Julian Hernandez – Kidnapped in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2002

During the early part of 2015, Julian Hernandez was a student at Cleveland High School. He was a straight-A student and an athlete. But when his parents divorced, he was forced to live with his father. His mother would not have access to him for years. It took a toll on her and her family.

In October, Julian Hernandez’s birth identity was confirmed. He was not the same man who disappeared from Vestavia Hills, Alabama, in 2002. A neighbor claimed that the boy was referred to as J.J., but he didn’t look anything like the young man in the picture. The FBI confirmed the child’s identity on October 30.

At the time of his disappearance, the boy’s mother and father didn’t have a formal custody agreement. Their relationship was strained. When the two were separated, she asked her father to watch him for a few hours. Eventually, he gave her a false identification. As a result, he couldn’t provide her with information about her son that was relevant.

For more than a decade, he lived under a different name. But when he applied for a college scholarship, he realized that the discrepancy was more than just an oversight. And the Social Security number that he used didn’t match his real name.

Although the flora and fauna of the kidnapping was unknown, law enforcement investigated hundreds of leads. They also searched for tips in the United States and abroad.

Julian’s father was arrested on November 2, 2015 in Cleveland. He was charged with a host of crimes, including interfering with his son’s custody. Since then, he has been held on a $250,000 bond in the Cuyahoga County jail. He is not expected to be released until sometime in 2022.

What is not known is how long the boy spent in Cleveland under a different identity. According to his attorney, his father was a phony. He posed as Jonathan Mangina and obtained a fake driver’s license and a Social Security card. However, he has not revealed any details about their lives in Cleveland.

Several years ago, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children listed Julian as missing. That’s when the kidnapping story broke. After several years, Julian’s mother began to search for her son. She was ecstatic to reunite with him.

The mother of Julian Hernandez was able to learn about her son’s missing-persons notice when a school counselor discovered the young man on the aforementioned database. Of course, the real question was, how did the boy manage to get on that list?

Well, the boy’s parents weren’t married when he went missing in 2002. Instead, they were living in separate units of the Vestavia Park Apartments. Though they weren’t legally married, they had a child-parent relationship.

Fortunately for Julian, his dad didn’t take advantage of that. Instead, he offered the boy the best he could. Not only did he provide him with a fake identification, he was also an athlete.