I actually made the next flight, although it required begging my way through security so that I arrived just as they were closing down the gate and taking the last passengers aboard. I was able to board quickly after a brief check of my passport and e-ticket by the gate agents.
Same business-class deal for the three-and-a-half-hour flight—more coffee and a basket of croissants, which I planned not to eat, but did.
No one will ever recognize me after these last two days: I must have gained forty pounds!
The hours spent flying gave me a false sense of security—as though I were just that same old reporter being sent somewhere terrific to cover something horrific. But no news organization had my back any longer. In fact, no one had my back any longer.
Not true. Dona and Donald …
I read and then re-read all the news clippings in the envelope. Two were follow-ups on the missing child, Theo Bienheureux.
One detailed the police investigation, in which an elderly neighbor who’d been walking her two Yorkies at dawn on the Saturday in question swore that she saw a sleepy child with a blanket around her being taken into a car, along with a man, a woman, and a priest!
She said the priest even tipped his fedora hat to her. It looked a little odd, but since the chauffeur carried and then loaded several suitcases into the car, she assumed it was just another nouveau riche family off to meet their private plane to take them somewhere “fabulously sacred,” the woman acidly stated. Her disgusted sniff practically jumped off the page.
The dawn episode, I knew, was a good cover, but it seemed like really bad news for the child.
Someone—and it sounded like the trio that Wright-Lewis had described to me—had abducted the girl from her apartment. But what about her damned parents?
The next clip was supposed to have explained it all:
People Magazine
April 27, 1981
Exclusive
“Missing” Theo Isn’t Missing After All!
By Harry Francescani
Little Theotokos Bienheureux, who had been reported missing by her teacher at the prestigious Friends Seminary school in NYC, has been found alive and well, and as it turns out, was not missing at all!
The twelve-year-old, who hasn’t been seen since she disappeared from school in March, had simply moved to a remote region of the Amazon with her parents, Leah and William Bienheureux, who are missionaries with the Catari Relief Services Worldwide.
According to Leah, thirty-five, in a letter to People magazine, which was forwarded to our offices from the CRSW Brazilian office:
“We wish to thank all our New York friends and neighbors for their concern about the whereabouts of our beloved daughter, Theo, who is safe and sound with us in our new missionary post.
“Our organization, you see, was the first to be informed by the Brazilian government last month that two lost tribes consisting of just twenty and twelve people, respectively, had been discovered deep in the Amazon rain forest by two engineers working on a dam project in the area.
“The Brazilian relief organization Indigenous Peoples Relief and Rescue contacted our group, the CRSW, who then negotiated with the Brazilian government to secure for these indigenous peoples a protected area consisting of twenty square miles, deep within the Amazon.
“Our hope is that they can form a new clan together and begin to rebuild their families.
“As you can see from the attached photos, Theotokos is thriving in our new jungle home. Although she is only twelve, she is the official ‘teacher’ of the group and is working with the five children who are clan members.
“We have much work to do and we will remain here as long as needed. When Theo comes of college age, she can choose to attend a university or remain here doing what we think of as ‘God’s work.’”
The rest of the article was an apology from the mother, who said both she and her husband were distressed that they had caused concern, but because they were (supposedly) not American-born, they therefore didn’t understand our customs.
Like pulling a kid out of school without formal paperwork or even an explanation? Right. They knew how to enroll her in school, but they didn’t know how to terminate that enrollment.
The story was accompanied by grainy photos of the family in their new home, which looked like a bunch of thatched-roof, open-sided huts amidst giant vegetation. The child in the pictures looked like Theo Bienheureux, but black-and-white photos of a twelve-year-old with her hair all frizzy from the Amazon air and wearing native dress could make any differences between the real deal and an imposter hard to decipher. And since the story had been reduced to fit the 8½ × 11-inch fax paper, the photos were very small.
At any rate, other pictures showed Theo “teaching” in an open hut while five little kids sat on a long bench alongside an indigenous bare-breasted woman who was nursing an infant. Across the photo in a young girl’s foolishly fancy script was scrawled in what looked like crayon, “I love it here!”