A DNA test recently confirmed that a 6-year-old boy kidnapped in 1951 was alive 73 years later, the New York Post reports.
Luis Armando Albino, a Vietnam War veteran and retired firefighter now living on the East Coast, was kidnapped from an Oakland, California, park in 1951 after he and his older brother, Roger, were approached by a woman wearing a bandana. The woman spoke Spanish and promised them she would buy them candy if they followed her, which Roger, who died in August, previously said Luis complied to.
Albino’s relatives, including his mother, who died in 2005, searched for decades before his 63-year-old niece, Alida Alequin, stumbled across him after taking an online DNA test “just for fun” in 2020, which showed a 22% match. Alequin said she tried unsuccessfully to contact Albino before she and her daughters picked up the search in early 2024.
Alequin presented enough evidence to law enforcement to re-open its missing person case for her uncle and authorities credited her for playing “an integral role in finding her uncle,” noting that “the outcome of this story is what we strive for.” Another DNA test, which compared Albino to Alequin’s mother, confirmed the match and investigators told the family that he had been found on June 20.
“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” Alequin said via the New York Post. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”
The FBI arranged a reunion between Albino and his family in California on June 24 and he returned for a three-week visit in July just before his brother’s death.
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