Starting today, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) will take over the national video network across 48 states to generate fresh leads in a decades’ old cold case: the abduction of Raymond Green. This first-of-its-kind effort marks NCMEC’s inaugural takeover of GSTV for a single case.
Raymond Green was just five days old when he was abducted from his home in Atlanta, Georgia on November 6th, 1978. After giving birth at Grady Memorial Hospital, Raymond’s mother, Donna, was befriended by a woman who called herself “Lisa.” That woman later showed up at Donna’s home and abducted baby Raymond. There is no photograph of Raymond, only a sketch from Donna’s memory. NCMEC forensic artists used photos of Raymond’s siblings and other family to estimate what he might look like today.
To get Raymond's attention, wherever he may be, a sketch, developed from an age-progression video created by NCMEC’s dedicated team of forensic artists, will appear on screens nationwide. While abducted in Georgia, Raymond could live anywhere in the United States now.
NCMEC and GSTV have worked in partnership with the goal of locating and reuniting missing children for almost five years. In 2021, the two companies began partnering on ADAM, Automated Deliver of Alerts on Missing Children, which distributes missing child posters from NCMEC to targeted screens at gas stations in specific geographic search areas across the nation. Since the start of the partnership, GSTV has shared more than 460 missing children’s posters.
With the ultimate goal of reuniting Raymond’s mother with her son, NCMEC held a regional press conference in Atlanta, GA today in partnership with the Atlanta Police Department. The campaign on GSTV’s screens will run for two weeks.
“We believe that Raymond could be out there and may not know his real identity,” said Angeline Hartmann, director of communications at NCMEC. “We’ve worked with families in similar situations where their babies were kidnapped and then found alive as adults. Today, Raymond could be anywhere and GSTV has given us this invaluable opportunity to reach the entire country. We’re asking everyone to take a moment and really look at both Raymond's image and the image of his abductor. You never know if you’ll be that one person who can make a difference.”
“Our partnership with NCMEC has helped reunite missing children with their parents since 2019. Normally, we activate in any given 25 states at one time, so this effort marks a major step up in terms of scale,” said Violeta Ivezaj, SVP, business operations, GSTV. “By turning our screens to a single case for the first time, we hope to leverage the attention we have with our viewers and garner the visibility Raymond’s family needs to bring him home.”