Whether as a magazine, podcast or documentary series: True crime formats are very popular. And sometimes they can help solve criminal cases. At least that's what happened last week in the US state of North Carolina. In a shop, a woman noticed another customer who looked familiar to her – probably from a documentary about a missing person case: She is accused of kidnapping her then nine-year-old daughter Kayla in 2017.
"I'm overjoyed that Kayla is safely home," her father, Ryan Iskerka, said in a statement released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He and his daughter would now have to get to know each other anew.
As can be seen from the reports of the case, Iskerka had custody of his daughter at the time of Kayla's disappearance. The mother had contact with her daughter, but did not bring her back to her father in July 2017 after a visit as agreed. According to witnesses, the mother was last seen packing her belongings and stowing them on the roof of her car – ostensibly to go camping. However, she also deleted her social media accounts and turned off her phone. She also had no contact with her lawyer. Since then, there has been no trace of mother and daughter.
The case was picked up in November in the Netflix series "Unsolved Mysteries" – and now probably led to the clarification of the case. The mother was arrested. It is still unclear how the two could remain undetected for so long.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, such kidnappings are not uncommon: In the United States, 30,000 children are reported missing every year, and family members are the perpetrators in 1500 cases.