PK search stories come in an infinite variety. A search by a left-behind parent can last for days or for decades, can involve either parent or child as the searcher – or both simultaneously – and can end in greatest joy, or deepest despair, or a hundred unforseen shades of gray in between.

Accounts of persistent long-term searches attest to the power of unconditional love that can exist between a parent and a child and to the deep-seated human need to definitively know one’s own true identity.

Faithful Effie McCormick had been doing more than praying between 1914 when her son was stolen and 1977 when she asked The Chicago Tribune “Action Line” column to help her find him. In those intervening decades the lost child’s half-brothers had aided the left-behind mother’s constant efforts to locate the stolen son. The “Action Line” tack was merely one more new “try” to add to an endless list of search methods that had so far come up with nothing.

But this time it worked. There was good news and there was bad news, but she was grateful to have any news. If could replace the blank spot in her knowledge, she could try to mend the mental wound that had been festering for 63 years. The Tribune ran this follow-up article:

For the past century and a half, stories of heroic searches for parentally kidnapped children have been a staple of journalism. Untold numbers of left-behind mothers and fathers have had their way of life shattered by the nearly unbearable pain of the PK experience.

Since the late 1700s tens of thousands of American left-behind parents have devoted their lives — sometimes all-consumingly — to searching for their stolen children. Many of these searching parents – even wealthy ones – have been reduced to poverty in the process.

The readers of the American newspapers got to know the face and the tragic PK story of this noble German woman only when she died thousands of miles from home in their midst.

In 1884 Countess Von Zeilkieka left Germany in search of her son who had been taken to America by the father, a Prussian army officer. The quest for her missing son was, as her obituary reported, “her life’s purpose, her one hope, the sole incentive for remaining alive.”

Almost a decade before her death in 1892, an investigative lead convinced the Countess that the Count and their son had settled in Georgia. For eight years she remained in Atlanta, singlemindedly pursuing her quest.  We are told that: “Frequently she would stop young men on the street and question them. She would often tell the whole story of her life and ask them to spread it in the hope that she might get some tidings of her boy.”

A few years before the Countess’s own expiration, word got to her that the wayward husband had died, yet even in death – as so frequently is seen in these cases of malicious access denial – the kidnapper perpetuates the crime by continuing to succeed in the “managing” of the false identity of the missing child. Thus the mother died alone, ignorant of her son’s fate; the boy, now a complete orphan, ignorant of his mother’s fate – unless perhaps the news reports reached him somehow.

One wonders whether the mother may have lived longer in the role of reunited parent if the iron-willfed father on his death-bed had released his relentless grip on the boy’s identity and fate.

The unfulfilled quest of the Prussian Countess is far from unique in its outlines. One Chicago father’s epic search for his two children lasted from 1865 to 1893, without apparently any distraction or pause in his singleminded purpose.

As in the case of Countess Zeilkieka, John McGray’s story of his life-long devotion to finding his parentally kidnapped children appeared in the press only after his demise. The Chicago Tribune account of the decades-long quest tells of the father’s tireless 28-year effort and frames the tale his failure to find his beloved children in metaphysical terms, suggesting that while the father’s dearest goal was unmet in this life, perhaps it was fulfilled in another life beyond.

Edward King learned his true name and identity at the age of thirty-seven when the wealthy paternal uncle who had kidnapped him and lied to him about his parentage for three and a half decades was executed by the dictator of Nicaragua. While the uncle whom he had loved like a father had revealed the truth about his identity, the condemned man refused to divulge the circumstances of the kidnapping – asserting the memory was too painful.

Upon learning the truth of his parentage, he changed his Spanish name to the English and set sail for the United States to find his mother. Following a sea disaster that left him destitute, he arrived at the offices of The Atlanta Constitution on November 8, 1894, requesting the editors to assist him in locating the parent he had long before been abducted from.

Mr. King, described as “a remarkably quiet, evenly-poised, sickly-looking man,” began his story: “I am hunting for my mother…. I do not know her myself. I have never seen her that I know of, but I know that I had a mother, and that she once lived in Georgia…” He had arrived from Nicaragua, where he had been brought up by the uncle, destitute. The Constitution commissioned him to write his story – putting some cash in his pocket — and printed it three days later.

There was no follow-up article to tell us how it all worked out, but it is quite likely King managed to locate his living Georgia relatives. After all, the American King family family was a prosperous one and some of its members would certainly heard of the Constitution article. The silence about the probable reunion might be explained as the reult of a family wanting to avoid firther airing of its dirty linen.

Since searching parents whose children were kidnapped by the other parent often go to extraordinary lengths in their search campaigns, their stories, it goes without saying, often make superb newspaper copy. By the 1870s PK papers were common in newspapers and even illustrations of the principals or even the kidnapping event itself (in imaginative reconstructions) were frequently seen. By the 1890s, PK stories were so common in the daily newspapers that one could find a PK story in some American newspaper just about every day of the year — and even two or three a day at times.

In 1896, Chicago father James A. Printy, kidnapped his children, Frances (6), and Emmett (3). Printy’s news story, like almost all PK reports clearly identify one parent as a perpetrator. But knowing which parent is charged with PK never in itself tells us which parent might be a “malicious access denier.” In reality, many “left-behinds” who cry “Kidnapper!” are themselves the true malicious access deniers who have, through their destruction of child-parent access have now instigated a reluctant – purely reactive — counter-abduction.

Yet with the case at hand, Printy’s, there is no question that there is a clear-cut malicious act. Mr. Printy had bundled little ones up and shipped them off to a remote convent in Scotland, while he himself remained in Chicago, not even bothering to hide himself from his ex-wife.

It took her almost two years, but she succeeded in being reunited with the children. Mrs. Printy told her story to The Chicago Tribune after her return:

When she realized that her children had been taken from her she became almost frantic. She begged her husband to tell her where he had put them, but he reused. She had not the slightest notion where they were, but she followed in vain clew after clew until she gained the information that led her to Scotland. It was in New York that, her money being gone, she sold her rings and engaged passage in the steerage. From Glasgow she made her way to Dumfries and then to sleepy little Maxwelltown, where she arrived at midnight, tired and hungry, for she had gone without food to enable her to pay her railroad fare.

Such cruelty to both left-behind and child is hard to fathom for one who respects family ties, yet such cruelty is practiced daily by those who have power over the fates of families.

The Wood case of 1889 was called “the greatest kidnapping mystery Pennsylvania has ever known since the days of Charley Ross.” (The Ross case was America’s most famous child kidnapping case between 1874 and March 1, 1932, when baby Charles Lindberg II was abducted on and murdered shortly afterwards.)

While father and daughter were successfully reunited – after almost two decades – the daughter, according to the The Chicago Tribune, was unwilling to inform her father of what she knew of the kidnapping, or what had occurred in the intervening years. Hence, the notation that, at least for the public, “the mystery is unsolved.”

It is common however in PK cases, where familial loyalties have been divided as far as they possibly can be, for a recently reunited PK victim to reveal all the details at once. There are others to protect after all. Thus reunion is recovery only in the physical sense; mental recovery can only be achieved over time – and cannot of course ever be fully achieved.

Since there are so many thousands of PK stories available to browse in old newspapers, it should not be suprising that among the tales are quite a number with bizarre twists.  The Thomas P. Smith case of the early 1900s is one of the more remarkable examples.

On November 6, 1908, the well-known New York illustrator, Will Grefe, received a letter from a stranger concerning a picture of his reproduced on the postcard below. The utterly unexpected letter written by a left-behind father “made him believe that he had been the means, unconsciously, of locating for an anxious father a young girl who has been missing for eighteen years.”

The father’s remarkable letter was printed complete the next day in the Syracuse Herald in an article that appeared on the “Woman’s Page”:

“You will pardon me, I am sure, this intrusion on your privacy by an anxious father seeking his long-lost daughter.

Some eighteen years ago I divorced my wife. The custody of my little daughter, a golden-haired, beautiful baby, was awarded to me by the court, but my wife stole the child and fled.

I traced her finally to Chicago, where I found she had eloped with a married man. After nearly ten years’ search I located her in London. My daughter was not with her. She claimed to have left her with a relative in Chicago.

I have searched vainly ever since, and am now on the train returning from a San Francisco clue to Chicago. When in London recently I saw one of your pictures, “A Friend at Court.” The likeness was so much like my wife at the age of 20 that I thought of writing, but hesitated to bring my grief before a stranger.

In San Francisco the other day I saw another picture of yours, “The Golden Opportunity,” the same striking likeness, so that I am convinced the model who sat for you must be my daughter. Will you not let me know her name and address, and all you may know about her, particularly if she has any recollection or knowledge of ever having been in Chicago? Could you possibly obtain from her one or more (different) photographs?

I am no longer rich, but could provide for her comfortably, and the one object of my life has been to find her and clasp her in my arms. You will surely help me, will you not? Please address me at No. 182 La Salle avenue, Chicago, Ill. Thanking you in advance, I am very sincerely yours, THOMAS P. SMITH

It is not known whether Mr. Smith ever succeeded in his ardent desire to be reunited with his kidnapped daughter. Grefe did what he could to assist, but the painter had lost contact with the model some while preceding the searching father’s query. We might surmise that the artist must have been reminded of the letter when five years later he was commissioned to illustrate the P. G. Wodehouse novel, The Little Nugget, a comic treatment of a popular subject of the day – Parental Kidnapping – one that inspired four novels that were published in the year 1913.

Of all the varieties (and there are quite a few) of PK, the most merciless and self-obsessed form is the type where the kidnapping parent has no motive for the act but the desire to destroy the connection between the child victim and the searching parent. In more extreme cases of this type the malicious parent achieves the desired end by killing either the child or the other parent — or both. (Special PK Papers are devoted to these murderous forms, which we have named Filicide-as-PK and Homicide-as-PK).

In the less lethal version, the kidnapping parent will abandon the child – but not without first having done whatever possible to erase or confound the identity of the young victim. This process of “identity management” on the part of the parent who maliciously denies child/parent access is common to virtually all long-term kidnappings, no matter what person or institution does the deed.

Let’s look at  three cases are each examples of this cruel type of PK, the  ”Abandonment of Child Following Kidnapping” type that, through the persistence of the left-behind parent, resulted in the reunion of the abducted-then-deserted adult child with the left-behind parent. In many cases of this category, state and private child housing institutions play an important – even if passive – role in keeping child and parent separated over long stretches of time. The more widespead the phenomenon of the “broken family” is the easier it is to break family ties and keep the truth hidden.

The Reverend Goodrich had in his lifetime more than his share of family dismemberment crises. It was the yearning of his kidnapped daughter for the truth of her own history that gave him back part of the family he had given up on finding.

Something worse than parochial school or a nunnery lay in store for parentally kidnapped Eleanor Reddick. Eventually however, the tireless efforts of brother and mother liberated her and gave her a home with a family.

The Fresno Bee did a big story with a photo telling the history of, and welcoming new resident Eleanor Reddick titled “Fresno Girl Is Home From Long Term in Exile”:

A broken home was responsible for the separation of Mrs. Greeve from her two children. Deserted by her husband in Lincoln, Neb., Mrs. Greeve placed them in a home, she said. In August, 1913, the father of the children went to the home and secured custody of the children by saying that he intended to bring them to their mother, according to her story. Until 1917 the mother who has since remarried, had no knowledge of their whereabouts. Her former husband came through Fresno that year, however, and called to see her. Meeting his former wife, Reddick told her that their son was at the state reform school at Golden, Colo., where he had been committed at the age of 9 years, and that their daughter was in a state institution in New Mexico.

Reddick died the same year. Mrs. Greeve secured the release of her son on parole and brought him to Fresno in November, 1918. Her efforts to locate her daughter were less successful and although she wrote two letters to the institution in which her daughter was living, she never received a reply. At the asylum, however, she was showed a copy of the letter which had been written and which never reached its destination.

Seldom has Fresno, California been better appreciated than by the 22-year-old homecoming PK victim. Eleanor told The Bee reporters that “a movie once a week and a dance once a month were bright spots in my existence. But this trip to Fresno has been wonderful.”

Here the child is found by the left-behind in a convent, but fortunately only a week after the kidnapping. Yet, as was common in PK cases where an institution had been assigned guardianship in some fashion – often requiring no proof of identity or legal status from the person surrendering the child – the left-behind parent met with resistance from the institution.

As reported by The National Police Gazette,

The brave woman, disguised beyond recognition, followed her husband for a week in order to recover her child. Finally she discovered that the little one had been left in a convent in Atchison. She drove at once to the retreat. Not knowing who she was or what she came for, the sisters opened the door at her bidding and allowed her to enter. She stated that she wanted to see her little girl. She was restless and uneasy, refusing to take a seat and walking the floor continually until the child appeared. Disguised as the woman was, the child recognized her and at once ran to her outstretched arms, crying: “Oh, my mamma.” The woman hugged the child to her breast with one arm and with the other tried to open the door. Failing in this, she called to the driver outside to kick the door in. A scene of excitement ensued and for a few moments there was a desperate struggle between the sisters and the determined woman, the sisters endeavoring to retain their charge, and the mother struggling to rescue it. The driver without, finally succeeded in forcing the door open, and the woman, with her child in her arms, was set free. She placed the child in the carriage, entered herself, drew a pistol, and pointing it at the terrified sisters, said: “Come and take my child,” and the hackman drove off. “