Springs baby still missing after 18 years

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jul 19, 2004 by DEEDEE CORRELL THE GAZETTE

Christopher Abeyta would be old enough to vote this year.

He would be old enough to graduate from high school, old enough to enlist in the Army.

Would be -- if he is still alive.

The 7-month-old baby who vanished from his crib one night 18 years ago remains missing, a ghostly and ever-receding figure in one of the most publicized unsolved cases in Colorado Springs history.

Many presume him dead.

He's not, his father, Gil Abeyta, insisted Thursday on the anniversary of Christopher's disappearance.

"We have never, ever sat down and said, 'We know he's not alive,'" said Abeyta, 62.

Others don't think that can be possible -- or that they'll ever see a resolution to the case that consumed the public's attention for months in 1986 and still draws a trickle of leads.

"I don't think the child is alive," said Vic Morris, former captain of detectives for Colorado Springs police, now retired. "Frankly, I don't think he was alive the day after he disappeared. That's strictly my opinion.

"The case is unsolved and probably will remain unsolved."'

At 6:30 a.m. July 15, 1986, the Abeytas dialed 911.

They said they'd last seen Christopher about midnight, safely sleeping in his crib several feet from their bed. When they awoke, the crib was empty.

Police raced to the house in Cheyenne Hills, near Quail Lake in southwestern Colorado Springs. Within minutes, they called for backup. It appeared they had a kidnapping.

Reporters flooded the neighborhood, and Bernice Abeyta appeared on television, pleading for her son's return.

"Please help us find him so tomorrow we can cuddle up in bed like we usually do," she said tearfully. "I beg you, please."

Relations between the Abeytas and detectives soon soured, and it became clear detectives suspected the family in the child's disappearance.

When Bernice Abeyta failed two lie-detector tests, the family announced the results to the media, attributing them to her stress and withdrawal from a medication.

They also criticized the police, accusing them of bungling the investigation and focusing too much on them.

Abeyta said when he admitted he wasn't excited about the unplanned pregnancy of Christopher -- who was at least 16 years younger than his siblings -- police suggested he resented the child and wanted him gone.

Some aspects of the case didn't add up, Morris said, emphasizing he was only expressing his personal opinion.

"The suspicion was the scene itself," he said. "It was not conducive to a stranger abduction."

First, he said, there were no signs of forced entry. The Abeytas said they left the door unlocked that night, which wasn't typical for them.

Also, Morris said, the crib was placed at the far end of an extremely cluttered bedroom.

"In order to reach it, you had to weave back and forth through this furniture," he said.

A person unfamiliar with the room surely would stumble over so much furniture in the dark, he said. "I'm not saying it wasn't possible. But it was doubtful."

Parents don't protect each other in such matters, Abeyta said this week.

"If Bernice thought I had anything to do with this, let me assure you, she would come at me with everything," he said. "And if I thought she did it, I would too."

Abductions by strangers are indeed rare, said Carmen Fontanaof the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Of almost 800,000 children reported missing in 2002, only 115 cases were stereotypical kidnappings.

"I truly believe he was taken by a person that may have wanted to raise Christopher as their own," he said.

Weeks after the disappearance, the investigation led police to suspect Christopher was dead, his body dumped in Quail Lake. The city ordered much of the water drained so divers could search the 18-acre lake.

They found nothing, but that didn't allay Morris' suspicion that the lake was the child's final resting place.

The lake, he said, was so choked with weeds and brush that it would have been difficult to tell for sure a body wasn't there without completely draining it.

"The only way you could have known for sure would have been to drain the whole thing," he said. "But the city wouldn't allow it."

Today, Abeyta still takes issue with the city's decision to drain the lake, saying they should have spent their money instead on a reward for Christopher's recovery.

No one takes a baby to kill it a few blocks away, he said.

"It was an act of love," he said firmly. "They knew him, they wanted him, they took him. It wasn't to hurt him."

The Abeytas have staked the years since on that theory -- that someone surely took Christopher because he or she wanted a child of their own.

Such an incident happened in Colorado Springs not long after Christopher's disappearance.

In 1988, psychotherapist Maritza Rentz wanted a baby of her own and kidnapped a 4-week-old infant from Colorado Springs woman Cora Abbott. Rentz passed the child off as her own until acquaintances grew suspicious and she was arrested several days later.