Taj Narbonne

Nine-year-old Taj Narbonne was last seen on May 31, 1981 in Leominster, Massachusetts. His mother, Annette (who was 9 months pregnant at the time) had a beer with his stepfather, Clarence Dean at 11:30 p.m. that night and went to bed around midnight. She woke up at 1:30 a.m. and discovered that Clarence wasn't in bed with her, so she got up to look for him.

Annette accidentally knocked over some bottles and told Clarence that he should go to Taj's room in case he was afraid by the noise and she went back to sleep. When she woke up the next morning, Taj was missing. The clothes that she had picked out for him were still in his room and she found a note that said: "I'm going away because I don't want to live here anymore. I don't have to listen to anybody anymore."

Annette later called her mother, Eunice to say that she couldn't find him. Initially, she believed that he ran away from home to get away from Clarence. The night he disappeared, Eunice said that Taj called and asked her to come get him because he was afraid, but she told him to go back to sleep.

Annette told the police that Taj was afraid of Clarence and didn't want to live with him. Taj even told his teacher and his best friend that he was being abused at home. She planned to leave Clarence and take her kids with her, but she delayed her plans due to her pregnancy. Clarence was sent to jail in 1982 for kidnapping and stabbing his estranged wife. He and Annette got divorced in 1983, and Annette went into hiding with her kids for a while after Clarence was released from prison.

In 1989 (eight years after Taj went missing), the police searched a barn located less than one mile from his family's home to search for his remains, but no evidence was found. In 1996, Wal-Mart sponsored a billboard profiling his case.

Taj's case is classified as a non-family abduction. Since then, Annette has remarried and moved to New York while Clarence resides at the Bridgewater State Hospital due to mental illness.