In October 1999, Andrea Michelle Reyes, then 23 months old, vanished from her father’s home in New Haven, Connecticut, US.
Later that year, authorities issued a felony warrant for custodial interference for her non-custodial mother, Rosa Tenorio Andrea.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) records show the last contact with Andrea occurred on October 5, 1999, and investigators believed she had been taken to Puebla, Mexico by her mother.
Alongside a felony warrant for Tenorio in 2009, another warrant was reportedly issued in September 2009, but neither was located.
Despite investigations by multiple agencies, including the New Haven Department, Andrea remained missing and her case stayed listed on NamUs, DNA Solves reports.
NamUs published multiple age-progression images—five in total—dating from 2010, 2011 and 2014, but they did not lead to her being found.
In 2023, the New Haven Police Department reopened the inquiry and received a lead when a woman contacted Andrea’s father believing she might be his daughter.
New Haven Police Department partnered with Othram—which handles in-house processing from DNA extraction, enrichment and repair to sequencing and genealogy—to verify the claim.
Police obtained a DNA sample from the woman and compared it to Andrea’s father’s profile using “KinSNP® Rapid Relationship Testing”.
“This comparison supported a father/daughter relationship, confirming that the woman who reached out is, in fact, the nearly two-year-old girl kidnapped in October of 1999. Andrea Reyes, who is now 27 years old, resides in Mexico.”
It is not publicly reported whether Rosa Tenorio Andrea was located.
This matter forms part of Project 525, a program led by Othram alongside the RTI research institute that manages NamUs.
There are 525 juvenile cases published on NamUs; the project aims to resolve them all, and Andrea’s identification marks a promising start, described as “the seventh case in Connecticut” using the technology to publicly identify someone.