The kidnapping of a six-year-old Oakland boy in 1951 has been solved 73 years later and, incredibly, there is a happy ending.
Luis Armando Albino was found safe and sound thanks to a dedicated niece who never gave up hope of locating her long-lost relative.
Albino, who is now 79 years old, He was kidnapped by a woman on February 21, 1951, from a park in West Oakland, where he had been playing with his older brother, Roger, who was ten years old.
The woman caught his attention and lured him in with deception, promising to buy him candy.
Little Luis then flew across the country to the East Coast, where he was raised by a New York City couple as their own son.
Luis’s mother never stopped hoping that he would one day be found safe and sound. Tragically, she died in 2005 at the age of 92 without ever knowing what had happened to her son.
Luis Armando Albino was kidnapped by a woman on February 21, 1951, from a park in West Oakland where he had been playing with his older brother, Roger, who was ten years old.
Luis Albino, 79, right, who was kidnapped in Oakland in 1951, was reunited with his brother, Roger, 82, in June before his death in August.
The Oakland Bay Bridge is seen connecting Oakland to downtown San Francisco.
A breakthrough in the case only came earlier this year, when Luis’s curious and persistent niece used DNA evidence and information from newspaper clippings in her search for the truth.
The niece, Alida Alequin, 63, who remained in Oakland, was determined to find her long-lost uncle and, with the help of local police, the FBI and the Justice Department, managed to piece together the clues.
Oakland police say their efforts “played a critical role in the search for their uncle.”
Since being taken from his family, Luis seemed to have led a very special life, having worked as a firefighter and served in the Marine Corps, including two tours of duty in Vietnam. He had also become a father and grandfather.
Alida was able to organize a meeting so that the two brothers, Luis and Roger, now 83 years old, could meet each other for the first time in 73 years.
She said Mercury News How his uncle “hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me,’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”
Little Luis was then flown to the East Coast, where he was raised by a couple as their own son.
The reunion was bittersweet because Roger had recently been diagnosed with cancer and did not have much time left to live.
“They hugged each other tightly and deeply. They sat and just talked,” Alida said as the couple caught up on their past, including their military service and what happened on the day of the kidnapping.
Luis saw his brother one more time last July before Roger died a month later in August.
“I think he died happy. He was at peace with himself, knowing that his brother had been found. I felt very happy that I was able to do this for him and give him peace and tranquility,” Alida said.
As for Luis’s mother and Alida’s grandmother, she believes that she would have been “very happy, without a doubt. She never forgot him. She always said that he was still alive. She hoped to see him. She never lost that hope.”
“I’m so happy I was able to do this for my mother and uncle. It was a very happy ending,” she said. “I was always determined to find him and who knows, with my story, I might be able to help other families going through the same thing. I would tell them not to give up.”
Luis has not spoken to the media yet but he has some Memories of what happened during her kidnapping.
Frustratingly, the adults around him in New York refused to answer any questions about why he had been kidnapped, and never told him what was going on.
The people he thought were his parents have already died.
Luis, who was one of five brothers, had been playing in what was formerly known as Jefferson Square Park in West Oakland.
Luis was taken to live with a family on the East Coast, but because he was a small child, he was never told why he had been kidnapped from the park that day. Pictured here is Times Square in the 1950s.
Following the kidnapping, police, along with Army and Coast Guard soldiers, searched the area and San Francisco Bay.
Brother Roger was interrogated several times and claimed that a woman with a scarf around her head had kidnapped his brother.
The FBI was also involved in the matter, but the case stalled.
Luis’s mother regularly visited the police missing persons office to obtain news, at first daily, then weekly, then monthly until finally her visits became annual, but it seemed that the authorities were no closer to uncovering the truth.
“She always felt he was alive. She took that with her to the grave,” Alida said.
“Throughout all this time, the family never stopped thinking about him,” she continued. “I always knew I had an uncle. We talked about him a lot. My grandmother carried the original article in her purse and always talked about him. There was always a photo of him hanging in the family home.”
But it was Alida who set the ball rolling when she took an online DNA test for fun in 2020.
The results showed that she had a 22 percent match with Luis, who, unbeknownst to her, was her uncle. But despite contacting him, she never received a response from him.
It wasn’t until later this year that Alida’s own daughters began investigating the case once again and searched for Luis’ name on the Internet.
Photographs of him found on microfilm at the Oakland Public Library only served to reassure them that the man they were looking at was indeed their long-lost uncle.
A new missing persons case was created and the FBI and the state Department of Justice became involved once again.
Luis was found to be living on the East Coast and even provided a DNA sample to confirm his identity.
Investigators went to the home of Alida’s mother (Luis and Roger’s sister) to confirm that they had finally found Luis.
“In my heart I knew it was him and when I got the confirmation, I said a big “YES!”,” Alida said.
“We cried until the investigators left. I grabbed my mother’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”
Although the missing persons case is now closed, the FBI says the kidnapping remains an open investigation.