Montana Barbaro
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Montana Barbaro (born July 2004) was the subject of a case of child stealing on Saturday August 7, 2004 when aged 3 weeks old.
She was stolen in Melbourne, Australia when her mother, Anita Ciancio, visited a shopping centre. The mother had just placed the 3 week old baby girl in a baby restraint in her car, and was transferring groceries from the shopping trolley. A male attacker knocked the mother to the ground, and a female removed the baby before fleeing by car.
Extensive coverage was given to the grieving mother and her other child, Sienna (19 months), supported by her father, along with surveillance video camera footage, by television news and current affairs shows.
Some 40 hours after the abduction, a baby was heard whimpering in a derelict house by a passer-by (herself a grandmother). Baby Montana was recovered unharmed other than having her hair cut and being dressed in a blue jump-suit (to disguise her appearance and her sex; blue for a boy.)
The two offenders Mark McEachran (42) and Cheryl McEachran (48) gave themselves up to police several hours later: reportedly, the woman already had six children and wanted to raise another, and was aided in her aspirations by her partner.
At this point, the case became even more odd, with Montana's father being revealed as a person well known to police.
Giuseppe Dom ("Joe") Barbaro, the baby's father, was revealed in the press to be an accused drug dealer, reported to be the subject two charges of supplying a prohibited drug and one of conspiracy to supply a commercial quantity of amphetamines. At least one of the charges involved another of his children, Pasquale Timothy Barbaro (23) who has been charged and pleaded not guilty to drugs charges. Joe Barbaro was the cousin of gang figure Pasquale Barbaro, gunned down along with Jason Moran beside a hotel in Essendon, Victoria, in 2003.
Joe Barbaro was then found by the press to have been leading a double life of effective bigamy. The press had found had another family interstate, in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. Tanya Flynn told the press that she had been Mr Barbaro's fiancée, and that he had moved her and their two children (Letesha aged 6, and Jay aged 3) there from Melbourne three years previously.
