Greek police appeal over mystery blonde girl found living in a Roma camp.

[John]

The Roma house at Farsala, Greece, where 4-year-old Maria was found by police.



More pics...


The woman who posed as the child's mother said she was given to her by another Romanian woman.

This is the house where a stolen four-year-old girl was living with a gypsy family after allegedly being snatched from her parents.

The discovery of the mystery blonde child, known only as Maria, in Greece has sparked an international search to find her true family.

She was found alongside 13 other children at a Roma gypsy camp in Farsala on Wednesday.

Police became suspicious because she bore no resemblance to the couple who claimed to be her parents.

DNA tests confirm they were not related and the 40-year-old woman and a 39-year-old man have been charged with kidnap.

Speaking from her prison cell on Friday, the woman who posed as Maria's mother said she has loved and cared for the child as if she were her own.

She claimed she was given the youngster two years ago by a Romanian woman to look after while she went shopping and she never came back.

"We didn't harm her. We love her and she loves us... we gave her everything we could, like we do for our other children," she said.

Police chief Vasilis Halatsis fears the couple are involved in a lucrative benefits racket.

They claim to have three families, and get handouts of around £6,900 a months.

Read more...

[Benita]

im beginning to wonder if this little girl was ever missing at all ..no one has come forward to claim her. >@@(*&)

[John]

Quote:

British parents are among hundreds of desperate families to have got in contact to claim the girl could belong to them.


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/pictured-house-stolen-blonde-girl-2470384

[AnneGuedes]

Quote:

British parents are among hundreds of desperate families to have got in contact to claim the girl could belong to them.


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/pictured-house-stolen-blonde-girl-2470384

HundredS of families who have lost a blond green eyes now four years old child ?

[Kazcutt]

This case ........ >@@(*&)

[Apostate]

Interesting story but nothing to do with the Maddie case

[jassi]

HundredS of families who have lost a blond green eyes now four years old child ?

Over a thousand, now, according to the Sunday Times. Amazing

[Cariad]

HundredS of families who have lost a blond green eyes now four years old child ?

And yet here in Britain we never heard about these abductions at the time....

I wish the papers would mention Ben Needham too. That Mirror article didn't.

[AnneGuedes]

And yet here in Britain we never heard about these abductions at the time....

I wish the papers would mention Ben Needham too. That Mirror article didn't.

What about those of the 14 children of the gypsy family who can't be their biological ones ?
Were they left with the family because they looked like gypsies ?
Poor little girl who is talked Greek, not her language.

[Mr Gray]

And yet here in Britain we never heard about these abductions at the time....

I wish the papers would mention Ben Needham too. That Mirror article didn't.

Yes it did....Campaigners for missing toddler Ben Needham say the case shares "significant" links with his disappearance in 1991.

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[Luz]

I have been doing a bit of research into child abduction from bed and I must admit that the only examples I can find are American ones - thought there are a good few examples nonetheless:

Elizabeth Smart, 2002. This is a very famous case, in the US as at least, and an interesting and involved one. An abductor entered the home in the middle of the night and took Elizabeth, then aged 14, from a bedroom she shared with her 9 year old sister. The sister witnessed the abductor at length, but did not call out to alert anyone as she was afraid he would kill her and her sister.

Elizabeth was admittedly much older than Madeleine - and therefore, one would think, harder to subdue and exit with undetected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Smart_kidnapping

Rosie Tapia, abducted from her bed in 1995, age 6, and murdered.

http://mylifeofcrime.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/rosie-tapia-murder-81395-salt-lake-city-ut-unsolved-murder/

Both girls were from Salt Lake City, Utah.

And a more recent example, from Los Angeles:

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/29/local/la-me-kidnapped-20130329

And another case, from Georgia, that involved a burglary:

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2013/09/17/ayvani-hope-perez-missing-georgia-home-invasion


No sign of gypsies, though it's a completely different demographic.



I did find a related piece on the topic of abduction from bed, however:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865558906/Child-abductions-from-homes-exceptionally-rare-expert-says.html

The piece contains an interesting insight:

''And while such brazen abductions are a parent's worst fear, they don't happen often, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"We do see them from time to time, but they are exceptionally rare," said Bob Lowery, executive director of the Virginia-based center's missing child division.

"We have the expectation that when we are at home, we are safe," he said. "This is a different kind of predator that will engage in something that high-risk because of the motivation for what he wants to do with that child."


Sherlock's question from this article is:

Does that statement, if true, suggest that someone willing to enter a child's bedroom at night, with all the risks that that entails, would be unlikely to be a person merely in the employ of higher-up or group who wanted a child to sell or pass on, or use for their own purposes?

For him to have been prepared to make such a brazen move, would he be a man operation alone, driven by his own nefarious drives?

Thanks Sherlock.

About Elizabeth Smart and Rosie Tapia I have many doubts, I think that in the first case the teen was involved and in the second the family had something to do with it. The other cases I don't remember...but I surely will read about them with my utmost attention.

I can't respond to your question. The human mind is too mysterious to know what moves it.

[Luz]

And yet here in Britain we never heard about these abductions at the time....

I wish the papers would mention Ben Needham too. That Mirror article didn't.

Unfortunately it is as if any UK missing child didn't matter anymore.
I feel deeply for those families and hope that someday they will get at least a little bit of the attention that the McCann have received, not for them, but for their children.

[Luz]

Ben Needham has been missing for almost 2 decades, isn't it time people care about what happened to him?!
Why is Cameron financing a millionaire campaign to salvage the McCann and hasn't moved a finger to help the Needham family?

Does it take Greece to hold a EU summit like the one that happened in Portugal in order for the installed power to negotiate a search - in this case it would be to find a child not to keep it hidden.

[AnneGuedes]

About Elizabeth Smart and Rosie Tapia I have many doubts, I think that in the first case the teen was involved

ES knew the guy, there might have been some seduction process.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Thanks Sherlock.

About Elizabeth Smart and Rosie Tapia I have many doubts, I think that in the first case the teen was involved and in the second the family had something to do with it. The other cases I don't remember...but I surely will read about them with my utmost attention.

I can't respond to your question. The human mind is too mysterious to know what moves it.

Thanks for your considered reply, Luz.