Vunderkind
Social Member
Four days ago, we reported that two kids - Rafael and Michael - were abducted by their maid in Isheri Magodo Estate in Lagos state.
The Full Story
A week before their abduction, the boys' mother had gotten a new maid off the OLX.com classifieds website. This proved to be a critical mistake - as when the maid disappeared, all information provided for the nanny agency proved to be dud.
The agency - Omolade Employment Agency - proved to be non-existent and all efforts to contact the woman who posed as the owner-manager proved abortive.
The next pensive step in trying to recover the precious children was to contact the MTN office. At the MTN office, steps were taken to recover the SIM information of the maid - who gave her name when employed simply as 'Juliet' - but it was almost also a dead-end as the photographs procured were of a significantly younger 'Juliet' that bore almost no resemblance to the maid who kidnapped the boys.
Somewhere along the line, the worried family received a phone call from an unidentified male. His SMS read: "Do you want to see your children?"
After the SMS, he flashed their phone number, but refused to pick up when they repeatedly - and frantically - called back.
Next stop was Ecobank - where the mother of the boys worked. Apparently, Juliet had visited the mother while she was at work, and there was significant optimism that the bank's CCTV would have captured her face. It turned out that her face was indeed captured, but it was too blurry to be of any use.
Photo of the maid, as obtained via CCTV video feed
The State Security Service (SSS) was also involved in trying to locate the criminal maid. Information conscientiously gathered placed her at Awoyaya, Lagos state, and search parties were dispatched to recover the kids.
This, quite unfortunately, proved ineffective. Despite the information received, the traffic situation in Lagos proved an alibi to the devious maid and that, coupled with the time of the day - dusk - ensured that the search team never arrived in time to make good use of their intel.
On Tuesday morning, they received a call from the anonymous man called again. He wanted N4 million for the boys.
The family consulted with SSS officials, who advised them to pay N2.5 million.
While this was ongoing, a news update by a popular lifestyle/entertainment/gossip blog went up, along with the CCTV shot of the maid, which caused the abductors to be immensely provoked.
The anonymous male called and said, "I thought I told you not to put the picture up? Confirm them [the boys, Rafael and Michael] dead!"
You can imagine how the boys' parents felt at this point.
They hurriedly paid in the N2.5 million and on Wednesday, they received another phone call from the man, saying "Received."
After that his phone went dark - offline - and anxiety peaked in the Esharegharanrhan family. They prayed and cried and dialed the number repeatedly, to no avail for a while, before the phone came back on, and the male voice said, quite simply: "Relax."
The phone went dark again.
We were informed that the next day the kidnappers dropped the boys off at the Sagamu Police station, where the parents rushed over to pick up their children.
