The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • A14

14 THE BALTIMORE NEWS FROM PAGE ONE custody dispute. Stanley, 58, now lives in Edgewood, where she runs a home day care service. But on March 24, 1982, when Toya was last seen, she was a single mother of four living in the Perkins Homes complex just south of Pratt Street. Toya, a third-grader, had come home from City Springs Elementary School and was playing with friends in a courtyard when she decided to go to a store two blocks away. There, she was seen talking to two men, one of whom was her ex-boyfriend.

When she failed to come home by early evening, Stanley called police. They canvassed the neighborhood and interviewed the two men and, ultimately, about 150 other people, and yet Toya has never been found. still at the same place I was at Stanley said. the problem: You have any What kept her going was her other kids. had to keep living and surviving for she said.

had to look out for their Stanley only stopped setting a place for Toya at the dinner table when she realized how sad it was for her son and two daughters to be reminded of their absence. She used to find pictures of Toya that the kids had put under their pillows at night, and keeps her own mementos of her long-lost daughter close at hand. took everything, all her things she had, little drawings she Stanley said, I keep them in a box in my News of other missing children naturally triggers memories of her own. Last month, the story of Carlina White, who was kidnapped as a child and, at 23, found her biological parents on her own hit Stanley particularly hard. Happy for the mother anger came out first why that be my child coming home to she said.

I was happy for her As the birthdays August 24 and other holidays went by, return seemed less and less likely. Stanley wavers between believing that Toya was alive out there, somewhere, and accepting that perhaps she is long dead. Either option, though, produces its own torment: To hope is to myself she says, for the disappointment of a reunion that never comes. To even consider that Toya is dead, though, seems like giving up on her child. Parents of missing children can be buffeted by a broad range of emotions, including fear, depression, grief, isolation, anger and despair, according to the U.S.

Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The office advises parents that they should not feel guilty for going back to work or laughing at times. It notes in a guide: minute you will feel a surge of hope, the next, a depth of despair that will threaten your very sanity. Life will become an emotional roller coaster that really stop until you can hold your child in your arms Stanley recalls the conflicting emotions she felt when, several years ago, Baltimore police found the body of a woman they thought was about the age Toya would be. They asked her for a DNA sample, but it turned out not to match that of the woman result that at least theoretically meant Toya could still be alive.

Still, it was upsetting because it also meant her fate was as unknowable as ever. Stanley suspected at the time that Toya had been taken by an angry ex-boyfriend man she would ultimately marry years later. When her daughter disappeared, Stanley was three days away from marrying another man in fact, she was getting her wedding dress fitted at the time. Stanley went ahead with the wedding, saying she thought that would prompt her ex-boyfriend to realize that their relationship was over and he would return the girl to her. Would do anything kept calling back to his house, leaving messages on his she said of learning that he had been seen talking to Toya at the store.

said, give her back to He returned the call a day later. He said he have Stanley said her later marriage to the man was motivated by her belief that he could bring Toya back. was the reason for the marriage I thought maybe he would give her back to she said. the time, I would have done anything as a mother to get She left him after several months, with no more clues to her whereabouts. Through friends, she learned several years ago that the man had died.

Much has changed in awareness of missing children since Toya vanished. She went missing eight months after Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old who disappeared from a Florida mall and was later found murdered. His case drew nationwide attention, and his father, John Walsh, became a well-known child and crime activist as well as host of the TV show Most Through his and other efforts, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded in 1984, and it continues serving as a clearinghouse for missing children. Pages of heartbreak On its website, page after heartbreaking page of pictures shows thumbnail photos of the missing, frozen in time to when they were last seen, as well as some details about their disappearances. Joining Toya on the page of missing are cases as old as that of 4-year- old George Barksdale, who vanished from outside a West Baltimore church in 1969, to those as recent as Barnes, the North Carolina honors student and track star who was staying at her apartment in Northwest Baltimore when she disappeared Dec.

28. Many of the children on the website are runaways, or are believed to have been taken by relatives, sometimes in custody disputes. Others are thought to be persons who have been found dead and have not been identified. Robert L. Dean saw the range of cases in the more than 10 years in which he headed the Baltimore Police missing-persons unit.

In fact, when he looks back on that time, two cases stand as bookends. very first case was Toya Hill, who was never Dean said. last case was the girl we found in a dumpster. While we were standing there waiting for homicide they came to empty it. We were five minutes away from losing her That was Ebony Scott, a 9-year-old from New York who was visiting her sister and was found slain the day she was reported missing: Aug.

12, 1992. In between, there were more typical cases, said Dean, who is 68 years old and retired after 25 years with the police force. He found runaways, helped people locate relatives with whom lost contact, determined the identities of the dead. The long-term missing stand out because they are so rare. He remembers case vividly, as well as one he inherited: 7-year-old Telethia Good.

She disappeared from her house, where she was visiting while her mother was at a church event, on Sept. 10, 1979. Identity unknown was always the feeling, have I done everything I can Dean said of having to pass those cases on to his successors when he retired. compare what I did to a doctor, but a doctor would always like to cure a disease. And he can do all he can, and he still cure every Even now, something will trigger a memory of a still-open case: Dean saw an ad for the Greene Turtle bar recently, and it reminded him of a woman who had overdosed and, despite a distinctive turtle tattoo, he was never able to identify.

Other cases similarly haunt other parts of the state: Katherine and Sheila Lyon, 13 and 11respectively, who went to Wheaton Plaza on March 25, 1975, to get pizza and have not been seen since. Or George Burdynski, 10, who disappeared while riding his bike to a house in Prince County on May 24, 1993. The cases have had their fits and starts, promising leads that went nowhere, suspicions that either were unfounded or could never be proved. For Annette Stanley, losing her daughter feels like a journey that has yet to end, one that has taken twists and turns even through psychics, at one point. And even as she acknowledges that perhaps Toya is dead, Stanley also allows herself to imagine her now grown-up daughter one day walking through the door.

my she says. would be the happiest day of my jean.marbella@baltsun.com Annette Stanley, then the newly-married Annette Hill Poindexter, awaits return to help her open wedding gifts. BALTIMORE SUN PHOTO 1982 A copy photograph of Toya Hill as she appeared in 1982 at age 8. BALTIMORE SUN PHOTO NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN anguish persists over children still missing MISSING, Frompage1 An age-progressed image of Toya Hill as she might appear at 34. Here are some of the children who have disappeared from Baltimore and elsewhere in Maryland and have yet to be found, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: George Barksdale Born: Feb 10, 1965 Disappeared: Apr 20, 1969 The 4-year-old, nicknamed was last seen on the steps of a church around the corner from his home in the 1000 block of Argyle Avenue in West Baltimore.

Tiffany Michele Goines Born: Dec 22, 1974 Disappeared: Dec 5, 1987 The sixth-grade student was last seen getting into a red convertible near her apartment in Frederick. Melody McKoy Born: Oct. 1, 1979 Disappeared: Dec 1, 1991 The sixth-grader at Harlem Park Middle School had slept over at a house, but when the family awoke the next morning, she was gone. Shannon Lee Potter Born: July 20, 1970 Disappeared: Mar 3, 1984 Baltimore County Police say the teenager climbed out of a bedroom window of her house in Parkville to go to a party and has not been seen since. George Stanley Burdynski Jr.

Born: July 29, 1982 Disappeared: May 24, 1993 Known as the 10-year-old was riding his red bike from his home in Brentwood in Prince County to a house when he vanished. Garnell Monroe Moore Born: May 18, 1995 Disappeared: Jul 1, 2005 An aunt who had become guardian told police she no longer could take care of the boy and left him on the steps of a social services office at 500 N. Hilton St. in Baltimore. Sources: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, news accounts.

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