Her Baby Was Stolen 45 Years Ago. Here’s What He Would Look Like Today By KC Baker

New parents Kevin Verville Sr., a 21-year-old U.S. Marine corporal, and his Filipino-born wife, Angelina, 22, were over the moon with the birth of their first child, Kevin Jr., on June 14, 1980.

Since Kevin Jr. was born with jaundice, a common newborn condition, doctors kept him in the hospital for a week. But soon the family was getting used to their new routine at home.

On July 1 of that year they had just returned from the grocery store when they heard a knock at the door of their apartment at an off-base housing complex near Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, Calif., where Kevin Sr. was stationed.

It was a social worker who had stopped by earlier that week to enroll the Vervilles in a program for junior military families and offer them a stipend for diapers and formula.

Kevin was busy unloading the groceries, so the social worker, who introduced herself as Sheila, said she would give Angelina and her child a ride to her office to weigh and measure Kevin Jr. for the program.

During the drive, Sheila — who appeared to be pregnant — made an unannounced stop at another house near the base and asked Angelina whether she would mind knocking on the door for her.

“My mom says she wasn’t even out of the car all the way, and the lady drove off,” says the Vervilles’ daughter Angelica Ramsey, 40, speaking on behalf of her mother, now 67, who is unable to talk as a result of strokes she has suffered.

Angelina helplessly waved her arms as the car sped away with her baby inside. “She was in shock,” says Angelica. “She couldn’t talk, even when a man in a truck stopped to pick her up and bring her to the police station.”

In that instant the happy future the couple had envisioned with their son evaporated. “That was the last time I saw my baby,” says Kevin, 67.

For about a month authorities canvassed the area, searching for any sign of Kevin Jr. or the kidnapper who had posed as a social worker. The FBI put out a sketch of the petite, curly-haired woman, whom neighbors said had been seen going door-to-door, reportedly looking for a baby of Filipino descent, and who had a small tattoo of a circle on her left hand.

Eventually the investigation went cold — and Kevin and Angelina entered a
tunnel of darkness, eventually divorcing under the strain of their loss. Saddened by her family’s history and desperate for answers, in 2020 Angelica, who was born five years after Kevin Jr.’s kidnapping, took action. She contacted the FBI, who directed her to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and implored investigators to take a fresh look at the case.

On June 10, just four days before Kevin Jr.’s 45th birthday, the two organizations announced a new campaign to search for the Vervilles’ missing son and released an age-progression image of what he might look like now.

“We believe there is a strong possibility that Kevin Verville Jr. is out there,” says Angeline Hartmann, NCMEC’s director of communications.

She notes that Kevin Jr. may not know his real identity — or even that he was abducted.

“We have worked with families in similar situations where babies were found years later,
even decades. We know that the answers are out there.”

For Kevin Sr. and Angelina, becoming parents for the first time was the start of a promising new chapter of their lives together. The young couple met in 1978, when Kevin was stationed in the Philippines, and wed soon after.

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In 1979 Kevin Sr. was transferred to Camp Pendleton, where Kevin Jr. was born. “It was just a happy time,” recalls Kevin. Their short-lived bliss turned to grief when Sheila drove off with Kevin Jr. Angelina cried for months and turned inward, barely speaking to anyone.

“She was devastated,” says Kevin Sr., who blamed himself. “As a father I feel like I failed to protect my family.”

Tensions over the fate of their son led to intense arguments, especially when Angelina sometimes worried that Kevin Jr. was dead. “That would anger me,” he says. “I always thought we’d find him.”

After divorcing in 1981 the Vervilles soon remarried each other and had two more children — Art, 38, and Angelica.

Fearing that they, too, could be taken, Kevin Sr. wouldn’t let the kids go anywhere alone.

“It’s a nervousness that never goes away,” he says. The Vervilles divorced again in 1991, then remarried for a second time before divorcing for good in 1996. Even decades later
Kevin Sr. still has a hard time talking about the kidnapping. “It was too painful,” says Angelica.

Seeing how anguished her parents were, Angelica decided to do something about it. Growing up she had watched true-crime shows featuring cold cases. “I thought, ‘Why isn’t Kevin on any of these shows?’” she recalls. In 2020 she began pushing for local authorities and the FBI to keep investigating her brother’s case.

In 2021 she began working with NCMEC. They tapped into the center’s database of past missing children’s cases to develop a profile of the kidnapper. Likely unable to have a child of her own, the woman who took Kevin Jr. may have been “baby shopping,” says Hartmann.

“She had a specific baby in mind that she wanted to steal, and she took this baby to raise and pass as her own,” she says.

To find Kevin Jr., Hartmann says, “we have to find her. So we ask people to think: Did you know a woman who had a new baby in 1980? What did that baby look like?”

Kevin Sr., who retired from the Marines almost 20 years ago, fears time is running out for him to be reunited with his son.

“I want to see Junior before I pass,” he says. “I also want Junior and his mom to meet.”

Though Angelina cannot speak, she “was crying” when she learned authorities are searching anew for the baby who was stolen from her so long ago, says Angelica. That baby, now a man, “is loved and missed by so many,” says his sister.

“I hope we find him very soon.”

If you have information about Kevin Verville Jr., contact NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST or the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov.