NEWS: U.S.
A Texas woman has been reunited with her long-lost family thanks to a DNA test, ending a mystery that has lasted more than 50 years

Melis­sa Hymis, 53, was abduct­ed from her home in Fort Worth by her nan­ny in 1971 when she was just 22 months old.

But after years of no results, she took a DNA sam­ple at a site and got match­ing results.

Ms. High­smith, for­mer­ly known as “Melanie,” plans to change her name back.

Her High­smith’s for­tunes began in August 1971 when her moth­er, Arta Apatenko, hired a babysit­ter through an adver­tise­ment in a local newspaper.

The nan­ny sus­pect­ed of kid­nap­ping her baby promised to look after her in her own home.

She then dis­ap­peared with her baby, spark­ing a decades-long man­hunt by the High­smiths, police and fed­er­al author­i­ties. As of Sep­tem­ber, her fam­i­ly had fol­lowed reports that Ms. High­smith had been spot­ted in South Carolina.

High­smith said she called her­self “Melanie Walden,” but year after year went by with­out her ever real­iz­ing that she was being searched for. At first, she thought it was a scam when her fam­i­ly tried to con­tact her on Facebook.

The break­through came on Novem­ber 6 when a DNA test on the ances­try site 23AndMe con­nect­ed the High­smith chil­dren to the fam­i­ly and helped ama­teur geneal­o­gists make sense of the results.

“We found Melis­sa pure­ly because of her DNA,” her fam­i­ly wrote in a Face­book post. “Not due to police or FBI involve­ment or pod­casts or our fam­i­ly’s per­son­al research or speculation.”

Ms. High­smith and her par­ents first met again on Novem­ber 26. In a Face­book post, the fam­i­ly said they had “more for­mal and legal DNA test­ing” and are wait­ing for “offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion for the neg­a­tive peo­ple out there.”

High­smith said he was “over­whelmed” by US broad­cast­er CBS. “But it’s also the most amaz­ing feel­ing in the world.”

Apatenko, High­smith’s bio­log­i­cal moth­er, said it was “unbe­liev­able” that her fam­i­ly was reunit­ed after so many years.

“I thought I would nev­er see her again,” she said.

No infor­ma­tion on the kid­nap­per has been released. Accord­ing to her Ms. High­smith, when she con­front­ed the woman who raised her (with whom she has been estranged for decades), she dis­cov­ered she was a kid­napped child. He admitted.

” said Mr Highsmith.

The statute of lim­i­ta­tions on the kid­nap­ping has long expired, but Fort Worth police said in a state­ment that they will con­tin­ue to inves­ti­gate the dis­ap­pear­ance to find out what happened.

Dur­ing this time, the fam­i­ly will be able to make up for lost time and get to know each other.

For exam­ple, Ms. High­smith’s sis­ter told The Wash­ing­ton Post that Ms. High­smith plans to redo her wed­ding to her now-hus­band and have her bio­log­i­cal father walk the aisle.

“My heart is filled with so many emo­tions right now,” she told CBS. “I am very, very happy.”