Atlanta mother continues search for son abducted 43 years ago
Billboards are up across metro Atlanta showing a man's picture and asking the question "Is This YOU?"
By MEGHAN PACKER
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ATLANTA, Georgia (WGCL) — A new campaign is shedding light on a 43-year-old cold case.
Billboards are up across metro Atlanta showing a man’s picture and asking the question “Is This YOU?”
Nobody hopes someone has an answer to that question more than Donna Green. The billboards are showing what her son Raymond may look like today at the age of 43. She doesn’t know for sure though because she last saw him when he was five days old and she never had a picture of her son. The composite was put together using his parents’ and siblings’ pictures.
“I pray for him all the time so I’m just trusting God,” she said.
The newborn as abducted by a woman who befriended 16-year-old Donna at Grady Hospital. The woman called herself Lisa and said she was at the hospital visiting her sister’s new baby. Days later she showed up at Donna’s Atlanta apartment saying she wanted to visit her and Raymond. Donna said the woman ended up walking out of the apartment with the baby when the opportunity arose. She was upstairs and her brother had fallen asleep downstairs where the woman and baby were.
“It’s like she disappeared out of thin air, never saw Raymond again,” said Donna.
The mother of six other children is holding out hope Raymond is out there somewhere and they will be reunited.
“I hope he’s a good family man, I hope he’s a servant of God, I hope he’s taking care of his children,” she said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) launched the billboard campaign and is also showing the picture on screens at electric car charging stations set up at gas stations. They also took to social media using #RaymondsStory and told a step-by-step account of what happened the day of the kidnapping in 1978 from the perspective of the baby.
“We want to capture people’s attention because he’s out there and it’s going to take, after 40 years, people out there looking, engaging with a campaign like this to help find him,” said Angeline Hartmann, NCMEC Director of Communications.
“We’re hoping this campaign will reach him, will reach African American men in this age range to just stop for a second and think, could this be me?” Hartmann said.
Anyone who hears this story and has questions about their past can call NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST.
Donna submitted her DNA to multiple databases and is hoping one day she will be a match with Raymond or perhaps his children.
“I think it’s possible that we could find Raymond. I think he’s out there somewhere, I do,” said Donna.
She now works with other families of missing children, hoping she can help bring them the closure she hasn’t yet gotten herself.
She said, “Anything I can do to help somebody not feel what I feel, that’s what I do.”
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