Only on Lifetime Real Women. Check Your Local Listings.
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Only on Lifetime Real Women. Check Your Local Listings. |
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Marianne Malky has been searching for her son, David, since 1974. The photograph on the left was taken shortly before David's disappearance; the one on the right is how David may look today.
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Rebroadcast Date: November 12, 2001 (Originally broadcast on August 27, 2001) SYNOPSIS: Marianne Malky and Stephen Shipenburg divorced in December, 1973. The divorce was difficult, but in the end, according to Marianne, she retained full custody of their 7-year-old son David. Shipenburg was granted regular visitation. Things followed a fairly predictable routine for the next five months. But in May of 1974, Marianne left David in the care of her sister while she went into the hospital for routine tests. As scheduled, Steven Shipenburg picked up David in New Jersey and took him to his home in New York. That evening, he called Marianne at the hospital and allegedly told her that she would never see her son again. When Marianne was released from the hospital, she went to New York in search of her son, to no avail. However, one month after David disappeared, Marianne says she received a phone call from him. He was crying and Marianne told her son that she would find him. She was able to track down what she believed was her ex-husband's address. According to Marianne, she staked out the building until Shipenburg pulled out of the parking lot in his car with David sitting in the back seat. Shipenburg drove away and Marianne started running after the car, through the traffic until she caught him at a red light. She claims the doors were locked so she beat on the windshield and tried to break the window with her purse. The light turned green and Shipenburg sped away. It was the last time Marianne ever saw her son. Marianne's search for David over the decades has exposed her to the plight of thousands of other parents whose children have been kidnapped by a former spouse. In 1990 she founded Voice for the Children, a Florida-based organization which works collaboratively with the National Center for Abused and Exploited Children. It lobbies state and national legislative bodies for the passage of legislative acts addressing family abductions. Marianne's search for her son continues. David may be going by the last name Shipenburg, Kaplan or Holcombe. He was born May 22, 1967. He is believed to have attended Oyster Bay High School in New York in the mid-eighties. UPDATE: In December of 2005, Marianne Malky’s thirty year search came to an end. An anonymous tip enabled Malky to contact her son’s wife who told her that David didn’t want to talk or meet with her. Though she is extremely disappointed, Malky is relieved to have some closure.
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