20 yrs later, woman says she found missing daughter
02/22/2013 05:28
Woman tells police she saw her daughter who disappeared in 1994 at wedding; woman denies she is missing girl, DNA to be checked.
A DNA double helix Photo: REUTERS
In a surprise development nearly 20 years after 10-year-old Alexandra Bernadette
went missing in Ramat Gan, her mother told police this week she believes she may
have located the girl, now living in an apartment in Ashdod.
The story,
first reported on Channel 10, is a major development in one of the most famous
missing person cases in the history of Israel.
According to the Channel
10 report, the mother was at a wedding in Ramat Gan three days ago when she saw
a woman who looked exactly like her daughter.
She confronted the woman,
who denied she was her daughter and left the wedding hall. The next day the
mother and another daughter tracked the woman down to her apartment in Ashdod
and called police, who took testimony from both sides.
Tel Aviv police
said Thursday night that the woman agreed to give a DNA sample, which is now
being examined by the Tel Aviv branch of the YAMAR investigative unit, which
looked into the case. Bernadette first vanished in 1994. The Tel Aviv District
commander has given the DNA exam top priority.
Bernadette was last seen
on November 24, 1994, when she vanished from the David Hamelech park in Ramat
Gan two years after moving to Israel with her family from Ukraine.