Where Are My Children? The True Story of a Mother Who Risked Her Life to Rescue Her Kidnapped Children

by Cassie Kimbrough

  He was saying something. "The police have a description of his car and the license plate number. They'll be looking for him."

  My babies are gone.

  "First thing in the morning we'll get a court order to stop him from leaving the country."

  "It's too late," I said. My babies are gone.

  "You don't know that," he said, but without much conviction. "Let me call Susan and have her stay with you tonight. You shouldn’t be by yourself."

  "No, I'll be all right." How calm I sounded. How could that be?

  Mr. Rosenthal argued with me briefly but gave up without his usual spunk. For once he had no ready answer, no advice, no funny stories to tell. He drove me home through the silent deserted streets.

  Once in the apartment I went straight to Jane and Michael's room. Everything tonight had seemed so unreal. Maybe it had all been a weird dream, and I would find them sleeping soundly in their beds. I hesitated a moment and then switched on the light. A self-portrait of Jane in her Super Girl costume grinned crookedly down at me from the wall. A brace of toy dinosaurs stood frozen in combat on the floor. I turned to look at their beds. They were rumpled and unmade…and empty. I buried my face in Michael's pillow, where his scent still lingered. It was no dream. There would be no last-minute reprieve from this nightmare.

  Chapter Two

  Monday, November 16, 1987

  The next morning, as promised, Mr. Rosenthal picked me up at eight to go to the courthouse. It was in the county seat, a small town about fifteen miles north of McAllen. On the way we passed fragrant groves of oranges. The December harvest was only a month away, and the trees were heavy with fruit. Palm trees lined the road, their leafy tops swaying in the breeze. It seemed incredible that the world around me was as beautiful as before. I felt removed from it, as if I were looking at it through an invisible curtain.

  At the courthouse Mr. Rosenthal and I went to the District Attorney's office, where we were ushered into the office of a young assistant D.A., Omar Trevino. His desk was cluttered with files, and he looked harassed and overworked. He stood up and extended his hand.

  "How can I help you?"

  Mr. Rosenthal introduced me and told Mr. Trevino briefly what had happened the night before.

  "We want to stop Mr. Bascope from leaving the country with those children. I'm not familiar with criminal law so I have no idea what we have to do to accomplish that."

  Mr. Trevino sat back down and motioned for us to take a seat. "Hmm, I've never run into a case like this before. But I know that you'll need court orders—probably a writ of habeas corpus and a warrant for his arrest from the sheriff's office." He shook his head. "But I don't know if there's any way to stop him if he's already left the jurisdiction of this court."

  My heart sank. That meant that if he was already out of Hidalgo County—which he surely was—he was out of reach.

  Mr. Trevino began to leaf through a law book. I sat perched on the edge of a wooden chair, suppressing the urge to scream, "Hurry up! Every second counts!" Maybe there was still time to stop them. Maybe at this moment they were at an airport, waiting for the plane that would take them away forever.

  Trevino put down the book. "If he's already left Texas, you're gonna have to get the Feds involved in it. I know a guy in the FBI office in McAllen. I can call him and see what you have to do to get a federal warrant issued." As he was making the call, a secretary stepped into the doorway.

  "There's a phone call for Mr. Rosenthal." He went to a desk outside Mr. Trevino's office to take the call and returned a few minutes later.

  "That was my secretary. She called the Carter Apparel Company—that's where Bascope was working—and they said he'd called in this morning to ask for a 'personal day' off. It looks like he might still be in the country. "

  My pulse quickened. But why would he call in to work if he was planning to disappear? It didn't make sense.

  "Where was he calling from? What did he say?" I asked.

  "I don't know. Kathy just talked to the receptionist there. The plant manager was in a meeting, but he's supposed to call me as soon as he gets out."

  Meanwhile, Trevino had talked to his friend at the FBI. "To stop this guy from leaving the country you need a federal indictment, not just a state one."

  "What do we have to do to get that?" Mr. Rosenthal asked.

  "Well, first you'll need the judge who has jurisdiction over the divorce case to sign several different court orders. Then you take those to the sheriff's department and they'll issue a warrant for his arrest. Only after that warrant is issued can you get the federal indictment." He went on explaining the process. I felt more and more frustrated as I listened. What he was talking about would take days.

  The secretary announced another phone call for Mr. Rosenthal. This time I followed him into the next room. After listening a moment, he began to frown. "I see, so there wasn't any phone call. Uh-huh. Yes. Well, I appreciate your calling. And please call my office if you hear anything."

  He hung up and looked at me. "That was the plant manager at Carter's. Freddy never called there this morning. That was just a story they were giving out—at his request. In fact, he got fired a month ago. The plant manager hasn't seen him since he came in to pick up his check several weeks ago."

  Fired a month ago? My throat went dry. "Then why…?"

  "They were covering for him in case the social worker called to check on his job status. Federico didn't want him to know he'd been fired." He added dryly, "I guess he thought it might hurt his chances for getting custody."

  The court had appointed a social worker to evaluate the two homes, Federico's and mine, and to recommend to the judge which was better for the children. He had recommended mine.

  "When this guy got Kathy's message this morning and found out that Freddy had taken off with the kids, he thought he'd better call me and tell me the truth."

  I was blinded by tears of frustration and anger—frustration at having my hopes raised and then dashed, anger at Federico's deception, and at his boss for helping him with it. If only I'd known he was out of a job, I'd never have let the kids out of my sight, even if it meant camping on his doorstep every other weekend. And how cool he'd been. Even after he'd been fired, he'd come to pick them up dressed in slacks and a tie, as if he were on his way home from work.

  In spite of my anger, I felt a stab of pity for him. He must have felt desperate after he'd lost this job, his second since we'd come back to the United States two years ago. I remembered how hard those first seven months in Austin had been, his grueling search for a job and the toll it had taken on him. He couldn't have done it again. And anger surged up again. He would have been too proud to slink home to Bolivia empty-handed. So he'd taken the children.

  None of that mattered now. He was surely well on his way to Bolivia, if he hadn't already arrived. Mr. Rosenthal must have read this thought in my eyes. He said, "Cass, he might not be out of reach yet. We'll go back to my office and get Kathy to type up those court orders right away. Then we'll come back this afternoon and get Judge Villarreal to sign them. There's still hope."

  While we were at the courthouse, Kathy had been busy herself. Kathy, who was from my native West Texas, was a mother of two little boys, happily married to her high school sweetheart, and a woman of unyielding convictions. Not only had she called Federico's former boss, she had also phoned his former landlady, who'd told her that yes, Mr. Bascope had moved out of his apartment the previous Saturday. In fact, he'd given two months' notice of his intentions to leave. No, he hadn't left a forwarding address. The landlady also mentioned having seen an Asian man who was helping Mr. Bascope move.

  "I know who the Asian must be," I told Mr. Rosenthal when he returned to the car where I sat waiting. Wan was a Korean who ran a small electronics shop in downtown McAllen, one of dozens of such shops that did most of their business with Mexicans from across the border, only eight miles away. We had bought a television set from him when we'd first moved to McAllen,
and Federico, in typical fashion—in Bolivia you had to bargain and haggle before buying anything, so it was an advantage to befriend the seller—had ingratiated himself with Wan. When Federico and I had separated, Wan had helped him move out of our apartment. He owned a large van that came in handy on such occasions. I was fairly sure that Wan was the same Asian the landlady had seen.

  Mr. Rosenthal and I drove to his shop, one of many similar establishments lining the street. As soon as Wan saw me, his face took on a guarded expression. He gave me a curt nod. Mr. Rosenthal handed him one of his business cards.

  "I'm Doug Rosenthal, Mrs. Bascope's attorney. We'd like to talk with you if you have a few minutes." Wan led us past stacks of television sets and stereos to his cluttered office at the back of the shop. There he sat behind his desk and motioned for us to take a seat. Mr. Rosenthal remained standing, one foot propped on an empty TV box. He glanced at Wan's business card.

  "Mr. Ho," he began, "I represent Mrs. Bascope in the divorce between her and Mr. Bascope. It seems that Mr. Bascope has disappeared and taken her children with him. We were just wondering if you might know something about where he's gone."

  Wan's face remained expressionless as he listened, nervously tapping a pencil on his desk. He claimed to know nothing. But when Mr. Rosenthal told him that Federico's landlady had seen him helping Federico move out of his apartment on Saturday, Wan admitted, "Yes, I helped him." He added quickly, "But I don't know where he was planning to go."

  "You mean he didn't even mention where he was moving to?"

  "He didn't tell me anything. He just say he was moving."

  "Well, was he planning to drive there?"

  "No."

  "How do you know that?"

  "He sold me his car."

  "Didn't you wonder what kind of place he was going where he wouldn't need a car?"

  "No. He sold it to me for very good price. I didn't ask questions." Wan was getting increasingly nervous.

  "What else did you buy from him?"

  "I bought nothing else from him. We make a trade, though. He came into my shop early last week because he wanted to trade his VCR."

  "What did he want to trade it for?" I asked quickly.

  "He had a VHS-type VCR and he wanted to trade it for a Betamax."

  I turned to Mr. Rosenthal.

  "In Bolivia they use only Betamax. I know that's where he's gone."

  Mr. Rosenthal asked Wan if he knew that I had legal custody of the children and that Federico had broken the law by taking them. He hinted that Wan might be considered an accomplice, but Wan kept repeating that he didn't know anything. It was clear he wasn't going to reveal anything else. He was visibly relieved when he walked us to the front of the store and saw us out.

  Inside the car, Mr. Rosenthal muttered, "That lying little weasel. He probably drove them to the airport himself."

  "It doesn't matter," I said. "They're long gone."

  That afternoon we returned to the courthouse. Judge Villarreal grimly signed every document put in front of him: writs of habeas corpus, demands to return the children to the custody of the court, orders finding Federico in contempt, orders for his arrest. Federico's lawyer showed up only long enough to present his motion to withdraw from the case. He had little to say about what Federico had done, except, of course, that he didn't know anything about it.

  Armed with the signed court orders, we went to the sheriff's office. We talked to a burly female investigator named Lisa Murillo and wrote affidavits setting out the events of Sunday night and our reasons for believing that Federico had kidnapped the children. This was the first step in getting a warrant issued and a stop order sent to all international airports and other ports of exit.

  Sometime that afternoon, I telephoned my father in Austin. As soon as I heard his voice, the dam burst. "Daddy," I sobbed, "Federico took Jane and Michael."

  There was stunned silence for a moment. Then he asked, "Where are they?"

  "I think they're in Bolivia."

  He said quietly, "I'm so sorry, darling." At that point there wasn't much comfort he could offer.

  I dug old photograph albums out of boxes the next morning and spread them around me on the floor. The sheriff's office needed pictures of Federico and the children for identification. I picked up one of the albums and began to turn the pages. It was hard to believe that these photographs were all that was left of our marriage. I stared at a picture of Federico as he was when I'd first met him. He was leaning forward earnestly, dark hair curling around his ears, and in the lamplight his eyes were clear and intense.

  Chapter Three

  Austin, Texas, 1975

  It was the summer of 1975 at the University of Texas. Federico was working on his master's degree in economics, and I was getting mine in English. I was the girl from the flat West Texas plains who'd always yearned to travel, to roam the English moors of the Bronte novels, to float down the Amazon River, to safari across the African savannah—the more exotic the better. The more different from my background other places and people were, the more fascinating I found them. So it wasn't surprising that Federico intrigued me, with his Latin good looks, his accent, and what I imagined to be a suave international air.

  We met quite by accident. In the summer session of that year we both decided to take a course just for fun: beginning French. It was the first day of class. The students' chatter died away as a large woman strode into the room, dumped some books on the desk, and sang out in a lilting accent, "Bonjour, mes etudiantes. Comment allez-vous?" Mademoiselle St. Clair, who in spite of her name was a homespun Texan like most of the rest of us, had a pixie-ish sense of fun that set the tone for the rest of the semester.

  That first day, when she commanded us to introduce ourselves in French, my attention zeroed in on the foreign student in the front row, the older one with the serious expression and aquiline nose. He seemed mature, wise, self-contained, even a little aloof. His name was Federico, but he was soon rechristened Frederique. I was Catherine, pronounced the French way: Cat-er-een.

  From that day I began to subtly pursue Frederique. After class he'd always pick up a copy of the campus newspaper at a kiosk just outside the building. I would "happen" to be there at the same time. We'd exchange a few pleasantries and then go our separate ways. He was unfailingly polite, even gallant in an old-world way—or maybe I'd read too many English novels. He had a vague and distracted air about him and didn't seem that interested in me. But that didn’t discourage me. One day he walked me to my dorm, wheeling his ten-speed bike alongside. A few days later, he asked me to dinner. We began seeing each other.

  I learned that he had grown up in Bolivia in a rather privileged family. His European ancestry automatically placed him among the upper classes. His mother's family hailed from the Andalusian region of Spain, and his father's ancestors had been Basques from France. His father had died when Federico was a toddler, he told me, and his stepfather, now a doctor with the United Nations, had immigrated to Bolivia after fleeing Nazi Germany.

  I was impressed with Federico's stories of growing up in houses full of servants, with chauffeurs to drive the family's Mercedes-Benz. He had traveled all over South America and Europe, he told me. He described his childhood in Tarija, a lovely town in the south of Bolivia, close to the border of Argentina, where grape vineyards covered the hillsides, women wore flowers tucked behind their ears, and natives spoke in the lilting dialect used in the days of Cervantes. It was all very charming.

  While he was a university student in Bolivia, Federico met an American girl, a Peace Corps volunteer. They fell in love. When her stint with the Peace Corps was over, Federico returned with her to Texas and they were married. He studied English while she got her master's degree in social work from the University of Texas at Austin. Now, three years later, he told me they were divorced. He was staying in Austin long enough to finish his master's degree in economics and was putting himself through school by waiting tables in a Mexican restaurant.

&n
bsp; It wasn't until we'd been seeing each other for several months that I learned that Federico wasn't divorced after all. At first I was furious. But by then I was in love, and it didn't take long for me to accept his explanation. He had told me that he was getting a divorce, not that he already had one; I had simply misunderstood. It seemed plausible enough—communication was never easy between us. And a few months after our near breakup, he was indeed divorced. So began a rather rocky relationship that continued for the next three years.

  Early in the summer of 1978, Federico's stepfather died. His newly widowed mother needed him. He decided to return to Bolivia as soon as the fall semester ended.

  For the first time in our relationship we discussed marriage. It was under the pressure of imminent separation that we made wedding plans. With some misgivings on my part (but doesn't everyone have the jitters?) we were married in November of 1978. Two weeks later we arrived in La Paz, Bolivia.

  My dream of traveling to foreign lands had come true—but Bolivia didn't exactly match my dreams. I was suddenly catapulted into a world different from any I had ever known or imagined. Sure, Federico had told me about the snow-capped mountains and the colorful indigenous people, but he hadn't told me that everywhere, all the time, inside or out, it was cold in La Paz, and there was no such thing as indoor heating. He hadn't told me that we'd be stuck in a cramped, cheerless apartment with his mother Nila for nine months. He hadn't told me that almost everything I ate and drank during the first year would give me the Inca equivalent of Montezuma's revenge, until my stomach incubated its own colony of hardy native amoebas. And he hadn't told me that instead of welcoming me into the family, my new in-laws would all but ignore me.

  At that point I couldn't speak much Spanish and with the exception of Federico's sister Ana Maria, they couldn't speak English. Every Sunday the family would gather for a huge midday meal in Nila's apartment. In front of us all, Nila would scold Federico for marrying a useless American woman who didn't know how to cook or do anything else a wife was supposed to do. What good was my college degree? What did a woman need that for? Why hadn't he married a nice girl from Tarija, his hometown? To his credit, Federico defended me as I sat picking at my food.