True crime documentaries are really popular right now, but after watching so many of them, you can become indifferent to them and just be interested in the facts themselves, forgetting that the events happened to real people who probably went through very strong emotions.
But it is very different when people tell their stories on their social media and don't let you forget that it is not a made-up movie, but this person actually went through that tragedy. One of those stories is a kidnapping one that went viral on TikTok. A woman found out that she was reported missing in 1980 when she went looking for her biological parents and shared what that felt like and what happened after in a series of TikTok videos.
More info: TikTok
When she was 26, this woman found out she was reported as a missing person who had been kidnapped since 1980 and went viral with her story on TikTok
Image credits: thebeardedmom
Shawne Bolton is a 42-year-old woman who goes by thebeardedmom on TikTok. She made a video dropping a story that got 3.3 million people interested and there were so many of them wanting to know more that she told the whole story and was answering questions both in the comments and in videos.
In the video that went viral, Shawne captioned it with “How I learned I had been kidnapped.” She says that when she was 26, she was in a good enough place in her life to look for her biological mother as the people she knew as her parents weren’t biologically related to her.
When she was 10, she was told that she wasn't the biological daughter of her parents and she wouldn't find out until she was an adult
Image credits: thebeardedmom
She called the sheriff’s department to find out if her mother had a criminal record. The sheriff didn’t find any information about Shawne’s mother but he did find something and that was a record for a missing person.
It was from 1980 and the missing person was her, and that means the report was filed a few months after she was born in 1979 on November 1st. The report stated that the missing person was kidnapped. The woman wanted to know more, but she wasn’t able to access the investigation report which was actually conducted, but obviously didn’t lead to any answers.
Image credits: thebeardedmom
The video left a lot of questions unanswered, so other TikTok users flooded Shawne with comments and she was happy to reply. So in another video, she reveals that her biological mother actually sold her to the people who raised her, Steven and Angie. And after that, she filed the missing person report because the grandmother was freaking out as she didn’t know what her daughter had done. In the report, the mother indicated Steven as the suspect, but weirdly enough, the investigation didn’t give any results.
After a lot of struggles, Shawne found her mother and got to know the whole family just to learn that her mother actually sold her to the family she grew up with
Image credits: thebeardedmom
A frequently asked question was when Shawne found out that she was living with people that were not related to her. It was when she was 10 years old when Angie and Steven were divorcing and Angie told her that she didn’t want to see Shawne anymore, so she would be living with Steven.
You would think that if a mother gives up on her child, she would at least make sure it was going to a kind family. But in reality, it was an abusive relationship where she got beaten on more than one occasion and sexually abused. She guesses that this was the reason she was bought in the first place.
Now Shawne doesn't have any contact with either of the families
Image credits: thebeardedmom
Eventually the TikToker found her mother with the help of a private investigator and sadly, it didn’t turn out great. The mother didn’t ever apologize for giving up her child and continued to insist on being the victim because someone took her baby from her.
The relationship with the rest of the newly found family was also awkward, because everyone knew of Shawne’s existence and celebrated her birthdays, the grandma even bought her presents every year on Christmas, but she wasn’t like the picture they had in their minds.
And just this year, TikTok helped her find her biological father and from what she told her followers, she is excited about it and they are getting along well
Image credits: thebeardedmom
At this moment, the woman cut all ties with both of her families, but there is a positive thing that came out of this situation. All of this happened back in 2006 and Shawne didn’t truly find out what really happened when she was just a baby because everyone tells her their own version of the story, but 2021 and TikTok wasn’t going to let this woman go without having at least a little bit of a happy ending.
One of the people who saw the woman’s videos, @gail4ce, did a bit of research and found her real biological father. Shawne herself didn’t know who he was and suspected that her mother also didn’t know. They took a DNA test with the person @gail4ce found and it was positive and it seems that they both get along quite well.
Image credits: thebeardedmom
Here you can watch the first video that got people curious to know more
At the end, nobody was punished and Shawne was all alone in trying to solve her own kidnapping case. Police didn’t help when she was sold and they didn’t help when she wanted to find out more about her origins. Her life story is truly a crazy one and it left some pretty nasty scars and a bunch of issues.
If you would like to know more details about how she felt and what were her interactions with her biological relatives, feel free to check out her TikTok. And tell us what was your reaction after hearing the story!
Here are some of the reactions people had when they first heard the crazy story
