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Missing Child 1990

I remember this very well and like Blues I have wondered what happened.

Two other missing baby cases spring to mind.

-Ben Needham - a British toddler who disappeared on the island of Cos some years ago. He is still not found and is believed to have been kidnapped by opportunist 'baby smugglers' who could command a high price for a blond-haired baby.

-Another baby, whose name escapes me, vanished from a car in similar circumstances to Ames Glover's apparent abduction at around the same time. There was eventually a solution to this mystery- her parents had murdered her because she was handicapped. Her carrycot was found in the sea some months later, though her body has never been recovered.

Where did Ames go to?
Is it likely that a father would leave a baby in a car while he went shopping?
If Ames wasn't in the car in the first place, where was he?
What do we know about his father's whereabouts both then and now?
Why would anyone steal a baby from a car?
Why wasn't the car obviously damaged in the abduction?

Fascinating.

I haven't seen any books about this case.
 
Came across this link about unsolved missing child cases.

Philip Hensher: There are some crime stories that will never reveal their ending
The urges of narrative have their own place. But life does not always conform to its structures
Click to expand...

A small black child, Ames Glover, disappeared from Southall in 1990, abducted by a stranger. The case was not much reported on at the time, and has not become well known since. Wikipedia, as good an indicator of public interest as any other, has an article of 7,500 words on the McCann case, and nothing at all on Ames Glover.

The little boy has never been found. And, looking at the circumstances, it seems as if one of the reasons for the public obscurity is that you can't make as good a story out of the Glover incident. It did not occur as a tragedy in paradise, but in Southall. The parents were not rock-solid respectable marrieds, but had already split up. And, I'm sorry to say, it seems to be harder to make a good story out of a missing black child than out of one with blond hair and blue eyes. But both the McCann case and the Glover are equal tragedies. Twenty years after Ames Glover's disappearance, his mother Shanika Ondaatje said, heartbreakingly: "I have lived in the hope that one day I will find out where he is or what became of him." She said it to the Hounslow Chronicle. No one else was interested.
Click to expand...

etc

We've discussed the idea of 'missing white woman syndrome' at some length. It certainly seems to apply here.
 
What a sad story. You don't like to think about what happened to the kid.
 
I find it particularly tragic that, on the whim of the media, near-identical cases can be treated so differently.
 
:( How awful, it's so sad to think of all the kids we never hear a word about because the media prefer Jonbenet type children. One can opnly hope he didn't suffer.
 
I've contacted the OP in the hope of finding that out! ;)

I'm also wondering about the 'carry cot' case, which I remember well. Can't bring enough details to mind to dig up a news report, though.
 
Hi, i posted the oringinal link in a previous incarnation. I think I was referring to the Ames case too. It's one of those stories that haunts me.
 
Layla said:
Hi, i posted the oringinal link in a previous incarnation. I think I was referring to the Ames case too. It's one of those stories that haunts me.
Click to expand...

We'll have to go with Layla's memory ... The original Ananova story link is long dead, and the article wasn't captured by the Wayback Machine.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Ames_Glover

I remember this case well. The father, Paul Glover, stuck to his story that he went to a cashpoint, then bought a takeaway meal and found Ames missing from the unlocked car when he returned. In 1990 there were far fewer CCTV cameras so it wasn't possible to check for discrepancies.

It seems to me the very mundanity of Ames' disappearance is what made it hard to investigate. The story was in the national papers and local people who were in the area that night came forward, but no-one saw the baby. However, that doesn't prove he wasn't there - just that he wasn't noticed. The police didn't have enough evidence to act.

I always thought the father had passed him to extended family and he had either been taken to Ghana or was being cared for until it blew over, to be handed back to dad at a later date. Scotland Yard reopened the case in 2003 but no new leads came up. The mum is still campaigning for information, the father is completely silent.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1443539/Missing-baby-case-is-reopened-after-13-years.html
 
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