A Missing Child of the 1980s, All Grown Up

Scott Rankin’s father hatched an elaborate plot to kidnap him and start a secret life, while his mother searched desperately for six years. That was only the start of Scott’s traumatic life journey.

Header collage by Yunuen Bonaparte | Story Edited by Brendan Spiegel

One morning in 1984, the school principal walked into the classroom where I taught fourth grade and whispered to me, “Scott is a missing child!”

I looked at 9-year-old Scott, who was present in my class that day. I was quite aware what was implied. The term “missing child” had been seared into the nation’s psyche in the 1980s following a few high-profile cases, including the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979. None of us at the school had any idea that Scott had been kidnapped from his own home just a few months before Patz.

The principal explained that Scott had been kidnapped by his father, and over the past six years, including the four-plus he’d been enrolled in our school, his mother, who lived on the other side of the country, had been desperately searching for him. I did not know the depth of the story beginning to unfold. It would be weeks before I understood the immediate implications for Scott and his family — and decades before I learned of the full dimensions of Scott’s remarkable experience.

12/29/78, I picked up Scott on time. Martha knows nothing. Today is the day…I have reached the point of no return.

— Entry in Scott’s father’s journal