America's 1st Kidnap Victim Never Found

Like every other atrocity that human beings have perpetrated against their own kind, child-snatching is undoubtedly as old as the species. We know this, among other ways, from the folktales of the world. The evil faeries who steal newborns from their cradles and leave changelings in their place; the bat-winged she-demons like Lilith and Lamia who prey on babies in the night; the demonic pipers who lure little boys and girls away from home forever–these and other such supernatural beings are nightmare projections of a primal parental fear that stretches back to time immemorial. The historical evidence, too, leaves no doubt that children have always made ripe targets for predators, who have kept them as tribal captives, sold them into slavery, or used them as sexual or sacrificial victims.