Dad Awaits Reunion With Kidnapped Daughter

When Carlos Reyes-Couvertier found his long-lost daughter after 25 years of searching, he felt a surge of joy — while sensing a long road toward healing ahead.

“We have some sense of happiness, but the chapter is not closed yet,” he said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

Reyes-Couvertier and his wife Lucia (who asked that her last name not be printed) gathered with police and city officials at New Haven Police Department (NHPD) headquarters at 1 Union Ave. to celebrate Special Victims Unit Detective Kealyn Nivakoff​’s breakthrough on the long-unsolved case.

Reyes-Couvertier last saw his daughter, Andrea, when she was 2 years old. He had been granted legal custody of her, while her mother retained visitation rights. In 1999, Andrea’s mother allegedly kidnapped the toddler, fleeing with her to Mexico. 

Since then, Reyes-Couvertier — a longtime New Haven Public Schools educator who currently teaches at Barack Obama University Magnet School — has been searching for Andrea alongside Lucia. They made several trips to Mexico to try to find Andrea. They found support in an online Facebook group of family members also looking for missing children. 

Nivakoff said that the police do not have information about why Andrea’s mother took her across the border.

According to Moore, the ​“Mexican government did not consider the offense of international parental kidnapping as a violation of the mutual extradition treaty with the United States.” He said that Mexican authorities located Andrea and her mother during the spring of 2000 in the Mexican city of Puebla, but declined to intervene ​“as Rosa was Andrea’s biological mother.”

Over the decades since, New Haven detectives and the FBI continued to investigate Andrea’s whereabouts.

Nivakoff took over the case in 2023. While she declined to go into detail about how the investigation took shape, Nivakoff said she conducted interviews and analyzed social media posts until finding someone she believed to be Andrea. 

The detective contacted the woman and asked her for a DNA sample, which the genetic testing company Othram processed. The DNA confirmed that the woman, now 26, was indeed Reyes-Couvertier’s daughter Andrea.

The father and daughter have not yet reunited in person, though they have communicated by phone and text message. 

“It was a moment of joy,” Reyes-Couvertier said of their phone call, ​“but we understand that this process is not over.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is coordinating and funding an in-person meetup, according to Nivakoff.

Meanwhile, a felony arrest warrant for custodial interference in the first degree remains active for Andrea’s mother if she re-enters the U.S.

Police Chief Karl Jacobson praised Nivakoff for her dedication to the case.

“This detective cared that much more. She didn’t have to go through her old cases and pull old ones out, and other detectives in this building do that every day,” he said. 

Lucia echoed this praise. ​“A 25-year-old case is daunting, but she willingly added us to her workload and checked in with us regularly,” she said.

Through tears, Lucia offered a message of hope for other families searching for their children — for ​“Vanessa Morales, Bianca Lebron, and all the others who have been taken from their families,” she said. ​“We keep you in our prayers, hoping for the day that you too can be reunited with your loved ones.”