Cases involving children who were found years or months after they were kidnapped:
Elizabeth Smart: Smart was 14 when she was taken in June 2002 from her Salt Lake City bedroom. She was found nine months later in the company of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, an itinerant couple. They have yet to be declared competent to stand trial in the case.
Shawn Hornbeck: In October 2002, Hornbeck, 11, was kidnapped while riding his bike in Washington County, Mo. In January 2007, authorities found Hornbeck and another kidnapped boy, Ben Ownby, in the suburban St. Louis apartment of Michael Devlin. Ownby, 13, had been abducted four days earlier. Devlin was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and abusing the boys.
Steven Stayner: Stayner was kidnapped in 1972 while walking home from school at age 7 in Merced, Calif. After Stayner escaped in 1980, Kenneth Eugene Parnell was convicted of kidnapping Stayner and a second boy, 5-year-old Timmy White. Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in 1989 at age 24.
— Associated Press