To catch a baby broker

To Jason, this little girl was Angie, the two-year-old who had stolen his heart and was about to become his adopted daughter. But after flying to Guatemala in a panic last march because he was told she had disappeared in a police raid, Jason discovered everything he knew about Angie was a lie.

Jason: At that point, my heart is breaking.

It turns out there had never been a police raid. The gut-wrenching truth about what really happened to Angie was uncovered by this private investigator in Guatemala. He was hired by a woman who works in the adoption business and suspected something was wrong with Angie's case.

He says everything unraveled the day Angie recognized this little girl in the waiting room of a doctor's office.

"Miguel" (in Spanish) : When the two girls saw each other they ran towards each other, they were hugging each other and started crying.

The tearful girls said they were sisters and, they had been kidnapped from their home.
This interview, taped on the private investigator's palm pilot, shows the older girl protectively clutching her sister - the little girl Jason thought he was adopting. She explains how four months earlier a neighbor tricked them, along with a third sister, into getting into a red car.

"Miguel" (in Spanish): Once they are in the car, they don't let them out and they take them to Guatemala City and lock them up in a boarding house in zone one.

Zone one is an unsavory area of the city populated by drug dealers and prostitutes. This is the boarding house where the sisters say they were locked up. It's run by a woman who is known as Mayra, and is the suspected head of a kidnapping ring.

The girls say Mayra physically abused and starved them and threatened them with more beatings if they didn't memorize new, fictitious names.

Her name is Candida - not Angie. She had been kidnapped, not given up willingly by a mother who couldn't take care of her, and she wasn't even two years old-- she was five. It was a lot for Jason to take in.

Jason: They had threatened her. They had also hurt them into admitting their new names. It makes me furious. I can't imagine doing that to an adult, never mind doing it to a child.

According to investigators, the kidnappers purchased phony birth certificates for the sisters, then split the girls up so they could sell them for adoption. One sister is still unaccounted for. Who would do such a thing? Police say the kidnapping ring is composed of women -- many of them mothers themselves.

When Jennell first saw this photo, she thought the little girl in the white dress looked lost. Now she understands why.

Victoria Corderi: Does it change what you see in this picture?
Jason: Yes.
Jennell: It's not just a little girl who's missing her mother. It's a little girl who's been through something no child should have to go through.

Before he left Guatemala, Jason wanted to meet the little girl he'd been sending gifts, pictures, and letters to for months.

Jason: We knew that she wasn't going to be ours. So it was very, very difficult to meet her.
Victoria Corderi: Why did you still want to meet her?
Jason: Because I loved her. She was my daughter.

Jason found Candida clinging to this doll -- a Christmas gift he and Jennell had sent. She and her sister had not yet been reunited with their parents, who live in a rural town several hours away. And, Jason says, after being told for months that her name was Angie, and that she was getting a new American daddy, she was very confused.

Jason: I walked through the door. And within two seconds, this girl is coming, running at me and hugging me, calling me "Papa" -- that was really, really difficult.
Victoria Corderi: What did you say?
Jason: I just hugged her and kissed her and told her that I loved her.
Victoria Corderi: She still wanted you as her father.
Jason: She didn't know any better.

We were with Candida when finally -- after four and a half torturous months -- she ran into her mother's arms.

Back in a familiar embrace, the little girl breaks down. Her mother tries to comfort her, but she can barely contain her own tears. Her daughters almost had been lost to her forever, adopted by unsuspecting families in the United States.

At home, the sisters celebrate, seamlessly slipping back into the innocence of childhood games.
It isn't as easy for their parents. Their hearts ache for their third kidnapped daughter. The private investigator says when he tracked down the woman suspected of holding her captive, she was uncooperative.

"Miguel" (in Spanish): She told us outright we would not get that girl back because she was already being processed for adoption.

Jason and Jennell say they are still chilled at the thought of how close they came to bringing home a stolen child unknowingly. Jennell even posted a warning to other parents on the internet.

Jennell: Any adoptive parents out there who have a picture of her maybe and are dreaming of her, need to know that she has a family who wants her

Before the U.S. embassy will approve a Guatemalan adoption, both the biological mother and child must undergo DNA testing. The tests are supposed to help circumvent kidnappings and baby swapping, but the private investigator says there are ways to get around DNA tests.

"Miguel" (in Spanish): They can say this little girl has no paperwork - she was found in the streets after about a year,  the court declares her abandoned, and then she can be adopted.

Police say no one involved in the kidnapping of the three sisters is talking --silenced by death threats from the alleged ringleader, Mayra. They say it's a common problem in Guatemala, where people fear the criminals more than the authorities.

Dateline wanted to talk to Mayra. Wearing hidden cameras, we went to the run-down boarding house she owns -- the place where the sisters say they were held hostage and beaten.

(Hidden camera)
Victoria Corderi: I'd like to talk to Mayra-

Victoria Corderi: I was told she was at her house in Jalapa, the same town where the kidnapped girls' live, 110 miles from Guatemala City. So we went there too.

(Hidden camera)
Corderi: Mayra? Mayra?

Police say Mayra’s home is what's known as a "crib house," where pregnant women stay until they give birth to babies that are sold for adoption. We saw a pregnant woman, and some children there, but I was told Mayra was out.

Meanwhile Candida's parents say people associated with the kidnapping ring have threatened to chop their missing child into pieces if they don't tell police to drop the investigation.

Clara (in Spanish): He told me that our missing girl will never come home and that we would hear the sounds of her body parts hitting our aluminum walls.

So why aren't the kidnappers behind bars? Police call the case a low priority. One woman, who they describe as a small-time player, was arrested, but as for Mayra, they say they can't find her. And almost a year after the warrant was issued for her arrest, she remains free.

We went to Josefina Arellano, who was then the director of the child and adolescent division of PGN, the Guatemalan Agency that approves adoptions.

Victoria Corderi: The girl is still missing and the woman who runs the ring, allegedly, is still out there. What does that say about the system?
Josefina Arellano: We have a lack of people-- to investigate all these cases.

She says there are only three prosecutors to investigate violent crime for the entire country. She promised to meet with them to try to speed up the investigation, but since this interview, nothing has happened. Candida's sister, who has been missing more than a year now, has not been found. And, Arellano has left her job at PGN.

Jason: It's insane. There really needs to be some sort of crack down on the people who abuse the children and who profit from this.

Abusers come in many forms -- kidnappers who terrorize children, and then there are the slick profiteers who put parents through a different kind of hell.

Jill: I've experienced betrayal. I've experienced pain like none other.

This woman and many others say they've been emotionally and financially devastated by their experience trying to adopt children from Guatemala targeted by the very people who were supposed to help them.

Stacy (crying): It was the worst experience.

MORE FROM

Section Front

To catch a baby broker Missing: Enma Galicia Photos: Inside the Hogar Primavera orphanage Photos: At home with the Galicias Photos: Behind the scenes in Guatemala Photos: Children of Jalapa A family's bittersweet reunion Reunited! Kidnapped kids returned to family Two sides of adoption Photos: Kids find new homes in the U.S. Section Front   Add headlines to your news reader: