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Trezell and Jacqueline West receive sentence for death and disappearance of Orrin and Orson West

Photo by: California City Police Department

Meela Miller, shown here at a family trip to Omak Lake, died late last year, and her mother, Mandie Miller, is charged in her death along with Aleksandr Kurmoyarov. (Photo courtesy of Daniel Herrera)

A 29-year-old man agreed to testify about the mysterious final days of 8-year-old Meela Miller’s life when he pleaded guilty to his involvement in her death Friday.

Around 25,000 boys and girls once lived in the Berlin children's home in Königsheide. Some are still looking for their parents today. 

Behind the gate with the squirrel emblem, an almost unreal idyll opens up - it's hard to believe that the Schöneweide S-Bahn station is only around 600 meters away: Neoclassical buildings stand in a sparse forest of tall oaks and pine trees. They are reminiscent of the Zenner house in Treptower Park. Here and there there are hammocks stretched between the trees.

All buildings are decorated with blue, red and beige scratch paintings, showing happy children in all walks of life. The houses are on the right and left on a street lined with flower beds. It leads from the entrance gate with the squirrel to an imposing house with figures standing in front of the column-decorated portal. It looks a bit like a miniature of the Weimar National Theater.

This afternoon, a group of two dozen people strolled through the listed complex on Südostallee in Johannisthal, a district of Treptow . Some carry folding stools in their hands; the tour will last two hours, at least.

Balconies were added to the houses a few years ago. The residents of the ground floors were given terraces. There is a sign attached to one: “You should be a caterpillar: eat – sleep. Eat – sleep. Eat – sleep. Zack – nice.” The current residents of the complex want life to be so easy here. But it's not a carefree place.

Today a residential park, formerly the GDR's model children's home

Flemish Minister of Welfare, Public Health and the Family Hilde Crevits is having the adoption landscape and the legal framework surrounding it reformed. This is done after previous recommendations from an expert panel and extensive consultation with all those involved. In the future, stricter supervision will be exercised to ensure that adoptions take place in the interests of the child. For example, there will be a systematic screening of countries of origin and independent experts will also assess adoption processes. It will also no longer be possible to adopt a child without guidance from the adoption service. And prospective parents for adoption and foster care will be better informed about the two options in the future.

“I absolutely believe in a future for intercountry adoption in Flanders, but only with a philosophy in which the interests of the child are absolutely central.  We have worked very hard in recent years with all partners on the necessary changes . Adoption should primarily be a search for a suitable family for a child and not the other way around. We therefore build in extra guarantees that adoptions are carried out correctly and morally. Good guidance is essential. It should not be about more-more-more adoption, but about better-better-better. We also connect adoption and foster care more strongly. In foster care we see many children waiting for foster parents, while in adoption we see just as manyseeing parents waiting for a child. That is why we would like to introduce all people who would like to care for a child to the two options. Ultimately, they can then make their own well-informed choice. In this way we hope to give more children a warm home.” – Flemish Minister of Welfare and Health Hilde Crevits  

To ensure that the interests of the child are absolutely paramount in intercountry adoption and to further eliminate the risk of malpractice, Flemish Minister of Health and Family Hilde Crevits has the Flemish regulations on adoption amended. The reform is based on the recommendations of an expert panel who provided several recommendations on intercountry adoption in mid-2021 and which various working groups started working on in concrete terms. A new screening instrument is already being implemented. The working groups included experienced experts and partners from the adoption sector, as well as adopted people and adoptive parents themselves.

Closer supervision of cooperation with countries of origin

In order to more effectively exclude the risk of malpractice and to carry out intercountry adoption in Flanders in a high-quality manner, the systematic screening of countries of origin will be enshrined in law as a principle and some assignments of the authorities involved will be changed.

The Limburg court gives permission for the use of genealogical DNA databases for kinship research in two cold case cases. The Public Prosecution Service (OM), the police and the Dutch Forensic Institute (NFI) will now use this internationally successful detection method in the context of a pilot, in the hope of forcing a breakthrough in stalled investigations.

Private DNA databases

Kinship research using (private) genealogical DNA databases can provide a solution when all available investigative resources have not led to a breakthrough in a criminal case. By comparing the DNA profile of an unknown dead person or an unknown suspect with the DNA profiles of people in a genealogical DNA database, (distant) relatives of this unknown person can be identified. With the help of these relatives, it is possible to determine the identity of the suspect or unknown dead victim through family tree research.

Cold case Hill murder  

The first cold case case in which this method is used concerns a home invasion with a fatal outcome. On August 14, 2004, the Leukel couple from Berg en Terblijt were brutally robbed in their home. An unknown man attacked them with, among other things, a saw. Sjef Leukel (68) died on the spot from his injuries. His wife ended up in a coma, from which she woke up after ten days. The case became nationally known as the 'Heuvel Murder'. Despite extensive and lengthy investigation, the offer of a reward for the golden tip and the presence of many perpetrator traces, the identity and motive of the perpetrator have remained unknown until now.

‘Korea is hiding our past’: the adoptees searching for their families – and the truth

Amid allegations of a corrupt adoption system in Seoul that falsified children’s records, those sent to Denmark as youngsters are desperate to find out their real stories

In the summer of 2022, Sussie Pflug Brynald, a Danish citizen, walked through the doors of Holt Children’s Services in Seoul, South Korea, looking for answers about her past. The agency had handled her adoption 49 years earlier when she was, according to Holt, a Korean orphan.

Brynald had brought with her a bottle of Danish liqueur and souvenir shot glasses adorned with Vikings and Danish flags. She had been told that bringing presents to the adoption agency might help her get some of those answers.

One of INEA's goals is to sustainably promote and strengthen connections, collaboration and knowledge sharing within the current adoption field. Interest groups for intercountry adoptees are valuable partners for INEA because of their expertise, experience and network in specific countries of origin. Particularly when it comes to support in carrying out searches in countries of origin, they have a wealth of knowledge and know-how. The Ministry of Justice and Security has made financial resources available for these organizations in the form of the subsidy scheme 'International Adoptee Interest Organizations' (hereinafter: the subsidy scheme). But how did this subsidy scheme come about and how do you apply for a subsidy?

Why a subsidy scheme?

A large group of international adoptees has been left out in the cold for a long time. Abuses came to light that made searches for and issues surrounding distance, adoption and identity complicated or impossible. In addition, adoptees have different questions and needs at different times in their lives. With the arrival of INEA, we want to ensure that intercountry adoptees and their families are seen and heard at all stages of life regarding questions about distance, adoption and identity.

The current support offering is fragmented; There are interest groups that differ in size, offering, approach and professionalism. The subsidy scheme was created to sustainably promote and strengthen the current support offered by interest groups. The ministry has consciously chosen not to pay individual compensation to adoptees in the Netherlands. One of the reasons is that general support and the creation of an improved infrastructure contributes more to assisting the broad target group of intercountry adoptees than providing uniform individual benefits to the entire group.

The subsidy scheme explained

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — After dozens of searches, scores of interviews, months of investigation, weeks of trial, and, lastly, a plea on the part of a defense attorney asking her client receive probation, the adoptive parents of Orrin and Orson West on Thursday were sentenced to life terms in prison.

Trezell and Jacqueline West, accused of killing the young boys three years ago, were sentenced to 15 years to life in prison plus four years.

As the Wests were sentenced, sniffling was heard from members of the audience, some of them biological family of Orrin, 4, and Orson, 3, others members of the public who have followed the case from the beginning.

Trezell West, 37, and Jacqueline West, 33, reported the boys missing in December 2020. Prosecutors say the couple killed them three months earlier and disposed of the bodies, then fabricated a tale of how the boys disappeared from their backyard, apparently kidnapped.

In May, they were found guilty of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and child cruelty regarding Orrin. Jurors failed to reach verdicts on second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with Orson’s death. A guilty verdict for child cruelty was returned regarding Orson.

It's never easy for adopted children to find their biological parents decades later, especially when they have little information about them. The challenge, though, has not deterred Mahogany from the United States. The 23-year-old girl is in India with friend Christopher to track down her biological parents. For the past two weeks, the two have been covering Lucknow street by street and meetings officials in the hope of some success.

Mahogany spoke to INDIA TODAY about her past as well as her mission. It was in 2000 that she was found abandoned by the Government Railway Police (GRP) near Charbagh railway station in Lucknow. The police searched hard for the parents, but in vain. Ultimately, the girl was sent to an orphanage from where, two years on, she was adopted by an American woman, Carol, and taken to Minnesota.

Mahogany said her foster mother, before her death in 2018, told her about her adoption. Therein began Mahogany's search. Mahogany, whose Indian name is Rakhi, told her story to Christopher, an artist, and a plan was drawn up to visit India. It took time to arrange for the funds and visa and finally, the two reached Delhi in the second week of September and proceeded to Lucknow.

Mahogany, who works in a cafe in Minnesota, said one of the first things she did in Lucknow was to enquire with the GRP at Charbagh station and also visit her orphanage. But credible leads to her biological parents eluded. Her documents at the orphanage have no details of her parents. Some photographs of her adoption have three women, but their whereabouts are not known.