately calls the number on the missing person’s flyer. The FBI and Chicago PD spring into action.”
“We knew that this was the break of the case. This was legit.”
“Back in the city, police asked Marcela to return to the police station.”
“I ended up going back to view more mug shots.”
“Tell me if you recognize any of these women.”
“And I was able to point her out in one of those mug shots.”
“That’s her! Are you sure that’s the one in the Jasmine [case]?”
“Authorities then bring in Patricia’s family holiday pictures.”
“They gave me a Christmas photo, um, of her being held by the lady and her boyfriend next to her, and I asked if they had found her and they said that they were looking into a lead.”
“Knowing that they were headed towards West Virginia, I mean, that was everything, and knowing that when the baby and her son and Sheila left the house, the baby was in good shape. If we can get the baby safely, everything will be all right.”
“But everything is not okay. Authorities start looking into Sheila Matthews’ past and what they find terrifies them.”
“Once we found out who Sheila Matthews was and where she and her boyfriend and the baby were going, we still had no idea if baby Jasmine was safe.”
“The FBI and Chicago PD have received a solid lead that 16-month-old baby Jasmine is en route to Williamson, West Virginia, with her kidnapper Sheila Matthews and Sheila’s boyfriend DeWalis Harris.”
“Agents and police around the country quickly mobilized.”
“We knew they were headed towards a specific location. Now it was focused on designing a strategy to get that baby back.”
“As Sheila, DeWalis, and Jasmine head south, agents frantically dig into Sheila’s past. They discover that although she has two biological children, she has a long history of stealing kids in order to keep men in her life.”
“In 1987 in Moses Lake, Washington, Sheila agreed to watch Maria Weeks, the three-year-old daughter of neighbors. It was only supposed to be for a weekend, but Sheila asked if Maria could stay a few more days to play with her niece who was in town. That was the last the Weeks family heard from Sheila, who mysteriously vanished with their little girl.”
“Sheila was trying to obtain forged documents, passing this little girl off as her own. She actually gave her a new name.”
“I need some money, I really do.”
“Sheila told her ex-boyfriend that the girl was his and that she had even named her ‘Micah’ after him. Having not seen Sheila in a few years, he believed her tale and gave her money for support.”
“It wasn’t until police came looking for the child that he discovered the girl was stolen. Sheila was arrested, then sentenced to five and a half months in jail and a year of community supervision. Then, less than a year before Jasmine’s abduction, Matthews tried a similar scheme in Chicago.”
“Sheila was dating somebody who had just gotten out of prison. When he went into prison, Sheila told him that she was pregnant. So now Sheila had to produce a child to show her boyfriend that she had a baby with him. Sheila took her sister-in-law’s son and passed him off as her own to cover her story. She gave the child a different name, a new age, and an immunization card. When she tried to get a birth certificate for him, she was caught and charged with forgery.”
“She does have some kind of mental illness and she’s a habitual kidnapper, I mean that’s really what it comes down to.”
“Now Sheila has stolen yet another child. What does she plan to do with her, and can agents stop her before Jasmine is lost forever?”
“Three days into the non-stop investigation, the FBI issues a federal arrest warrant. Special Agent Jim Wise is one of the agents pulled onto the case. He immediately jumps in his car for the two-hour drive to Williamson.”
“I was running lights and siren. I was very nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. Had a baby just been kidnapped, or were we trying to locate a baby? Are we trying to recover a baby? So I had all kinds of thoughts running through my mind and also try to drive quickly to get there.”
“At the same time, the FBI contacts local authorities for assistance.”
“I get a phone call about 2:20; um, it was the FBI wanting to know if anyone here knew a woman named Sheila that lived on Vincent Street. Actually, I did.”
“In an amazing twist of small-town luck, the dispatcher knows exactly whom the agents are asking about.”
“I told them how I met her and that I could even tell them what the tattoo said on her neck. One of them says ‘Leo’ and the other says ‘Aquarius.'”
“Minutes later, Senior State Trooper Sergeant Steve Harper is contacted about the missing baby.”
“Initially, I did think, you know, ‘this is crazy, there’s no way a baby from Chicago is in small-town Williamson, West Virginia.’ We’ll go check it out; it’s going to be one of those ghost runs.”
“With FBI and police en route, Chief of Williamson Police Roby Pope sends the dispatcher to the house for surveillance.”
“Since she knew what this girl looked like, I had her take her personal vehicle and a radio and go up to the area and just keep an eye on that residence.”
“I park across the street from the house. I crawl into the back of my vehicle and I have binoculars to make sure that the baby did not leave the home.”
“Special Agent Wise and Sergeant Harper arrive within the hour.”
“We observed a black male subject come to the door that I didn’t know. At a certain point, we observed Miss Matthews through the window of the residence and knew she was home at the residence.”
“Now that law enforcement knows Sheila is inside, they can formulate a plan of entry, but they have to be extremely cautious. They have no idea what the situation is inside the house, but they are familiar with the neighborhood and know that things could go very wrong very quickly.”
“Anytime there’s a kid in [with] that baby, it’s a very dangerous situation. But in this area, that is a high-drug, high-crime area; that potentially puts another aspect of danger into the situation.”
“What concerned us was if they were selling narcotics out of their residence, the baby was inside, and if a drug deal went bad, what would happen to the child? But the bottom line, we had to get inside.”
“As law enforcement prepares to storm the residence, tension runs high. A child’s life is on the line and there is no way to predict what will happen next.”
“It’s just a dangerous situation. Somebody that’s got the nerve to kidnap a child and bring them—I don’t know how many, five, six states away—it’s hard to tell what they’ll do. You always worry about the stability of an individual that kidnaps a baby. Would they harm the child if they thought they were going to be captured?”
“In Chicago… have you found her?”
“Marcela Anderson receives word that authorities believe they have located Sheila Matthews and that Marcela’s missing baby, Jasmine, may be within reach.”
“They told me that they may have found her and that the police were at her house in West Virginia as we spoke. And that was the best news I had heard all week.”
“Marcela has no idea that authorities are terrified something will go wrong during the rescue. 530 miles away in Williamson, West Virginia, agents and local law enforcement gather outside the house where they believe Sheila Matthews is holding Jasmine.”
“Special Agent Wise is feeling the pressure.”
“I was in charge and that makes it even more concerning for me, is that I don’t make a mistake that [could] get baby Jasmine injured, or any of these officers. Let’s get ready.”
“My mind’s just going crazy, just wondering what to do, how to do it.”
“Agents and officers get into position around the house. Wise and Harper head for the front door.”
“We knocked two or three times with no response. Police open the door and that’s when we decided to force entry into the residence.”
“One of the officers broke the glass of an outer door, which gave us access to an inner door. One of the officers kicked that door, the door flew open. The four of us made entry.”
“As the team clears the house…”
“Turn around!”
“Harper sees DeWalis Harris in the hallway.”
“Don’t move! Hands behind your head!”
“While I’m approaching him, I saw the baby. [She] stepped kind of in between me and the male individual. She was in a dangerous spot at that time. I didn’t know if he would pick her up and take her hostage. I didn’t know what would happen.”
“While still pointing his gun at Harris, Sergeant Harper rushes forward and scoops up baby Jasmine.”
“Then I began checking the baby. She appeared to be fine. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t upset; she was just… she was kind of smiling in there.”
“Authorities handcuffed Sheila Matthews and DeWalis Harris and escort them out of the house. With Jasmine safely in custody, agents notify Marcela that her nightmare is finally over.”
“We gave her the best news that she could possibly have received, that her baby was alive and well and that we had her. She was in FBI custody.”
“I was overjoyed that they had actually found her. It was the best news ever, besides giving birth to her. Just knowing that they found her and she was safe and I was going to get her back, it just made my heart jump for joy.”
“Marcela boards a plane bound for West Virginia, anxious to reunite with her baby.”
“They had her waiting for me.”
“It’s a mom… and just being able to hold her and see her again.”
“She called my name as soon as she saw me.”
“Thank you so much! Thank you!”
“Upon returning to Chicago, the relieved family gives a final press conference.”
“We got our baby back and thanks for everyone who helped and prayed. And God really came through and just got to have the faith. Things do come true, good things.”
“Marcela, can you describe the trip home to us? You were on the airplane with her for what, about an hour, a little over an hour? Just tell us what that was like.”
“Oh, good to have my baby [in] my arms. It’s hard to explain, just so much exhilarating.”
“For Marcela and baby Jasmine, Christmas can finally begin. They head back to Milwaukee to celebrate.”
“We were greeted at the door by all my neighbors and there was a big poster board on my door saying ‘Welcome Home,’ and that they missed her and loved her and [are] glad she was back.”
“And I let her open some of her gifts. Going from nightmare to the best Christmas ever, truly a blessing.”
“After several interviews, DeWalis Harris is cleared of any involvement in Jasmine’s abduction. He had no idea that baby Jasmine had been taken from the Chicago, Illinois, area.”
“Sheila Matthews eventually pleads guilty to federal kidnapping charges and is sentenced to 12 and a half years in jail. She is scheduled for release November 2012.”
“To this day, Marcela is still tormented by the events of that terrifying Christmas Eve.”
“Besides the fact of not trusting anyone to be around my children, I had to deal with the fact of how could you let someone else take your baby? I had people on my side and I had people blaming me as well.”
“Her comfort is knowing that Jasmine seems unharmed by what happened. Jasmine is living a normal life, though in her heart she’s well aware that she is a lucky girl.”
“Sometimes, like when I’m alone, like no one knows this, but when I’m alone sometimes I pray to God and thank him, because if it wasn’t for all them people, I wouldn’t be here today.”
