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This is a list of notable long-term false imprisonment cases.
Note: this list does not include prisoners of war or conflict.
Elizabeth Ann Gilmour is an American child safety activist and commentator for ABC News. She gained national attention at age 14 when she was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City by Brian David Mitchell. Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, held Smart captive for nine months until she was rescued by police officers on a street in Sandy, Utah.
Christina Marie Williams was a 13-year-old American girl who was kidnapped in Seaside, California, on June 12, 1998, while walking her dog Greg in an area of Fort Ord.
Florence "Sally" Horner was an American girl who, at the age of 11, was abducted by serial child molester Frank La Salle in June 1948 and held captive for twenty-one months. Posthumous research has shown that Vladimir Nabokov drew on the details of her case in writing his novel Lolita, although Nabokov consistently denied this during his life.
Colleen Stan is an American woman who was kidnapped and held as a sex slave by Cameron and Janice Hooker in their Red Bluff, California home for over seven years, between 1977 and 1984. At Cameron's trial, Stan's experience was described as unparalleled in FBI history. Janice was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony, while Cameron was found guilty on multiple charges and sentenced to 104 years in prison. Stan's case has received international publicity, and been the subject of multiple books, films, and television series.
The Fritzl case emerged in 2008, when a woman named Elisabeth Fritzl informed investigators in the city of Amstetten, Lower Austria, that she had been held captive for 24 years by her father, Josef Fritzl. Fritzl had assaulted, sexually abused and raped his daughter countless times during her imprisonment inside a concealed area in the cellar of the family home.
Lydia Gouardo is a French woman, born in Maisons-Alfort, Val-de-Marne, who was imprisoned for 28 years, raped, and tortured by her father, Raymond Gouardo, in their home in Meaux and Coulommes in Seine et Marne. The abuse took place from 1971 to 1999.
The Sheffield incest case concerns the conviction in November 2008 in Sheffield Crown Court of a 54-year-old English man who, undetected over a period of 25 years, repeatedly raped his two daughters and fathered seven surviving children with them. Apparently unrepentant, he received 25 concurrent life sentences and is required to serve a minimum of fourteen and a half years in prison. His original sentence was life with a minimum period of 19 years 6 months, but this was overturned on appeal having been ruled excessive. After this and a similar incest case in Swindon in 2003, independent inquiries were set up to examine the way in which the case was dealt with by local authorities, the medical profession, and child help agencies.
The Álvarez incest case was uncovered late March 2009 when 59-year-old Arcedio Álvarez was arrested in Mariquita, Colombia, accused of imprisoning and sexually abusing his daughter Alba Nidia Álvarez over a period of 25 years, beginning from when she was nine years old. The daughter also gave birth to 14 children, six of whom died due to lack of medical care.
On June 10, 1991, Jaycee Lee Dugard, an eleven-year-old girl, was abducted from a street while walking to a school bus stop in Meyers, California, United States. Searches began immediately after Dugard's disappearance, but no reliable leads were generated, even though several people witnessed the kidnapping. Dugard remained missing for over 18 years until 2009, when a convicted sex offender, Phillip Garrido, visited the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, accompanied by two adolescent girls, who were discovered to be the biological daughters of Garrido and Dugard, on August 24 and 25 of that year. The unusual behavior of the trio sparked an investigation that led Garrido's parole officer, Edward Santos Jr, to order Garrido to take the two girls to a parole office in Concord, California, on August 26. Garrido was accompanied by a woman who was eventually identified as Dugard.
Armando Lucero was an Argentine man arrested in 2009 on charges of raping one of his daughters over a period of 20 years. He was alleged to have fathered seven children with her, and also to have raped two of his other daughters. He was arrested when his daughter went to the police after fears he would abuse her own children.
Michaela Joy Garecht was nine years old when she was abducted in Hayward, California, in broad daylight at the corner of Mission Boulevard and Lafayette Avenue. Sketches of Garecht's abductor were distributed along with missing person flyers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area within 24 hours of her disappearance, but search efforts proved fruitless. Her case was featured in national media, including profiles on the documentary series Unsolved Mysteries.
Philadelphia basement kidnapping, also known as the Basement of Horrors, describes the discovery of four people, being held against their will, in conditions of deprivation on October 17, 2011, in the basement of an apartment building in the Tacony neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
John Glatt is a British American author of biographies and true crime books. Glatt was born in London and moved to New York in 1981.
In May 2014, Isidro Medrano Garcia, who had been living under the name Tomas Medrano or Tomas Madrano, was arrested and accused by police of kidnapping a 15-year-old girl in 2004 and repeatedly raping her and continuing to hold her captive until 2014. Garcia was accused of forcing the alleged victim to marry him in 2007. As time moved on, the woman had a child with Garcia on October 27, 2010, or in 2012, and they continued to live openly together as a family in Bell Gardens, California, until the woman contacted her sister through Facebook and met with her mother in April 2014. She filed a domestic violence complaint with Bell Gardens police on May 19, 2014. As a married couple, Garcia and the woman had an apparently active social life in the community, including hosting large parties and the woman spending time and running errands by herself, having her own car, and working outside the home. However, police said the woman had tried to escape twice and been severely beaten. Through his attorney, Garcia claimed that the woman made up the story of abuse because the couple was breaking up.
Blanche Monnier, often known in France as la Séquestrée de Poitiers, was a woman from Poitiers, France, who was secretly kept locked in a small room by her aristocratic mother and brother for 25 years. She was eventually found by police, then middle-aged and in emaciated and filthy condition; according to officials, Monnier had not seen any sunlight for her entire captivity.
The Colt family incest case concerns an Australian family discovered in 2012 to have been engaging in five generations of incest beginning with June's parents being brother and sister. June then met Tim and married, who then emigrated from New Zealand in the 1970s. They all lived on a farm near Boorowa, New South Wales. The family members' true identities remain unknown to the public; the name "Colt" is a pseudonym used by New South Wales courts and government agencies, as are all of the family's given names.
The kidnapping of Amber Swartz-Garcia occurred on June 3, 1988, in Pinole, California when she was seven years old. She had been playing jump rope in her front yard when she was abducted. Curtis Dean Anderson, a convicted kidnapper, confessed to kidnapping and killing Swartz-Garcia shortly before his 2007 death, but doubts remain about his involvement.
A Stolen Life: A Memoir is a true crime book by American kidnapping victim Jaycee Lee Dugard about the 18 years she spent while sequestered and enslaved with her captors in Antioch, California. The memoir dissects what she did to survive and cope mentally with extreme abuse. The book reached No. 1 on Amazon's sales rankings a day before release and topped The New York Times Best Seller list hardcover nonfiction for six weeks after release.