Missing daughter found; ex-wife facing charges

Monday, June 29, 1998 | 11:26 a.m.

It had been five years since Stewart Homnack last saw his young daughter.

Today, the heartache is over.

Word came by telephone Friday that police had found Cruzita McKinsey C. Homnack, his 8-year-old daughter, who disappeared June 28, 1993.

And there was more news: Homnack's ex-wife, Kendra Rose Hogue, 27, is behind bars awaiting a court appearance to answer charges of criminal contempt and violating custody rights.

Metro Police received information Friday on the whereabouts of the woman and child that led detectives to an undisclosed location.

The child was to remain at Child Haven until a custody hearing is held at Clark County Family Court this week, according to Lt. Tom Monahan of Metro's Crimes Against Youth and Family section.

"(Hogue) was supposed to turn her (Cruzita) over to me, but she never did," Homnack, a security officer at the Flamingo Hilton, said. "And she didn't show up for court."

Homnack and Hogue had been sharing custody of their daughter until the apparent abduction. After Cruzita disappeared, he was given full custody and police began looking for the mother and daughter.

A felony warrant for parental abduction was issued for Hogue July 6, 1994.

Authorities sensed the mother and daughter might have been living under assumed names, possibly in the Las Vegas area after Hogue renewed a driver's license last summer in Boulder City.

Local lawmen were helped in the case when ADVO Inc. began distributing direct mail cards to 73 million households across the country.

The mailer contained information about the case and a computer-generated, age-progressed picture of the child as well as a picture of the mother.

Metro Police Detective Jeff Rosgen said the last action in the case took place a month ago, when a person called with information that turned into another dead end.

"It's one of the things that happens on these long-term cases," Rosgen noted.

He said just because the daughter was with her mother didn't mean the child was safe.

"The truth of the matter (was) they (were) living in hiding," Rosgen said. "The little girl (might) not (have) been allowed out of the house to play or attend school.

"Many times in cases like these the parent can't get a job or financial assistance. And the child may be told to lie about her identity and her past."

Rosgen is happy with the support from ADVO, which in 1985 began a program called "America's Looking for its Missing Children."

The program involves cooperation between ADVO, a direct mail company, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Since the program's inception, more than 30 billion mailers have been distributed, and more than one in seven children featured has been found, according to officials.

"Few issues are as tragic as child abduction," Vincent Giuliano, ADVO's senior vice president of Government Relations, said.

(SUN Reporter Karen Zekan contributed to this story.)