There are other viable ways the kids could have disappeared & even still be alive, maybe even hearing about searches. It has happened before. A random drive by took them home then gave them to someone else, a family member squirreled them away, a well meaning but mentally challenged adult took them home "to play", something tribal, a school-adjacemt worker "took matters into their own hamds", a sexual deviant has them, and other possibilities.
There was a boy taken from his school bus stop in Missouri, held for several years by a sexual deviant who was a pizza manager. The kid was sex trafficked across state lines for his pleasure & personal gain. Kid was chained up at home while captor worked long work shifts. He watched his parents plead tirelessly for the duration on TV & knew they never gave up on finding him alive. It gave him strength to live until he escaped. And my own story: I had a 6th grade student who had been kidnapped from a convenience store by a trucker, traded truck to truck for a year, kept docile by needle drugs & nakedness, & escaped by rolling out of the road-work slowed truck on the interstate and running nude across traffic to the other side of the median. The girl's mother NEVER quit pleading for her return. She was an amazing young woman to have survived her ordeal. Knowing she had strong family gave her both hope and strength.