RALEIGH, N.C., Dec. 30, 2006

Missing N.C. Twin Toddlers Found

Biological Mother Is Accused Of Kidnapping 17-Month-Old Kids From Adoptive Parents, Taking Them To Canada

  • Play CBS Video Video Birth Mom Abducts Adopted Kids

    The FBI says missing twins were taken from their North Carolina home by their biological mother, who had given them up for adoption. Tracy Smith speaks with lead investigator Don Clark.

  • Tyler Lee and Holly Ann Needham, 17-month-old twins

    Tyler Lee and Holly Ann Needham, 17-month-old twins  (CBS/EARLY SHOW)

  • Interactive Out Of Sight: Missing Kids

    Get the facts on kidnappings, learn predator profiles and check out resources for locating missing children.

  • Interactive FBI Crime Statistics

    Explore the latest information on U.S. crime, from acts of violence to property damage.

(AP)  A biological mother accused of kidnapping her 17-month-old twins from their adoptive parents in North Carolina has been arrested in Canada, and authorities say the children are safe.

Allison Lee Quets, 49, and the twins were found Friday night when police in Ottawa, Canada, acted on a tip, the FBI said in a statement early Saturday. The toddlers, Tyler Lee and Holly Ann Needham, were placed in the custody of Canadian Social Services.

Quets could face federal charges of international parental kidnapping.

A custody agreement allowed Quets to take the children for a brief visit Dec. 22-24, but authorities said she never returned them. The FBI said an investigation indicated Quets crossed the Canadian border with the twins Dec. 23.

The children lived in the Raleigh suburb of Apex with their adoptive parents, Denise and Kevin Needham. Quets had a home in nearby Durham.

Officials with the FBI Victim Witness program were arranging for the adoptive parents to travel to Canada to be with their children.

©MMVI, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Add a Comment See all 36 Comments
by sjhanders January 2, 2007 4:50 PM EST
Agnim,
Did somebody drop you in a toilet at birth?
Reply to this comment
by agnim January 1, 2007 8:00 PM EST
"For those mothers and fathers who are having children when they shouldn't to give to parents who can't have them and should!

Posted by me4prezz at 12:47 PM : Jan 01, 2007"
That is the kind of sentiment that is so obscene!

Who the hell are you and barren womb people to say who should or who shouldn't have children, and then to give them up to those who are cursed to have none? Tsk-tsk.
Reply to this comment
by agnim January 1, 2007 7:57 PM EST
" I would never wish as much pain on you as Michelle and her husband have been through - however, that said, I do hope that some day, you feel a little more compassion for someone who IS in their position than what you are showing now.

Posted by kevzgrl at 04:26 PM : Jan 01, 2007"

First in line for your 'compassion' should be the new mother who is badly in need of assistance; so that she may be able to carry out her NATURAL responsibilities to herself and her child.

Greater pain than that of your Michelle is the pain incurred in breaking the POWERFUL NATURAL BOND between a new mother and her child.

Women who would discard their children have to be undergoing serious mental-physical dislocation for that natural bond to be broken and treated so lightly.

So unless the new mother is mentally/physically incapacitated, all she might need is TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE! That is what we should be offering new mothers, instead of legal kidnapping of their children!

If those judges had any good sense, they would be compelling the government to use the nation's resources on these new mothers who are desperately in need of assistance, instead of causing the new mothers to 'sell' their children to barren 'vultures' who have no business with children in the first place, especially since they are cursed to have none!

Reply to this comment
by kevzgrl January 1, 2007 7:26 PM EST
To Agnim;
I wish that I could introduce you to my friend, MIchelle, who has been in childcare since high school and loves children and would love to have one of her own, but has been unable to do so, even with 3 years of fertility treatments. I wish you could see and feel the pain she goes thru month after month, when she finds out that, once again, the drugs and tubes and other invasive procedures did not work. She is NOT an "ENVIOUS DEAD WOMB INDIVIDUALS WHO WOULD USE THE COURTS TO IMPOSE THEIR INFERTILITY PROBLEMS ON DELICATE NEW MOTHERS WHO MAY BE HAVING THEIR OWN ISSUES MOMENTARILY!"
I would never wish as much pain on you as Michelle and her husband have been through - however, that said, I do hope that some day, you feel a little more compassion for someone who IS in their position than what you are showing now.
Reply to this comment
by kevzgrl January 1, 2007 7:17 PM EST
To Amorgan9;
I went to the link you mentioned and read "Who kidnapped Who First?", and guess what? I DON'T BUY IT. The person who supposedly wrote this went on and on about how Ms. Quets needed help, and the writer offered to take the kids until she was able to care for them, and etc, etc, etc. If she truly needed help, why didn't she accept the help that was offered? There are medications and other treatments doctors can use to control hyperemesis and depression - no mention of any of that, though. What about the sister, who is speaking out about why Ms. Quets took the children away from their parents? Did she know what was happening and offer to help? If that "concerned person" saw all this going on, why didn't she step forward and speak up when it was happening?
The point is, those children are 17 MONTHS old, not 17 days, and the Needhams are the only ones they know as Mommy and Daddy. This didn't all JUST happen within the last month or two.
In the movie "Parenthood" Keanu Reeves has a very telling line; "You have to have a license to drive a car or own a gun, but they will let any ....licking fool be a parent." Sad, but very true.
Reply to this comment
by agnim January 1, 2007 6:42 PM EST
"While this woman's situation may be different, I am looking at it from the situation of my sister, who is now legally adopted, and has many issues that she has to work through from her 1st 3 years of life.

Posted by me4prezz at 12:20 PM : Jan 01, 2007"

So if you will acknowledge that your sister's situation is different, why would interject it to prejudice the case against this mother WHO ONLY NEED ASSISTANCE? Tsk-tsk.

As for your sister's case, no one offered ASSISTANCE TO THE MOTHER, which is what these people need more than anything else. Instead the effort was to buy her child. That was disgusting, even if the comical courts agree to this additional violation of this young human being!
Reply to this comment
by me4prezz January 1, 2007 3:47 PM EST
That is why there is adoption. For those mothers and fathers who are having children when they shouldn't to give to parents who can't have them and should! I don't know this woman's story, but I do know that you are spouting off words on here on a subject that you know nothing about. Go to your local emergency department and ask to stay for just 1 day and see how many child abuse cases they have by those that are "pee'd out" and tell me again why placing kids in adoption is such a bad thing.
Reply to this comment
by me4prezz January 1, 2007 3:46 PM EST
One other thing, Agnim, do you have children or are you married?

Giving birth makes one a MOTHER, but NOT a MOM! They are 2 different things! I love my children more than I can possibly say on here, but being in the medical field and a prior emergency medical technician and currently a nursing student, I see horrors you can't even imagine being done to children by people who "pee'd them out" as you like to phrase it (it is called labor and delivery by the way!) beating, burning, breaking bones, belittling, and doing whatever they can to hurt them, even killing them.

There are husbands and wives out there who would desperately love to give birth to their own child and can't. That is a medical reason and NOT mother nature. God's greatest gift was free will. Not everything is chance. We choose our paths and sometimes our bodies just don't work right. Cancer can cause it, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, etc. That doesn't make a bad person of an inability to get pregnant just as having the ability to get pregnant doesn't make a good MOM! Just because you could, does NOT mean you should!
Reply to this comment
by me4prezz January 1, 2007 3:20 PM EST
Agnim:

I cannot believe the stuff you typed on here. My sister is adopted because the mother she had, the one who had the ability to "pee her out", did so in a toilet in hopes of drowning her! By the time she was 3, she had been sexually, physically and emotionally abused and her biological mother sold her essentially. She needed money and my parents, seeing how bad off the child was and having NO blood relation to her, went to the courthouse, got the paperwork they needed, and said they would pay her the money she needed if she would sign custody over. It took 6 years before her parental rights were severed and that was after the 2nd child she "pee'd out" was taken from her for the same thing!

You are right, sometimes the system is screwed up and good mothers are removed from their babies, but this is the exception rather than the rule and more often than not, children are given back to these individuals when they shouldn't be and then you read about their murder or some other horrific crime against them. Think before you write on here or speak of what you do not know!

While this woman's situation may be different, I am looking at it from the situation of my sister, who is now legally adopted, and has many issues that she has to work through from her 1st 3 years of life.
Reply to this comment
by agnim January 1, 2007 2:29 PM EST
" Also, suggesting a couple who want their "own" child go "SCREW AND MAKE ONE" is so disgusting and heartless toward someone who has infertility problems that I can't even believe you typed it.

Posted by kevzgrl at 09:09 AM : Jan 01, 2007"
Believe it!

And we are not 'disgusted' at those who may have infertility problems, per se.

We are 'disgusted' at the act of ENVIOUS DEAD WOMB INDIVIDUALS WHO WOULD USE THE COURTS TO IMPOSE THEIR INFERTILITY PROBLEMS ON DELICATE NEW MOTHERS WHO MAY BE HAVING THEIR OWN ISSUES MOMENTARILY!

And you dam right parents OWN their children!
Parents have the power of life and death over their children. Regardless of what courts may decide, parents decide whether the children are born or not!

Adoptive so-called 'parents' HAVE NO inalienable rights to other people's children!
Mother Nature made those individuals sick/barren for a reason!

New mothers need assistance from the society.

Assistance with the children is what should be offered a new mother who may feel temporarily overwhelmed by the many responsibilities in her delicate state.

New mothers don't need to have their children stolen by courts and individuals who are too sick to screw and pee out their own children!

A lot of these adoptive so-called 'parents' are more like thieving VULTURES. They should go get a pet if they can't pee out their own children!
But they should not be trusted with other people's children!

Reply to this comment
by amorgan9 January 1, 2007 2:24 PM EST

Excerpt taken from an article I just read......GIVING YOU MORE INFORMATION!!!

"She's not a crazy, unstable person," said Gail Quets, whose sister, Allison Lee Quets, 49, was arrested in Canada on Friday. "She's a well-meaning, upright citizen who was driven to the brink. I think she must have given up and felt she couldn't get justice in the state of Florida. I think she thought this was a last-ditch effort to save her children."

Quets lived in Orlando, Fla., but kept an apartment in Durham so she could see the twins while she appealed the adoption.

Her sister said Saturday from her Kentucky home that Quets probably thought she was doing the right thing for the children, adding that she had been fighting for the twins since just hours after she gave them up.

Allison Quets was married once for about 15 years, but the marriage ended about a decade ago, Gail Quets said. She has no other children and the father of the twins is a sperm donor.

Quets, who conceived the twins through in-vitro fertilization, became weak during her pregnancy from hyperemesis, a severe form of nausea and vomiting. She was fatigued and disoriented and gave her children up for adoption just weeks after they were born, Gail Quets said, adding that her sister almost immediately changed her mind and attempted to get them back.

The adoption is not yet final because of Quets' appeal, which is why she had visitation rights.




Reply to this comment
by amorgan9 January 1, 2007 1:48 PM EST
Hey There! Did anyone go to the link I sent to ACTUALLY READ this ladies story instead of debating amongst yourselves trivial aspects of "adoption" or "biological" children?? Again, I give you....

www.missingchild.wordpress.com

Under the heading "Who Kidnapped Whom First"...I beg you to READ this article fully, word for word, and THEN respond!! This woman needs HELP, she needs people on her side, NOT bickering about things not relevent to HER specific case!

Thanks so much, looking forward to your Informed Reply!

~A friend of Allison's in Titusville Florida...
Reply to this comment
by kevzgrl January 1, 2007 12:09 PM EST
Agnim:
A parent is the one who wipes runny noses (and bottoms), reads to a child at night, calms their fears and CHERISHES and HOLDS CLOSE that warm little body. A parent does not "PEE OUT" a child and give it up, with all the paperwork and COURT TIME involved with adoption. The PARENTS of these children are the couple who stood in a courtroom and swore to love & care for them, not the woman who stood there and said "I agree to give up any right to them".
"Good adoptive parents will understand the above facts, and will understand that THE OWNER OF THE CHILDREN may come to re-stake her claims at anytime." When did anyone become an "OWNER" of children? You own a car or a house or STUFF - you don't OWN children, idiot.
Also, suggesting a couple who want their "own" child go "SCREW AND MAKE ONE" is so disgusting and heartless toward someone who has infertility problems that I can't even believe you typed it. I have friends who would LOVE to have a child of their own, and would make wonderful parents, but month after month of fertility treatments for over 3 years now have led to nothing - "why don't they adopt?" By your reckoning, there shouldn't be a child available for them and even if they do, 5 or 10 years down the road the birth mother could come back and say "Wait, I changed my mind" and get the child back. You don't have much heart OR much sense.
Reply to this comment
by amorgan9 January 1, 2007 12:07 AM EST
I know this lady peronally. Her story truly needs to get out! She has been completely WRONGED by the North Carolina couple and the Florida Court System! Here is a link to her true story! It is lengthy, but worth the read!

http://missingchild.wordpress.com/2006/12/31/who-kidnapped-whom-first/

Someone needs to contact Nancy Grace or someone about this. I was hoping for this story to get in the local Florida spotlight on the news or something, but hey, NATIONAL spotlight is EVEN BETTER!!! It's unfortunate the way it came about, but some intelligent beings need to get a hold of this and shine some light on the corruptness!

We're praying for Allison and the twins!
Reply to this comment
by suzsaz December 31, 2006 8:10 PM EST
Amerigirl: I respect your opinion...as there will always be two sides to this. One last thought, though. How will you feel years from now if your daughter is off at college in another state, becomes pregnant, and is too frightened to make an informed decision. What if she falls prey to the blood hound baby brokers? How will you feel if you find out, one day or even one hour too late, that your grandchild has been sold to someone? And when I say sold, the only person who really gets any money is the broker, not the birth mother. Just something to think about.
Reply to this comment
by December 31, 2006 5:19 PM EST
suzsaz

I meant to say that most women are NOT tricked into giving up their children. My apologies.
Reply to this comment
by December 31, 2006 5:18 PM EST
suzsaz

I understand your perspective. Consider this: I didn not purchase my daughter. I stood infront of a judge and agreed to treat as if she were a child born from my body. I paid nothing for her. When you do most adoptions, especially state-run adoptions, there is no money. There is only the agreement that you will love and protect this child as if it were yours.

I understand that some women are pressured, but most are not. Most children are taken because of maltreatment or given up in orphanages (in other countries).

Of course their are exceptions. Most women are 'tricked' into giving up their children.

With that said, giving up a child is an emotionally overwhelming ordeal. I couldn't imagine letting go of my daughters unless I knew their life would be infinitely better with someone else; still it would not be easy and I know this woman probably struggled as any woman has. Just like abortions however, there is no going back. She legally gave those children up, right, wrong or indifferent and this world revolves around laws. One says, you give up your child, you don't get it back.
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by suzsaz December 31, 2006 1:12 PM EST
I think people have forgotten that children are not pets or cars or jewelery that can be purchased. A birth mother is the mother. I believe many women are taken advantage of when their hormones are out of whack, and force fed the mantra "oh, your child will be better off", but does anyone alert the birth mother to how she will feel after the birth? If you rescue a child from a horrible environment, that's one thing, but to go to a broker to "buy" a child is different. It is so inhumane. What's next, buying lungs, hearts, thyroids from living people? Watch out when you walk down a dark alley, because you may loose your lungs to support some upper middle class person who needs and can pay a broker for a healthy one. I think the United State needs to wake up to this billion dollar industry of "buying" people., ie., brand new white babies.
Reply to this comment
by December 31, 2006 1:04 PM EST
klosinski1


you are right. I've seen moms give birth and only keep the boy because he looks like his daddy.. people who know nothing of this kind of stuff should either think about it or admit their ignorance.
Reply to this comment
by December 31, 2006 1:03 PM EST
Agnim,

klosinski1 is right. I'm not sure if you come from a very good environment (no drugs, violence, etc). But I've seen a great many mothers who treated their children like s#$% because they only had them to prove that they are an adult--at 16!

No Agnim and no Hermit22 when a mother, through negligence or will decides to give up her child, she is given a GREAT amount of counseling. I know this because I am an adoptive parent. She is told REPEATEDLY that this is her choice and once she makes it, that is it.

Of course some women are pressured but once its done, its done. Those children, for reasons we are not aware of, are better with the adoptive parents. Kidnapping a child you gave up doesn't mean you can keep them, it means you go to jail like this woman.

This is a sad case all around. Do you think the adoptive parents want to tell their children their birth mother tried to steal them and was arrested?
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