US Woman May Be Montreal Baby Who Went Missing in 1978

'I think I might be your daughter'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 17, 2016 3:00 AM CDT
US Woman May Be Montreal Baby Who Went Missing in 1978
Photo of Liliane Cyr and baby Yohanna.   (YouTube)

A Canadian woman looking for her missing daughter since she went missing as a toddler almost 40 years ago received a Facebook message in early August that may change her life, the Ottawa Citizen reports. The private message sent to Liliane Cyr, who maintains a Facebook page dedicated to finding her daughter Yohanna, who disappeared from their Montreal apartment in 1978, was from a US woman who started off asking a very specific question about a birthmark on Yohanna's finger, followed by this: "I'm not 100% sure, but I think I might be your daughter." The woman told Cyr that the discovery that her birth certificate was a fake, an odd lack of early childhood photos, and fuzzy memories of a plane ride led her to suspect something was amiss in her past.

The Montreal Gazette tells the story of what happened the week Yohanna disappeared, with 20-year-old Cyr leaving 18-month-old Yohanna in the care of Aaron Lewis Guay, her US boyfriend at the time, while she was out of town for work. Guay met up with Cyr a few days later without the baby, first telling Cyr his mom was watching Yohanna, then saying the toddler had drowned in the tub and he'd buried her. Guay was charged with kidnapping, but he denied his original story and a judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence to go on with the case; he was released and disappeared. Cyr says she's trying not to get her hopes up, but she notes that photos of the woman resemble Yohanna. DNA tests are in the works. (Two teens missing for two years were found on a Minnesota farm.)

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