Missing boy's family in disbelief he was so close
He disappeared in 1996 as an infant, seen being carried away from his house the day his mother was shot and her body burned in an unsolved murder that haunted police and this community.
Then came the anonymous tip that led police to arrest the women Shea knew as his mother and grandmother. They are accused of kidnapping the boy and rearing him a few miles from where the murder took place.
The boy — born Le-Zhan Williams — is in protective custody while authorities figure out how to reintroduce him to the family he's never known. And that family is trying to reconcile their joy with the frustration that their missing boy was just across town.
"That was what was overwhelming to me, that he was right here under our nose," said Riva Lee Boyden, 70, the boy's great-grandmother.
Boyden sits in the front room of her neatly kept bungalow, on the sofa that replaced the one where her 17-year-old granddaughter was shot and killed in May 1996. Two girls were seen fleeing the house — soon engulfed in flames — with a small bundle.
When authorities told Boyden they had made arrests last Friday that could close the case, she didn't have to wait for DNA testing to confirm the boy was Le-Zhan. When she saw his picture, he looked just like his uncle Mark.
News of the boy's recovery is particularly welcome in Vallejo, a city of 117,000 northeast of San Francisco. The city's recent history has been littered with high-profile child abductions.
Le-Zhan surely will be traumatized, now that the women who reared him are in jail. County social workers aren't sure how he will react to his biological family.
"I'm glad he's back, and I just want to see him. Because there's so much to do," Boyden said. "He's going to have some counseling. And we will, too."
Le-Zhan's father is Lathan "Young Lay" Williams, a 1990s rapper with a major-label record who is serving time for armed robbery.
Police believe jealousy over his relationship with Daphne Boyden probably drove then-teenagers Latasha Brown and Ocianetta Williams to kill.
"I just wanted to hold a baby," Latasha Brown said in a jailhouse interview published in the Daily Republic of Fairfield, a suburb.
Brown acknowledged visiting Daphne Boyden's home and taking the 25-day-old baby, but told the paper she couldn't remember details of the killing. "I looked down at the baby and said 'I owe you the world,' " she said. "I felt the baby didn't have anybody."
Brown told the paper she fled to Texas for five months, then returned to live with her mother, Dolores Brown.
Latasha Brown, 22, and Ocianetta Williams, 23, who is unrelated to the rapper, face murder charges. Because they were minors at the time, they won't face the death penalty if convicted, prosecutors said.
Ocianetta Williams pleaded innocent to murder and conspiracy charges Wednesday. Dolores Brown, 44, also pleaded innocent to felony child-concealment charges but signed a plea deal that likely will be entered during a hearing today, her lawyer Karl Spieckerman said.
Latasha Brown is expected to enter a plea on murder, arson and kidnapping charges tomorrow.
What amazes and frustrates locals about this kidnapping is its brazenness — that Latasha Brown, who went to high school with Daphne Boyden, continued to live with the boy in the same city.
"How could you stay in the county knowing the truth?" asked Carolyn Alexander, who helped the Boyden family after the crime. "These women weaned this child, cared for and loved and caressed him. They call this child by an unrightful name. Then they tell the child all sorts of stories to cover the crime in their heart."