On September 16, 2019, 5-year-old Dulce María Alavez went to the City Park in Bridgeton, New Jersey, along with her 3-year-old brother and 8-year-old aunt. NBC reports that she was driven there by her mother, Noema Alavez; upon parking the car, the two younger children burst out of the car, ice creams in hand and ready to play. Only 10 minutes later, around 4 p.m., Alavez saw her 3-year-old son crying and alone – he pointed behind a building, saying his sister had disappeared behind it. But Dulce had completely vanished, apparently lured over to a red van by a man wearing orange sneakers and a black t-shirt, and hasn’t been seen since.
The FBI spoke with Dulce’s father, who is currently believed to live in Mexico, but he’s had no contact with his daughter for her entire life. Later reports say he’s been cooperating with authorities (per NBC), and according to ABC, in April 2021, he reportedly posted videos of himself online on Dulce’s birthday, saying that he had nothing to do with the kidnapping (though those videos were never verified).
There’s not much to go on, aside from that. Investigators suspect that this is a crime of opportunity, committed by someone who was “likely there for a period of time,” though they have little to go off of aside from a vague description. That said, they do believe she’s still alive, because “if she was deceased, something would turn out somewhere,” and a new age-progression photo was released in September 2021.
