CA CA - Kevin Art Verville Jr, <1 (Infant), Oceanside, July 1, 1980

[victoriarobinson642]

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Name: Kevin Art Verville Jr.
Case Classification: Child Abduction
Missing Since: July 1, 1980
Location Last Seen: Oceanside, San Diego County, California

Physical Description​

Date of Birth: 14 Jun 1980
Age: 2-3 weeks old
Race: White+Asian
Gender: Male
Height: 18-20 inches
Weight: 7 lbs
Hair Color: Bald
Eye Color: Brown

​

Circumstances of Disappearance​

Kevin was kidnapped from his parents on July 1, 1980, in Oceanside, CA.

Daily Times-Advocate from Escondido, California

Get this Daily Times-Advocate page for free from Friday, July 4, 1980 A-2 -ADVOCATE, ESCONDIDO, JULY 4, 1980 DOOI DOONESBURY URY EVERYTHING SEEMS TO BE, WELL, WE'RE UNDER.... Edition of Daily Times-Advocate

www.newspapers.com

The FBI has joined the nationwide search for a 3-week-old boy who was kidnapped Tuesday by a woman who posed as a social worker and gained the confidence of the boy's mother. Agents say they believe the kidnapper, who represented herself as being from a fictional agency she called HELP, may have lost a child within the past two months either from crib death, abortion, or stillbirth.

The boy, Kevin Art Verville was last seen by his mother when she unwittingly left him in the kidnapper's car as she obligingly went to the door of a home where she was told a second woman was waiting to join the "social worker." When she went to summon the non-existent client, the woman kidnapper drove away.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

Thanks for starting a thread. Never heard of this very tragic case, but it popped up on a social media page for NCMEC today.

This article explains what happened and the effects on his family:

This Oceanside baby was a newborn when he was last seen. Is this how he looks now?

Kevin Verville Jr., who was 17 days old when he was kidnapped, would be 45 years old this weekend

www.nbcsandiego.com

 

[CuriousDetective]

How devastating.

 

[victoriarobinson642]

Thanks for starting a thread. Never heard of this very tragic case, but it popped up on a social media page for NCMEC today.

This article explains what happened and the effects on his family:

This Oceanside baby was a newborn when he was last seen. Is this how he looks now?

Kevin Verville Jr., who was 17 days old when he was kidnapped, would be 45 years old this weekend

www.nbcsandiego.com

 

[mlhenn]

Kevin Art Verville Jr. – The Charley Project

Last updated June 11, 2025; casefile added.

Details of Disappearance​

Kevin was last seen in Oceanside, California on July 1, 1980. His family lived in the Sterling Homes apartment complex in the 900 block of Bougainville Street, which was off-base housing for military families stationed at Camp Pendleton. He was their first child.

An unidentified woman came to his home on June 30 and introduced herself to his parents by only the first name "Sheila". She spoke to Kevin's mother, Angelina Verville, in Tagalog, a Filipino language which is Angelina's native tongue.

Sheila said she was a social worker from an organization called Project Help which offered financial assistance, diapers and baby formula to low-income military families, and showed them a laminated Project Help identification card. She promised to come back later and take Kevin and his mother to Project Help's headquarters to enroll them in the program.

Late the next afternoon, Sheila picked up Kevin and his mother, Angelina, in a gray or silver four-door sedan, possibly a 1975 Cougar, and drove them to a remote, rural area in northern San Diego County, California, near the town of Fallbrook. Then she pulled over at a point slightly east of Highway 76 and Interstate 15 and asked Angelina to knock on the door of a nearby house, saying another mother she was enrolling in Project Help's program lived there.

When Angelina got out of the car, Sheila drove away with Kevin. Neither of them have been heard from again.

Project Help was a real organization, but no one who worked there had any knowledge of Sheila or anyone who looked like her. Authorities later found out that Sheila had been at Sterling Homes in the days leading up to Kevin's abduction. She spoke to some thirty different families there, looking for a child who was part Filipino and under six months of age, until she identified the Verville family and Kevin as fitting her criteria.

Composite sketches of Sheila are posted with this case summary. She had some knowledge of military life, as she asked people about anyone with a rating of up to E-5 who had had a baby recently. Military personnel rated E-6 and higher are career military and would be less likely to want help from a social service agency.

She was about 20 to 28 years old in 1980, about 5'1 to 5'3 tall and 105 to 135 pounds, and described as white, possibly of Filipino or Spanish heritage. She had frizzy or curly red or blonde shoulder-length hair, freckles on her arms and face, and a tattoo on her left hand between her thumb and index finger of a circle with an X inside it. She was wearing navy blue pants, a blue maternity top with red or orange decorations, and sunglasses with white- or pearl-colored oval frames. She appeared to be in the second trimester of pregnancy and spoke with a slight Spanish accent.

It's possible that Sheila's hair was a wig, and the glasses and apparent pregnancy could have also been part of her disguise. She has never been identified. The FBI created a profile of her which suggested she lived alone and might have recently lost a baby son to stillbirth, crib death or removal from the home by child protective services. According to the profile, she would probably have been depressed, even suicidal, over her loss, and kidnapped Kevin to "replace" her own baby boy.

Authorities believe Kevin may still be alive and may have been raised by his abductor, not knowing his true identity.

 

[Rixey]

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/age-progressed-photo-california-baby-abduction-20374846.php

Much of the info is included in the other article posted, but it also includes the sketch from the FBI of what the abductor is believed to have looked like.

I had never heard about this case before. Hopefully the current publicity about the case will lead to some answers for his family.

 

[summergirl1]

Given that she spoke Filipino and had a distinctive tattoo, it's maybe a bit surprising she hasn't been identified in all these years. Perhaps, now, with social media and wider reading of online news, she will be.

 

[CuriousDetective]

Given that she spoke Filipino and had a distinctive tattoo, it's maybe a bit surprising she hasn't been identified in all these years. Perhaps, now, with social media and wider reading of online news, she will be.

I have the same thoughts.

 

[Rixey]

She was about 20 to 28 years old in 1980, about 5'1 to 5'3 tall and 105 to 135 pounds, and described as white, possibly of Filipino or Spanish heritage. She had frizzy or curly red or blonde shoulder-length hair, freckles on her arms and face, and a tattoo on her left hand between her thumb and index finger of a circle with an X inside it. She was wearing navy blue pants, a blue maternity top with red or orange decorations, and sunglasses with white- or pearl-colored oval frames. She appeared to be in the second trimester of pregnancy and spoke with a slight Spanish accent.

It's possible that Sheila's hair was a wig, and the glasses and apparent pregnancy could have also been part of her disguise. She has never been identified. The FBI created a profile of her which suggested she lived alone and might have recently lost a baby son to stillbirth, crib death or removal from the home by child protective services. According to the profile, she would probably have been depressed, even suicidal, over her loss, and kidnapped Kevin to "replace" her own baby boy.

Authorities believe Kevin may still be alive and may have been raised by his abductor, not knowing his true identity.

With all due respect to the experts at the FBI, I think an equally likely scenario is she faked a pregnancy, or hid a lost pregnancy, from her military spouse or perhaps the person she was trying to get to become her spouse, and needed to have a baby about the right age and ethnic background when they returned from a deployment.

If the husband/baby daddy is on a ship somewhere, or stationed out of the country, it would be pretty easy to "be pregnant" in photos and to "give birth" while he's gone. Once home he'll find a baby that looks right, and assume that baby is theirs, no questions asked because everything fits. This scenario also explains her knowledge of military ranks/ratings.

It would be unlikely that the father would be assigned to Camp Pendleton since I'm sure they investigated everyone connected with the base, but it could be someone who was previously stationed there, or stationed at a base else where in CA or NV/AZ, or someone in another branch of the military. Computer databases in 1980, even in the military, were so limited she could get away with a lot that you never could today.

Just a thought.