Michelle Knight, Cleveland kidnapping: Why didn't the cops realize that she'd been abducted?

Two of the missing women who were just found alive in Cleveland, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, had been the subject of much media coverage over the past ten years; the Cleveland Plain Dealer called them “two of Cleveland’s most famous missing persons.” The other woman, Michelle Knight, hadn’t received nearly as much attention. It’s worth asking why.

Knight was either 18 or 20 years old—her age has been reported differently in different articles—when she disappeared in 2002 from her cousin’s house in west Cleveland, only a couple blocks away from where Berry and DeJesus would vanish in 2003 and 2004, respectively. At the time, Knight was apparently upset that she had lost custody of her son, and authorities believed she had run away of her own volition. As such, the investigation into Knight’s disappearance was short-lived. Knight doesn’t even appear to have been listed in the official Ohio Missing Persons database.

According to a Plain Dealer article, though, Knight’s mother, Barbara, “never believed that her daughter would disappear without a trace, without so much as an occasional phone call.” Barbara Knight continued to search for her daughter for years thereafter, periodically posting missing-person flyers around the west side. According to the Plain Dealer article, she searched alone.