A Doting Mother

Somewhere out there, possibly in Texas, Alicia Banuelos and her daughter Lyric, now a teenager, live a quiet, wholesome life. They go to church every Sunday and spend free time communing with relatives in the area. Alicia is a doting mother and likes to know where Lyric is at all times. She speaks poor English, and the girl is very obliging in helping her mother to get around. Mother and daughter are inseparable, but Alicia worries that the time is nearing when Lyric will want to spread her wings, explore life away from her, and then ...

Then she may possibly contact her father in Chicago, and the authorities will inevitably follow her trail. For ten years now, police have been searching for Alicia Banuelos, who murdered her newborn child, and subsequently kidnapped her then-four-year-old daughter.

Banuelos and her husband were about to divorce, when she discovered she was pregnant with their second child. It was a heavy blow to her already strained psyche, and she turned her anger and resentment at the unborn baby. She somehow managed to keep her pregnancy a secret from everyone. In April of 1997, Alicia Banuelos quietly gave birth alone in the bathroom of her own home, and left the newborn to drown in the toilet. The family found her on the bed in blood-soaked clothes and rushed her to the hospital, but it was too late to save the baby.

Pending the murder trial scheduled to begin in October of 1999, she was allowed limited supervised visits with Lyric. During one such visit at a large shopping mall in Schaumburg, IL, just two days prior to the trial date, Banuelos disappeared with her little girl. Lyric has not seen her father for ten years, spending most of her life on the run with her mother. Alicia Banuelos is now 40 years old, and police believe she and Lyric may have been living with relatives in El Paso, Texas.