Three-year-old Michelle “Shelley” Newton poses for the camera in a sailor’s outfit, smiling wide, showing the gap between her two front baby teeth in an undated missing persons flyer from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

“Michelle was taken by her Mother,” it reads.

Now, Michelle, 46, is on a path to healing. Her mother is facing one charge.

The toddler’s vanishing took place in spring 1983, after her mother Debra Newton claimed she was “relocating to Georgia” from Louisville, Kentucky, “to begin a new job and prepare a new home for the family,” according to a Monday news release from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

CNN affiliate WLKY spoke to Joseph Newton, Debra’s husband and Michelle’s father, in 1986 after three years of searching for his daughter. He said the plan had been to move to Georgia. Debra took Michelle early, he added.

When he got there, he said they were gone.

Sometime between 1984 and 1985, a “final phone call” occurred between Debra and Joseph Newton, according to the sheriff’s office. Then, “both mother and daughter vanished.”

A custodial-interference indictment warrant soon followed.

“Wouldn’t you want your child back? At least to see her grow up?” Joseph Newton asked WLKY nearly four decades ago.

Police at one point thought it was possible Michelle was in Clayton County, Georgia, a suburban county almost 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta, according to the flyer.

Despite no signs of Michelle or her mother and Debra’s inclusion on the FBI’s “Top 8 Most Wanted parental-kidnapping fugitives,” Michelle’s case was dismissed in 2000 when “the Commonwealth” of Kentucky could not reach her father, the release said.

Five years later, Michelle, who would have been in her 20s, was removed from national child missing databases, according to the sheriff’s office.

The undated missing persons flyer says Michelle’s entry in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children system and Debra’s warrant for custodial interference were recalled in 2005 “due to inaccurate information.”

The case was reindicted in 2016 after a family member “prompted detectives to reexamine the case.”

Earlier this year, 66-year-old Debra Newton had been spotted in Marion County, Florida, going by a different name.

When a Crime Stoppers tip identified the woman as a possible match, a US Marshals Task Force detective compared a recent photo to a 1983 image of Debra, and a Jefferson County detective “confirmed the resemblance,” the release said.

Authorities collected DNA from Debra’s sister in Louisville, and it showed a “99.9% match” to the woman in Florida.

When police arrived at her door, Michelle told WLKY that officers officially broke the news, “You’re not who you think you are. You’re a missing person. You’re Michelle Marie Newton.”

Michelle, who had been living under a different identity, called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office upon discovering her true family history, according to the release.

On the other side of that phone call was a reunion with family she hadn’t seen in decades, including her father.

“She told us she didn’t realize she was a victim until she saw everything she had missed,” Chief Deputy Col. Steve Healey said.

“She’s always been in our heart,” Joseph Newton told CNN affiliate WLKY. “I can’t explain that moment of walking in and getting to put my arms back around my daughter.”

“I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything. It was just like seeing her when she was first born. It was like an angel.”

The resolution of a case spanning more than 40 years reflects a legacy of “extraordinary” detective work from the sheriff’s office, Healey said in the release, including its long-held philosophy that “no family seeking help is ever turned away.”

Healey says it also proves the importance of one courageous tipster. “People think calling in tips is ‘snitching.’ It isn’t,” he said. “You’re helping victims. You’re helping families. This case proves that one phone call can change a life.”

A family member of Debra’s traveled to Kentucky and posted her bond.

She has been arraigned on a felony charge of custodial interference, according to the Commonwealth’s Attorney Office in Jefferson County. Felony custodial-kidnapping charges carry no statute of limitations in Kentucky.

CNN has reached out to the Louisville-Jefferson County public defender’s office for comment on Debra Newton’s legal representation.

Debra Newton voluntarily appeared in court for her arraignment in Louisville, the release states.

Both Michelle and Joseph Newton were in attendance.

Michelle doesn’t appear to be taking sides. She told WLKY: “My intention is to support them both through this and try to navigate and help them both just wrap it up so that we can all heal.”

One week ago, I wrote that Kentucky needed to show us something against Gonzaga. Unfortunately, it did, in a bad way. The Cats’ 35-point loss to the Bulldogs was their fourth to a ranked team this year. It was a performance so abysmal that the team got booed off the floor at halftime. Ever since, BBN has been in a tailspin, uncertainty about the program’s short-and long-term future hanging over the Bluegrass like a thick fog.

Kentucky has already gotten back in the win column, beating NC Central by 36 on Tuesday night; however, the true test of whether or not the Cats have reached rock bottom is Saturday vs. Indiana. The Hoosiers are 8-2, losing to Minnesota and Louisville last week. They rebounded from the 87-78 loss to the No. 6 Cards by routing Penn State 113-72 on Tuesday, thanks in large part to 44 points from Lamar Wilkerson, who picked Indiana over Kentucky out of the transfer portal this past April.

Both Kentucky and Indiana fell out of the AP and Coaches Polls this week, hovering near each other in the group of “others receiving votes.” KenPom ranks Kentucky No. 20 and Indiana No. 21. It gives the Cats a 4-point edge in Saturday’s game, while BetMGM goes a half-point higher at 4.5.

Thank goodness this one’s at Rupp because it’s a must-win, in more ways than one.

Resume

Let’s start with the most basic: the schedule. It may feel premature to start worrying about the NCAA Tournament, but we’re 10 games in, one-third of the way through the regular season, and Kentucky still doesn’t have a good win, going 0-4 in said opportunities. The highest-ranked team the Cats have beaten so far is Valparaiso, which ranks No. 191 in the NET rankings. All of Kentucky’s wins are in Quad 4, all of its losses in Quad 1. Quad 1 losses don’t hurt you a ton, but at some point, you have to pick up some meaningful wins to offset them.

The Cats have two more chances to pick up a Quad 1 win before SEC play begins: vs. Indiana and St. John’s. Over half of Kentucky’s conference games are in Quad 1; before starting that gauntlet, we need to see that the Cats are capable of winning one. Of the two coming up, beating Indiana in Rupp feels more manageable than Mark Pope taking down his old coach, Rick Pitino, and St. John’s next weekend in Atlanta.

Lamar Wilkerson

Much has been said about Kentucky’s struggles with recruiting this week. Most of that conversation has centered around high school recruiting, not the transfer portal, but Lamar Wilkerson is one of the biggest portal targets Mark Pope missed on this past offseason. Kentucky felt so good about landing him that Mark Pope took him to the winner’s circle at Keeneland. Instead, Wilkerson went to Indiana, the Hoosiers sweetening the pot at the last minute.

On Tuesday, Wilkerson set an Indiana record with 10 three-pointers in the win over Penn State. He is averaging 18.8 points and 3.5 made threes per game this season. There were other whiffs for Pope and his staff during the offseason, but Wilkerson will take center stage at Rupp tomorrow night, at a time when Kentucky’s $22 million team is the laughing stock of college basketball.

Please don’t let him get hot.

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Fan fatigue

You don’t need me to tell you BBN is unhappy. The boos in Nashville were ugly proof of the unrest in the fanbase now. Concerns about recruiting and the school’s partnership with JMI, as outlined by Jacob Polacheck and Jack Pilgrim earlier this week, aren’t helping. Mark Pope struck a different tone on Tuesday night, using his bench to send messages to Kam Williams, Jaland Lowe, and Brandon Garrison, and biting back anger afterward as he talked about how his team continues to fall short of the standard. On the player side, Otega Oweh seemed to step up as a leader, scoring a season-high 21 points and insisting all is well in the locker room during interviews, one of which took place with his teammates surrounding him.

On Saturday, we get to see if those baby steps of progress are enough to avoid a fifth loss. Kentucky has already lost one home game this season, last week vs. North Carolina. Given all that’s happened since, there might be boos if the Cats pick up a second tomorrow night.

Fear of becoming Indiana

Indiana used to be one of Kentucky’s biggest rivals; for fans of a certain age, the Hoosiers may still be. Over the past 20 or so years, Indiana has faded to irrelevance. The Hoosiers haven’t gone to a Final Four since 2002. There’s a reason they put Christian Watford’s buzzer-beater vs. Kentucky in 2011 on a popcorn box; they haven’t had much else to celebrate.

As Kentucky fans, we’ve made our fair share of jokes about Indiana, but it’s not quite as funny now that the Cats haven’t gone to the Final Four in a decade, won an SEC regular-season championship since 2019-20, or an SEC Tournament title since 2017-18. For all our hopes that Mark Pope would be the one to turn it around, Kentucky still hasn’t won a big game this season. As Mark Story outlined in the Herald-Leader, Kentucky could be on the path to becoming the next Indiana, which makes Saturday’s game even bigger. With this being the first game in a four-year series, it could be an annual reminder if things keep trending in this direction.

So, please, Kentucky, win this basketball game. You can make it my early Christmas gift.