Tanya Kach's story resonates with those with missing family
By Jill King
Greenwood
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, April 2, 2006
Leah Keeney's heart stopped when she heard the
story of Tanya Kach.
"It hit way too close to home," said Keeney, whose
little sister, Toni McNatt-Chiapetta,vanished from a Clairton intersection in
1981.
Like Kach, Toni was 14 years old when she disappeared.
But unlike
Kach, who resurfaced March 21 after 10 years -- during which she said she was
held captive in a McKeesport bedroom -- Toni is still missing.
"The first
thing I thought was that this might be what happened to Toni," said Keeney, 46,
who now lives in McKeesport. "I bet she's out there still. My sister didn't just
fall off the face of the earth. Someone knows something."
Kach's story
resonates with relatives of missing children and gives them reason to hope, said
Joann Donnellan, spokeswoman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. Donnellan said families have called the center after hearing about
Kach's re-emergence and wondered whether their children might be in similar
situations.
Donnellan said most runaways, as Kach was, return home within a
few months or, at most, three years. She said the center knows of 14 cases of
children who remained missing for 10 years before resurfacing. Those cases were
classified as runaways or non-family abductions, Donnellan said.
"It is rare
for this to happen, but it does happen," she said. "We never give up hope here.
Our motto is 'Never Forgotten' and a case is never closed here until the child
is found, one way or the other. This Tanya Kach case shows that very
unbelievable things can happen. You have to keep hope alive."
Elizabeth
Smart, the Utah teen who vanished from her Salt Lake City bedroom in June 2002,
is perhaps the best-known example of a child who resurfaced after a lengthy
disappearance. Smart was found alive in March 2003 in the company of a homeless
street preacher who had done work in Smart's home.
Smart, then 14, traveled
to different states with the man, Brian David Mitchell, and his wife, Wanda
Eileen Barzee. Mitchell was wanted for questioning in Smart's disappearance and
someone called police after spotting him with two females in a Salt Lake City
parking lot.
When police questioned the three, Smart wouldn't reveal her
identity. Experts later theorized she was under Mitchell's control and that's
why she didn't try to escape.
When Kach, a troubled teen and frequent
runaway, disappeared, police questioned teachers and staff at Cornell Middle
School, where Kach was an eighth-grader. They interviewed dozens of people. The
FBI got involved.
She was gone, but not far.
For the better part of 10
years, Kach said, she was kept locked in an upstairs bedroom of a Soles Street
home, held captive and sexually exploited by Thomas John Hose, 48, who was a
security guard at what is now Cornell Intermediate School.
Hose was charged
with child sex crimes and faces a preliminary hearing Thursday along with Judith
Sokol, 57, a former McKeesport beautician accused of helping Kach and Hose
conceal their relationship.
Gwen Elliot, a former commander with the
Pittsburgh police who oversaw the family crisis and sex assault unit,
investigated missing persons cases for years. She wasn't involved in the Kach
investigation, but said it seems like police did everything they could to try to
find her.
"If you hide someone well enough, even the police might not be
able to find them," Elliot said.
Keeney said Tanya Kach has given her new
hope that her sister -- who now would be 38 -- is alive somewhere.
"There's
a chance that someone took her, hid her, controlled her and brainwashed her so
bad that she doesn't even know who she really is," Keeney said. "She could be
living somewhere thinking she's someone else and not know that there are people
out there still looking for her, still wanting her to come home. I have to
believe that."
Toni's Charley Project profile
(http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/mcnatt-chiapetta_toni.html):
Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance
Missing Since: November 5, 1981
from Clairton, Pennsylvania
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: May 31, 1967
Age: 14 years old
Height and Weight: 5'2, 105 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Blonde hair, hazel eyes. McNatt-Chiappetta
has a mole on the left side of her neck. Some agencies refer to
McNatt-Chiappetta as Toni Lynn McNatt.
Clothing Description: A black jacket
with Clairton Band imprinted on the back and Toni imprinted on the front and
orange trim around the waist and cuffs.
Details of Disappearance
McNatt-Chiappetta left her family's residence in Clairton,
Pennsylvania on November 5, 1981. She was headed to an evening rally at her high
school, which was located about two blocks from her home. McNatt-Chiappetta was
last seen walking on Miller Avenue and Mitchell Avenue at approximately 7:15
p.m. She never arrived at the rally and has not been seen again.
Authorities
planned to question Dean Maksin, a former friend and neighbor of
McNatt-Chiappetta's family, in August 2001 regarding her disappearance. Maksin
was charged with sexually assaulting another woman in the area in 2001.
Investigators interviewed Maksin after Chiappetta vanished in 1981, but he was
not considered a possible suspect until after his arrest for the unrelated
charge 20 years later. McNatt-Chiappetta's family said that she would have
trusted Maksin at the time of her presumed abduction. There have been no arrests
in Chiappetta's case.
Investigating Agency If you have any information
concerning this case, please contact: Pennsylvania State Police 412-929-6262
You can print a poster of Toni here. (Before printing, be sure to change your page setup to "landscape", or part of her age progression photo will be cut off.)
Photos from The Charley Project: Toni around the time she disappeared, what she might have looked like at age 37.
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