After more than 40 years, woman reunites with family after allegedly being abducted by her mom
Police body-camera captures the moment a Florida woman was arrested for allegedly abducting her own daughter more than 40 years ago.
MARION COUNTY, Fla. — Three-year-old Michelle “Shelley” Newton poses for the camera in a sailor’s outfit, smiling wide, showing the gap between her two front baby teeth in an undated missing persons flyer from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
“Michelle was taken by her Mother,” it reads.
Now, Michelle, 46, is on a path to healing. Her mother is facing one charge.
The toddler’s vanishing took place in spring 1983, after her mother Debra Newton claimed she was “relocating to Georgia” from Louisville, Kentucky, “to begin a new job and prepare a new home for the family,” according to a Monday news release from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
CNN affiliate WLKY spoke to Joseph Newton, Debra’s husband and Michelle’s father, in 1986 after three years of searching for his daughter. He said the plan had been to move to Georgia. Debra took Michelle early, he added.
When he got there, he said they were gone.
Sometime between 1984 and 1985, a “final phone call” occurred between Debra and Joseph Newton, according to the sheriff’s office. Then, “both mother and daughter vanished.”
A custodial-interference indictment warrant soon followed.
“Wouldn’t you want your child back? At least to see her grow up?” Joseph Newton asked WLKY nearly four decades ago.
Police at one point thought it was possible Michelle was in Clayton County, Georgia, a suburban county almost 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta, according to the flyer.
Despite no signs of Michelle or her mother and Debra’s inclusion on the FBI’s “Top 8 Most Wanted parental-kidnapping fugitives,” Michelle’s case was dismissed in 2000 when “the Commonwealth” of Kentucky could not reach her father, the release said.
Five years later, Michelle, who would have been in her 20s, was removed from national child missing databases, according to the sheriff’s office.
The undated missing persons flyer says Michelle’s entry in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children system and Debra’s warrant for custodial interference were recalled in 2005 “due to inaccurate information.”
The case was reindicted in 2016 after a family member “prompted detectives to reexamine the case.”
Resolution leads to reunion
Earlier this year, 66-year-old Debra Newton had been spotted in Marion County, Florida, going by a different name.
When a Crime Stoppers tip identified the woman as a possible match, a US Marshals Task Force detective compared a recent photo to a 1983 image of Debra, and a Jefferson County detective “confirmed the resemblance,” the release said.
Authorities collected DNA from Debra’s sister in Louisville, and it showed a “99.9% match” to the woman in Florida.
When police arrived at her door, Michelle told WLKY that officers officially broke the news, “You’re not who you think you are. You’re a missing person. You’re Michelle Marie Newton.”
Michelle, who had been living under a different identity, called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office upon discovering her true family history, according to the release.
On the other side of that phone call was a reunion with family she hadn’t seen in decades, including her father.
“She told us she didn’t realize she was a victim until she saw everything she had missed,” Chief Deputy Col. Steve Healey said.
“She’s always been in our heart,” Joseph Newton told CNN affiliate WLKY. “I can’t explain that moment of walking in and getting to put my arms back around my daughter.”
“I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything. It was just like seeing her when she was first born. It was like an angel.”
The resolution of a case spanning more than 40 years reflects a legacy of “extraordinary” detective work from the sheriff’s office, Healey said in the release, including its long-held philosophy that “no family seeking help is ever turned away.”
Healey says it also proves the importance of one courageous tipster. “People think calling in tips is ‘snitching.’ It isn’t,” he said. “You’re helping victims. You’re helping families. This case proves that one phone call can change a life.”
A family member of Debra’s traveled to Kentucky and posted her bond.
She has been arraigned on a felony charge of custodial interference, according to the Commonwealth’s Attorney Office in Jefferson County. Felony custodial-kidnapping charges carry no statute of limitations in Kentucky.
CNN has reached out to the Louisville-Jefferson County public defender’s office for comment on Debra Newton’s legal representation.
Debra Newton voluntarily appeared in court for her arraignment in Louisville, the release states.
Both Michelle and Joseph Newton were in attendance.
Michelle doesn’t appear to be taking sides. She told WLKY: “My intention is to support them both through this and try to navigate and help them both just wrap it up so that we can all heal.”
Florida woman charged with posing as nurse and treating more than 4,000 patients with stolen license
Autumn Bardisa, 29, is accused of helping provide care to 4,486 patients from June 2024 to January despite “never holding a valid nursing license,” the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said.
Florida woman arrested and accused of posing as a nurse for years
02:08
Aug. 7, 2025, 8:29 PM GMT+7
A Florida woman was arrested and accused of posing as a nurse and treating thousands of patients with another nurse’s license, authorities said.
Autumn Bardisa, 29, of Palm Coast, faces seven counts of practicing as a health care professional without a license and seven counts of fraudulent use of personal identification information, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
The sheriff’s office said that after Bardisa worked at AdventHealth Palm Coast Parkway Hospital for nearly two years, a colleague discovered that she was not licensed to work as a nurse after she got a promotion this year.
In her time at the hospital, Bardisa “participated in medical services” for 4,486 patients from June 2024 to this January despite “never holding a valid nursing license,” the sheriff’s office said.
AdventHealth hired Bardisa on July 3, 2023, as an advanced nurse tech, who works under the direct supervision of a registered nurse.
When she applied, she claimed she was an “education first” registered nurse, which meant she had passed the required schooling to become a registered nurse but had not yet passed the national exam for her license, authorities said.
During the hiring process, Bardisa told the hospital she had passed the exam and provided a license number that matched her first name, Autumn, but with a different last name, the sheriff’s office said.
Bardisa tried to explain the discrepancy by claiming she had recently got married and had a new last name, the sheriff’s office said. The hospital asked her to provide her marriage license as proof but she never did, it said.
The name and license number she provided, however, belonged to another nurse, also with the first name Autumn, who AdventHealth employed at a different hospital, the sheriff’s office said.
Bardisa then went on to work at the hospital without scrutiny. In January, she was offered a promotion.
The promotion “sparked interest” among her colleagues, the sheriff’s office said. A fellow employee checked the status of her license at that time and found “she had an expired certified nursing assistant license, which the employee reported to administrators,” the sheriff’s office said.
AdventHealth then opened an investigation into the claim and found Bardisa never provided her marriage license to confirm her identity, the sheriff’s office said.
Bardisa was terminated Jan. 22 “after she failed to confirm her identity,” the sheriff’s office said. AdventHealth then contacted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a criminal investigation.
The probe took seven months, in conjunction with the Florida Health Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and included interviews with the nurse whose identity Bardisa is alleged to have stolen.
The two had attended the same college, but the Autumn whose identity was stolen said they did not personally know each other, the sheriff’s office said. That Autumn said AdventHealth told her about the alleged fraud in January.
An arrest warrant for Bardisa was issued Aug. 5 and she was arrested at her home. Video of her arrest showed officers confronting her as she was in her car, wearing blue scrubs, the sheriff’s office said.
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Sheriff Rick Staly called the arrest “one of the most disturbing cases of medical fraud we’ve ever investigated.”
“This woman potentially put thousands of lives at risk by pretending to be someone she was not and violating the trust of patients, their families, AdventHealth and an entire medical community,” Staly continued.
The charging affidavit said AdventHealth “failed to immediately identify that Autumn had never uploaded the marriage license” and of “oversight on the discrepancies” in Bardisa’s employee information.
AdventHealth said it does not comment on pending legal matters or personnel matters.
Bardisa remained in custody Thursday morning on $70,00 bond. It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney, and her arraignment was set for Sept. 2.
