Melissa Highsmith: Family 'overjoyed with delight' after reuniting with sister who was kidnapped in 1971
FORT WORTH, TEXAS: Melissa Highsmith has now been reunited with her family after being separated from them for 51 years. Just in time for the holidays, Highsmith's family discovered a match with Melissa's children when they opened the results of a 23andme test on November 22. The family had been looking for Melissa for years.
"One of our sisters called her daughter — the youngest one — and her daughter led us to her mom," Jeff Highsmith, Melissa's younger brother who had never met his sister before last week, told Fox News Digital. The Highsmith family says Melissa's likeness to her mother is uncanny and they are still awaiting the results of an official DNA test from Melissa herself. "We had coffee with her on Thanksgiving night, and when I looked at her, I just knew. I knew," Jeff Highsmith said later that he "couldn't take" his eyes off her when he met her as she looked "just like" his mother.
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Highsmith, who now goes by Melanie, was raised about ten minutes from the Fort Worth, Texas apartment where she was kidnapped on August 23, 1971, when she was just 21 months old. After a tip from an anonymous source about Melissa's possible sighting near Charleston, South Carolina, the case gained media attention in September. Although Melissa Highsmith wasn't in Charleston at the time of the sighting, it raised awareness of the case on a national level and gave Highsmith's siblings inspiration to track down their long-lost sister. She is now thinking about going back to her birth name.
After Melissa turned 53 in November, Jeff Highsmith told Fox News Digital that his family thought they were "stepping in the right direction" and that they were getting closer to learning where Melissa was and what was happening.
Alta, Melissa's mother, who had recently separated, placed an ad for a babysitter to watch over Melissa, her firstborn, at the time she moved to Fort Worth and began working as a waitress in the 1970s. After responding to the post, a woman agreed to meet Alta at the restaurant where the young mother worked, but she never did. Later, the prospective nanny called Alta to express interest in the job, claiming that she had experience caring for children and a sizable yard.
The 21-month-old child was left in Alta's roommate's care while the young mother worked as a waitress; Alta then hired a babysitter to pick her up. The woman who picked Melissa up was described by the roommate as being dressed in white gloves, sunglasses, and a bonnet, in the middle of August in Texas, Jeff said. Highsmith had not been seen since her mother contacted law authorities on the day she vanished in 1971. Although Jeff thinks his sister was abducted, his current priority is getting to know her. After locating Melissa, the Highsmith family is "overjoyed with delight" and feels closer than ever, he said.