An eagle-eyed Unsolved Mysteries viewer has helped a father reunite with his missing daughter. A store owner in North Carolina who had seen the Netflix true-crime series recognized Kayla Unbehaun, now 15, and contacted the police.
Kayla was allegedly abducted by her mother, Heather Unbehaun, six years ago. Their photos were among those featured at the end of a 2022 Unsolved Mysteries episode that focused on cases of parental abduction.
At the time Kayla disappeared, her father, Ryan Iserka, had full custody, according to a report from Chicago’s ABC 7. Her mother had visitation rights. When Iserka went to pick up his daughter from her mother’s home in Wheaton, Illinois, on July 5, 2017, they were not there.
Heather and Kayla’s whereabouts remained unknown for years. Then, the owner of a Plato’s Closet store in Asheville spotted Kayla at a shopping center. The store owner called the police, who later arrested Kayla’s mother. She posted bail and was released from custody on May 16.
“I’m overjoyed that Kayla is home safe,” Iserka said in a statement the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children shared on Twitter. “I want to thank @ElginPDFD, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and all of the law enforcement agencies who assisted with her case. We ask for privacy as we get to know each other again and navigate this new beginning.”
Have other ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ cases been solved?
The original Unsolved Mysteries premiered in 1987 and featured more than 1,300 mysteries over 200+ episodes. According to the show’s official website, viewer tips helped solve more than 260 cases. Fans of the show helped identify wanted fugitives and reunite people with lost loved ones.
Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries reboot premiered in 2020. While that version of the show has generated plenty of viewer tips, none had led to an arrest, until now.
“We had thousands of tips and leads that came in, but nothing was solved,” creator Terry Dunn Meurer told Gizmodo in 2022. “But it does take awhile for cases to get solved. They can’t just have a tip and go and make an arrest.”
“Nothing has been solved yet,” he added. “But we still are very hopeful because with the show streaming, we still see people going back and looking at them and sending in new tips.”
Unsolved Mysteries is streaming on Netflix.
Source: ABC 7 Chicago, Unsolved.com
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