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Coffee and Crime Time: Where is 5 Year Old Dulce Alavez ?
Stephanie Harlowe's 39-minute breakdown, the fullest single telling on file.
Watch on YouTubeWhat happened
Dulce Maria Alavez, born April 25, 2014, was five years old when she disappeared from Bridgeton City Park in Bridgeton, New Jersey, on September 16, 2019. She and her brother were playing on the park's swings while their pregnant mother sat in a car roughly 30 yards away, playing a scratch-off lottery ticket and helping Alavez's younger sister with homework. Sometime between approximately 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern Time, Alavez vanished from the playground. When her mother went to check on the children, she found only Alavez's brother alone at the swings, crying.
More than 30 police officers searched the surrounding woods in the hours after Alavez was reported missing, but the search did not locate her. A possible suspect has been described as a light-skinned Hispanic male approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall, seen driving a red van in the area. As of June 15, 2023, no strong suspect had been identified in the case.
The disappearance drew national media attention, including segments on the Dr. Phil show and In Pursuit with John Walsh. In February 2021, investigators followed a set of leads that led to a search for Alavez in Austintown, Ohio. Later that year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released two age-progression images depicting how Alavez might appear at age seven. Around the same time, FBI Special Agent Daniel Garrabrant said the person who took Alavez "was likely there for a period of time" and described the case as "a crime of opportunity," with the abductor apparently looking for a child of about Alavez's own age or gender. Investigators have also used artificial intelligence to generate additional images estimating how Alavez's appearance has changed as she has grown older.
The case has also been complicated by misinformation: in 2020, a false claim spread on social media asserting that Alavez had been found dead. No such discovery has been confirmed by authorities, and her case remains classified as an unresolved disappearance believed to involve an abduction.
