A little girl who vanished without a trace when she was almost two has been found alive — more than 25 years later.
She was last seen by her father in Connecticut
Back in October 1999, Andrea Michelle Reyes was just 23 months old when she disappeared from her dad’s home in New Haven, Connecticut.
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Authorities believed her mother took her to Mexico
Not long after, police put out a felony warrant for her mother, Rosa Tenorio Andrea, who didn’t have custody at the time.
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), the last known contact with Andrea was on October 5, 1999.
Investigators thought her mother had taken her to Puebla, Mexico.
Years of investigations led nowhere
A second felony warrant for Tenorio was reportedly issued in September 2009.
But even with multiple agencies working the case — including the New Haven Police Department — there was nothing. Andrea stayed listed as a missing person, and no one knew where she was for decades.
“Over the years, Andrea’s father searched tirelessly, but never heard from his daughter or her mother,” the DNA testing company Othram, which was involved in the case, said in a news release.
Age-progression images failed to bring answers
Over the years, investigators released several age-progression images to show what Andrea might look like as she got older.
NamUs had at least five of them from 2010 to 2014. But despite the efforts, nothing came of it.
A woman contacted her father, believing she was Andrea
Then, in 2023, something finally changed. New Haven police took another look at the case, and that’s when Andrea’s father got a message — from a woman who thought she might be his daughter.
DNA testing confirmed her identity after 26 years
To find out if the woman was really Andrea, police teamed up with Othram, a company that specializes in advanced DNA testing. They analyzed a sample from the woman and compared it to Andrea’s father’s DNA using a method called “KinSNP® Rapid Relationship Testing.”
DNA Solves confirmed the results: “This comparison supported a father/daughter relationship, confirming that the woman who reached out is, in fact, the nearly two-year-old girl kidnapped in October of 1999. Andrea Reyes, who is now 27 years old, resides in Mexico.”
It remains unknown if her mother has been found
What happened to Andrea’s mother is still unclear. There’s been no public update on whether Rosa Tenorio Andrea was ever found.
This case is part of a larger project to solve missing children cases
Andrea’s case is part of Project 525, an initiative by Othram and the RTI research institute, which manages NamUs.
Right now, NamUs has 525 open cases involving missing juveniles. The project aims to help solve them all.
Andrea’s case is already a success story — it’s actually the seventh case in Connecticut where this kind of DNA technology has helped bring answers.
