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

by Cassie Kimbrough

  "There's an Eastern flight leaving for Miami in twenty minutes!" Bob exclaimed.

  At the Eastern counter we turned over our passports and in moments we were booked on the flight. We trotted to the immigration station. This was where we would leave Bob behind—he would be returning to Bolivia to rescue Guy. There was no time for a proper good-bye. I threw my arms around him and we hugged quickly, then he hugged each of the children.

  "Bye, kids. Be good."

  Lloyd was motioning impatiently. Shepherding the children in front of me, we hurried to join him in line. I looked back. Bob stood watching us, still wearing his Miami t-shirt and the alpaca hat. He waved, his blue eyes merry. I waved back, blinking back tears. I owed him so much, not only for his part in recovering my children, but for his unflagging optimism, his kindness, his encouragement. When I looked back again, he was gone.

  The children and I were passed along from desk to desk. We picked up our passports at the last one. We hurried around the corner to the boarding gate to wait for Lloyd. He had been delayed for some reason.

  Seconds passed. The boarding gate was empty; all the other passengers had already boarded. I kept an anxious eye on Jane and Michael as they skipped up and down. Something's wrong, I thought. Why was Lloyd taking so long? Unable to stand the suspense any longer, I started back to see what the holdup was. Around the corner he appeared, trench coat flapping.

  Outside the plane's engines began to whine, and then the whine rose to a roar. Customs inspectors quickly zipped open our luggage and felt around inside. They zipped them back up and handed them to us. I slung the duffle bags around my neck, grabbed Jane's and Michael's hands, and hurried onto the tarmac behind Lloyd. The plane was a hundred feet in front of me. I fixed my eyes on it and started to run, expecting any moment to feel a detaining hand on my arm. Then we were up the steps and inside the plane. I took the aisle seat across from Lloyd and put the kids by the window. The plane started to taxi away from the airport, then turned back toward the terminal.

  Lloyd whispered ominously, "The plane's turning back."

  I ignored him. It couldn't be. The plane was simply turning down another runway. And indeed it was. As it picked up speed and took off, Lloyd and I slapped hands across the aisle in a high-five.

  Eastern Airlines was celebrating some kind of anniversary, and they passed out complimentary bottles of wine to all the passengers. I looked next to me at Jane and Michael. They were already asleep in their seats, their uptilted faces full of peace and trust. I lifted the wine in a silent toast.

  *******

  Epilogue

  It would make for a nice neat ending to say that we lived happily ever after. But life is never that simple. After spending the night in Miami, Lloyd, the children, and I flew on to Texas. I hadn't dared to go to my parents, so instead the children and I stayed with friends for a few weeks. Only a handful of people knew where we were: my family, a few friends, and Mr. Rosenthal.

  I was euphoric for the first few weeks after our grand adventure. The children bubbled over with excitement.

  "That was fun, Mommy! When can we do it again?" they'd say, and I'd smile and shudder inwardly. I believe that Jane and Michael were in a state of elation for awhile, too. I showered them with attention and affection such as I hadn't done since they were babies. As a matter of principle I'd never allowed them to sleep in my bed at night. But we were forced due to circumstances during the trip and for awhile afterwards to sleep together. I found it wonderfully comforting to wake up at night and feel them cradled one on each side of me and listen to their gentle breathing. It was a very close time for us, a time of rebuilding the bond that had been strained, but never broken. I thought my children were lost to me forever, and they'd been miraculously given back to me. Truly a gift.

  It wasn't long, though, before I had to get my head out of the clouds and make some serious decisions about our future. Where would we live now? What did I need to do to cover my tracks? How would I support myself and the children?

  I pondered what to do next. Lloyd had advised me to disappear in Los Angeles or New York City, but after all this time away, I couldn't bring myself to leave my family and friends in Texas. So I compromised. We did move to a large city, but it wasn't New York or L.A. With Mr. Rosenthal's connections, I found a good job right away. Jane, Michael, and I settled into our new life and began again—new city, new home, new school, new job, a new start. Even a new identity. Following at least part of Lloyd's advice, I changed my name and took other measures to make it as difficult as possible for Federico to find us again.

  Starting over was exciting, and for the first time in years I knew that things were finally falling into place for me—for us. At the same time it was scary. I had never been on my own before—there had always been parents, or roommates, or a husband—and now I had not only myself but also two children that I was completely responsible for. The burden of being the only breadwinner and somehow making ends meet, of trying to be both mother and father to my children, of making the thousands of decisions, large and small, that went into running a household—schools, daycare, church, doctors, schedules, meals, clothes—and somehow here and there squeezing in a few precious moments for myself—was sometimes overwhelming, as I'm sure all single working parents know.

  I felt very alone at first. I didn’t know a soul in this big new city and dared not confide in anyone. To fill the solitary hours after the children were in bed, I began writing this book. I wanted to have a family chronicle of our "grand adventure" while the scenes and conversations were still fresh in my memory. My family encouraged me to record the uncanny chain of events that had brought me and the children safely out of South America and home again. Even Lloyd was surprised. On the flight to Miami from Lima he'd told me that our chances were "less than zero," and that in all his years with the FBI and as a private investigator, he'd never seen anything like it.

  We had been incredibly lucky. But we hadn't escaped totally unscathed. In a routine preschool check, Michael tested positive for tuberculosis, which is still widespread in Bolivia. For a year he took daily medication and was closely followed by a doctor. And Jane had to start all over again in the first grade, having missed all but two months of it the previous year.

  But our most abiding legacy was fear—fear that Federico could find us and take the children again. If I stepped out of their line of vision in the supermarket, Jane or Michael would yell "Mommy!" in a panicky voice. When they played outside, I would stand nearby, watching with suspicion anyone who came too near. I coached the children carefully about strangers and, of course, about their father, should he unexpectedly show up. I could see in their eyes that it was a difficult lesson. Michael said, "If I see Daddy, I might forget and run up and hug him." He added quickly, "But after I hug him, I'll run away." It was wrenching. I didn't want them to grow up fearing their father. Yet they had to be aware that it could happen again.

  Federico hadn't taken their departure lightly. Within days of their disappearance, he'd filed lawsuits against everyone that might have had anything to do with it: me, of course, Dr. Castillo, Russ and Food Aid International. He'd even lodged a complaint against the U.S. Consulate, accusing them of being accomplices to my plans. I found all this out in June 1988, when I received a letter from Dr. Castillo, forwarded by Mr. Rosenthal. Dr. Castillo sent copies of two issues of Criterio, a news magazine published in Bolivia. Featured on the cover of the May 23, 1988, issue was a photograph of Jane and Michael, and an article entitled, "The Kidnapping of the Bascope Children." Inside, a six-page story described how doting father Freddy Bascope had "rescued" his children from their neglectful American mother and returned them to the bosom of their homeland, Bolivia, where they were living happily until they were violently snatched away by me.

  The article was full of half-truths, lies, and conveniently forgotten details, like the fact that Federico had illegally kidnapped the children in the first place. In the article the Criterio reporter described his
interview with the U.S. Consul. Since Steven Dunlop was out of town, another official was interviewed. He explained that all the Consulate did was issue passports for the Bascope children, which was their right as U.S. citizens. He denied any involvement with the kidnapping.

  Even the nun from the Amor de Dios school was interviewed. She lied by claiming that I shoved her out of the way in order to escape with the children. Even a woman of the cloth would lie to protect herself. At least she had done the right thing when it mattered. It seemed apt that her name was "Esperanza," which means "hope."

  The article included photographs of the school and the FAI apartment where I'd stayed. They'd recovered a photo I.D. of Bob and his registration at the Hotel Claudia, showing that he'd checked in on April 4, 1988, and checked out at 8 A.M. on April 29. There was even a photo of the crude map I'd drawn of the school grounds, which I'd left behind in my suitcase, where the Bolivian police discovered it.

  As soon as the first article appeared, Dr. Castillo had marched to the Criterio offices and attempted to clear his name. He explained that he couldn't have had anything to do with the resnatch because he was in Sucre presenting my ease to the Supreme Court that day. He showed the Criterio reporter my legal documents and pointed out that Federico had illegally kidnapped the children, and that he was wanted in the U.S. by the FBI. This put a whole different light on the situation. It occasioned a second article appearing in the May 30 issue. This was a cover feature, too, called, "Kidnap of the Bascope Children: The Other Version." The article stated that Dr. Castillo's revelations cast Federico's version of events "in serious question."

  After he was arrested in the Plaza Hotel in La Paz, Guy was held under house arrest and interrogated for 48 hours by the Bolivian police. Then, with the help of $10,000 sent by Lloyd, he was released and returned home to Miami. Food Aid International and Russ were eventually found innocent of any wrongdoing.

  Lloyd is still running his private investigation agency in Houston. I was saddened to learn that Bob died in the summer of 1990 from a sudden illness.

  As for Federico, he is still on the FBI list and cannot get a visa to return to the United States. A few months after I recovered the children, he wrote a letter to my parents. In it he said that I must have loved Jane and Michael very much to have done what I did to get them back and that he wouldn't do anything to upset their lives any further. He can exchange letters with Jane and Michael through one of my brothers. I never wanted them to be cut off from their father, in spite of what he did.

  I wish him well. You might think that I can afford to be magnanimous, that as the winner I have the luxury of pitying the loser. But it is the children who have lost the most. They still love their father, and they still miss him. Michael summed it up when he said, "Mommy, when I was with Daddy I missed you, and now that I'm with you, I miss Daddy."

  There is no winner. No real solution.