Toddler found in West Virginia after being kidnapped on Christmas Eve

By Noah Isackson

Associated Press

CHICAGO – A Christmas nightmare finally ended for a mother when her 16-month-old daughter was found in West Virginia, days after being snatched from a Chicago bus station by a stranger.

Jasmine Anderson was found Thursday after a nationwide search that led authorities a home in Williamson, W.Va., where the kidnapping suspect allegedly took the toddler after the Christmas Eve abduction, said Thomas J. Kneir, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago office.

The child was apparently in good health and in the custody of West Virginia authorities until she could be reunited with her parents.

Police arrested Sheila Matthews, 33, who has been charged with one count of federal kidnapping. She was taken into custody and was scheduled to appear in court in West Virginia on Friday.

A tip from a the mother of Matthews’ boyfriend led to the arrest.

“We’re really grateful to everyone who helped,” said the child’s mother, Marcella Anderson, fighting back tears. “Especially the family members who were brave enough to come forward and had really good hearts, and God bless everyone.”

An FBI spokesman in Chicago said an FBI agent will accompany Anderson to Pittsburgh, where she would be reunited with her daughter Friday. The agent did not offer a time or a specific location. In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the baby’s grandmother, Wilma Anderson, also said the reunion would take place Friday.

Police say Matthews took the child to cover up a lie she made to her boyfriend. Matthews told him she had a baby while he was in a California prison, and when the man was released, she told him her mother was caring for the baby in Chicago, police said.

“When she went to the Greyhound station that night, she was looking to abduct a baby,” said Philip Cline, chief of detectives for the Chicago Police Department. “And unfortunately Marcella was there with Jasmine.”

Anderson said she and her two daughters were waiting for a bus home to Milwaukee on Monday when a woman with a tattoo on her neck approached the family. The woman offered to give them a ride home to Milwaukee.

The woman also suggested that she hold Jasmine while Anderson take her other daughter with her to the ticket counter. Anderson was waiting in line to return the tickets when the woman disappeared with the toddler, Anderson said.

According to police, Matthews and her boyfriend later took the toddler to the house of one of his relatives in a Chicago suburb on Christmas Day.

Matthews “tried to pretend that the baby was her own,” Cline said, dressing the girl in a Christmas dress and even posing with her in a photo later obtained by police.

Early Wednesday morning, the couple traveled with Jasmine to West Virginia. But their hosts spotted a photograph of Jasmine on television and called police on Thursday.

The boyfriend was questioned and released, said Randy Coleman, a spokesman for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety.

Matthews pleaded guilty in 1988 to a kidnapping charge in Washington, Officer Alice Casanova, a Chicago police department spokeswoman, confirmed on Friday. She abducted a 2 1/2-year-old girl from her parents in Seattle in 1987. The child was found unharmed about a month after she disappeared and was returned to her family.

Matthews was sentenced to 5 1/2 months in jail and 12 months of community supervision.

“Throw the book at her,” said Nancy Matthews, the alleged abductor’s grandmother. “She has done this two more times. She was in jail in Seattle, Washington, for one and a half years for kidnapping.”