A tip from a NewsChannel 3 viewer about a missing baby cold case has given detectives more hope of cracking the case than ever before.
Yesterday marked the 31st anniversary of the abduction of David Blockett, a Newport News baby who was stolen from his mother when he was just 15 days old.
A mystery woman tricked his mother into taking him and his two-year-old brother Frederick.
The woman let Frederick go later that day but she kept David.
For decades, detectives would have no promising leads.
That all changed after NewsChannel 3 started to investigate.
“I am so much more confident that we are gonna find David,” says Detective Amber Rogers.
Newport News police assigned detective Amber Rodgers to David’s case after NewsChannel 3 took action to get it re-opened a few months ago.
Since then, we've aired a series of stories about the cold case.
A viewer called in with a tip about the mystery woman's police sketch.
Now that information is giving detectives more hope than ever before.
“That has since led us to interview several other people who might have known the suspect back in the day or who might have information about her, and we're currently following leads on that,” says Rogers.
Those interviews have sent detectives back to the original case file and they are now looking more closely at women who were questioned in the 1980s.
One of them was a woman who they say was acting strangley near Riverside Hospital.
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"Well apparently she delivered a baby there prematurely and the baby had to stay in the hospital for several weeks and every time she went to visit the baby, she was acting strange saying that the hospital staff was abusing the baby,” says Rogers.
There was another woman from York County involved. She was from the same area where detectives found David's clothes just days after his abduction.
Because the clues about these women continue to develop, the names cannot yet be revealed.
A psychic's theory in the 80s has also given police new insight into what may have actually happened. Many things the psychic said matched what David's brother remembered about that day.
“I remember being in the car. I remember my brother sitting beside me, and I remember playing with a cassette tape, and I was just pulling the ribbon and taking the cassette tape,” recalled Frederick.
But I also remember a man driving the car. It wasn`t her,” says Frederick.
The psychic also said that the kidnapper got in on the passenger's side of the vehicle in the front seat after putting the baby in the car. That matched up immediately without Frederick even talking to the psychic. He was only two-years-old at the time.
The psychic also said that after the kidnapper took David and his brother, she drove to York County and met up with another vehicle that was there waiting for them.
She also says that there was some money exchanged and the kidnapper took Frederick and the other woman took David.
This newfound relevance in the psychic's theory and the viewer's tip about the police sketch have given detectives more hope that they are closer than ever to finding David.
“The information we have is just amazing and I’m feeling like we're really gonna find David this time,” says Rogers.
