‘I Never Lost Hope,’ Mother Says After Reunion With Girl Missing 18 Months

Amid the glare of television lights and a barrage of reporters’ questions, little Crystal Henning sat quietly on her mother’s lap Wednesday, bewildered by the hoopla surrounding her reunion with the mother she had not seen in 18 months.

Had she missed her mother? The 4-year-old nodded solemnly. What did she do when they were finally reunited? “I gived her lovins and hugged her,” she said, smiling up at her mother.

Gail Henning’s arms tightened around her daughter as she described her anguish during the months since her daughter failed to return from a weekend visit with Henning’s ex-husband, Fred.

“I never lost hope, but there were times when I thought I was trying everything I could . . . and nothing was working,” Gail Henning, 26, said. “There’s been a lot of pain. I missed her so much.”

Crystal disappeared from her Torrance home in April, 1984, and resurfaced on Monday, when investigators for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office found her living with her father, his girlfriend and the girlfriend’s son on a small farm near the Kern County community of Buttonwillow.

Her father, Fred Henning, 31, was arrested for child abduction and was being held Wednesday in lieu of $30,000 bail in Kern County Jail. His girlfriend, Sandra Crook, 31, was arrested on charges of abducting her 6-year-old son from her ex-husband in Riverside. She was being held in Riverside County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail. The boy has been returned to his father, Ken Crook, who now lives in Paso Robles.

Crystal was one of the first children to be pictured on milk cartons in the missing children campaign coordinated by Assemblyman Gray Davis (D-Los Angeles), who hosted Wednesday’s news conference to “(offer) hope and encouragement to other parents” of missing children.

Investigators said Crystal’s picture did not directly contribute to her discovery, but the milk carton campaign has helped by increasing public awareness of the crime.

“It makes people more willing to talk with us, and some of the information we got did directly lead to Crystal being found,” said Ed Hawk, a district attorney’s investigator.

During her 18-month search for her only child, Gail Henning spent more than $5,000--most of it borrowed from family and friends--to pay private investigators, and one of them developed information that helped lead to Crystal’s discovery, Hawk said.

Hawk said Fred Henning had adopted the name “Charles Crayne” and was working in the oil fields near Bakersfield. When investigators arrived at the Buttonwillow home on Monday, Hawk said Crook was in the kitchen “cooking a chicken dinner” and the two children were dressed for Halloween “waiting for daddy to come home from work so they could show him their costumes.”

Later that day, Gail Henning drove to Bakersfield to retrieve her daughter.

“She recognized me right away, but she’s a little confused about what’s going on,” Henning said Wednesday. “It’ll take some time to sort things out. She had been calling the other lady ‘Mommy.’ ”