SOUTH ELGIN | Missing Girl Found 6 Years Later After Story Aired on NETFLIX's Unsolved Mysteries
- Glancer Magazine
- May 16, 2023
- 2 min read
LOCAL AREA FATHER HAS BEEN REUNITED WITH HIS DAUGHTER
ELGIN–A remarkable story unfolded this past week as news of a missing girl from Illinois who was abducted in 2017 and featured on the Netflix reboot of "Unsolved Mysteries" has been found safe in North Carolina.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children confirmed Monday night that Kayla Unbehaun was found safe in North Carolina. She was nine when her mother, who only had visitation rights, abducted her and the pair disappeared.
Kayla's mother, Heather Unbehaun, 40, was taken into custody in Asheville, according to jail records reviewed by area TV station WLOS. She is now being held on a $250,000 bond and is awaiting extradition.
The Asheville Police Department told the station that Kayla was spotted on Saturday, May 13, at a secondhand clothing store called Plato's Closet just before 7:30pm. An employee at the store recognized the missing child from a "well-publicized media" and contacted the police, according to the station's reporting.
A North Carolina store owner who watched “Unsolved Mysteries” on Netflix has been credited with recognizing a young Illinois girl missing since 2017 and calling police in Asheville about what she saw at the shopping center over the weekend.
Kayla Unbehaun was 9 years old when she was last seen on a camping trip in the summer of 2017. Non-custodial mother Heather Unbehaun’s alleged abduction of Kayla from South Elgin, Illinois, was noticed the day after the Fourth of July that year, when the girl’s father Ryan Iserka went to the suspect’s Wheaton home to pick up his daughter. The girl had vanished, and so had her mother, even though Ryan had full custody of Kayla at the time, according to Law & Crime.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also released a statement from Kayla's father, Ryan, thanking those who supported the family through the search.
