Factbox: Some notorious abductions which victims survived
(Reuters) - Three women abducted about a decade ago were found alive on Monday at a Cleveland house and police said a school bus driver was arrested in connection with their disappearance.
Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight were found to be in good health. Local media reported that Berry vanished in 2003 and DeJesus in 2004 when they were teenagers. CNN reported that Knight disappeared in 2000 at the age of 20.
Following is a list of notorious abductions that have come to light in recent years, in which the victims survived.
- Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped in June 1991 in South Lake Tahoe, California at age 11 and remained missing for more than 18 years. She was discovered in August 2009 after her abductor, Phillip Craig Garrido, a convicted sex offender, brought her to a parole office in Concord, California along with two daughters fathered by him, aged 11 and 15 at the time. Authorities believe Dugard was held for most of the time in an enclosed area behind Garrido's house in Antioch, California. Garrido and his wife Nancy pleaded guilty to kidnapping and other charges. In June 2011 he was sentenced to 431 years imprisonment. Nancy Garrido received a sentence of 36 years to life.
- Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom in an affluent suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, in March, 2003, at age 14. She was found nine months later in Sandy, Utah, only a few miles from her home. Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Ileen Barzee were indicted for her kidnapping. They were initially found unfit to stand trial but were later convicted, and Mitchell was sentenced in 2011 to life in prison. The abduction and recovery were the subject of a made-for-TV movie and a book.
- Shawn Hornbeck was 11 years old when he was abducted near his home in Richwoods, Missouri while riding his bicycle and remained missing for more than four years. He was found, along with Ben Ownby, 13, who had been abducted more recently, in the Kirkwood, Missouri, apartment of Michael J. Devlin, in January 2007. Devlin pleaded guilty to abduction and child sex abuse and was sentenced to life in prison.
- Natascha Kampusch was abducted at the age of 10 in March 1998 on her way to school in Vienna, Austria and held for more than eight years in a secret cellar in the small town of Strasshof until she escaped in August, 2006. Her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide the same day after a police chase by stepping in front of a moving train, aged 44. Kampusch later wrote a book about her experience.