Mum Appeals To Find Her Baby Who She Handed To A Stranger 34 Years Ago

A mother has spoken about how she handed her baby to a stranger at a bus station 34 years ago — and never saw her baby again.

It was December 2, 1983 in downtown Washington, DC. when then 18-year-old Eleanor Williams was holding her three-month-old daughter, April, as she sat at a bus station, when a stranger approached her asking to hold her baby.

So naive and young, Eleanor allowed the woman, who called herself Latoya, to hold her baby, as she insisted she take the baby to the bathroom to change her, telling Eleanor: “You look exhausted”.

When ten minutes later and the woman has not returned, Eleanor began to worry, but the woman never came back — and so did her baby.

Eleanor, now 52, can only recall the horror kidnapping that happened and how that incident and that one decision changed her life forever.

“She came over next to me at some point and just started talking to me. She was being friendly, asking me lots of questions. Like, ‘Where are you going?’ and, ‘How old is your baby?’

“She was nice, you know? Then she was like, ‘Do you mind if I hold her?’ And I was sitting right next to her, right there, so I said okay, and I let her,” she told the Washington Post.

Eleanor said that the woman then offered to take her baby to the bathroom to change her. “She said: ‘I’ll take her to the bathroom. You look tired.’ And I was sceptical, but I had already said okay, and she had already got up and taken her to the bathroom.

“And then, I don’t know, about 10 minutes later, when she didn’t come back, I started getting nervous,” she said.

Now, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has released a picture of the snatched baby and a computer image of what she would look like now “” as a 34-year-old woman to help Eleanor, who also has a son and lives alone, find her only daughter.

Police said that the woman, who could also go by the names Rene or Rene Latoya, was described as a young black female with a slim build, about 161cm tall with spots on her face.

She also had her ears pierced with two holes in each ear.

Eleanor said that April has a notable birthmark on the top of her left wrist in a straight line.

She said that April was bundled in a pink-and-white snowsuit on the day she was snatched.

Leslie Parsons, head of the DC Police criminal investigations division, said that the only thing they could do for now is to release the picture and story to the media. “Hopefully someone will see it, and they’ll call us.”

Now, as Eleanor endured comments from friends calling her an “unfit mother” and police questioning whether she sold her baby, she admits that she blames herself for what happened.