Bridgeport toddler disappeared without a trace more than 40 years ago
Jovonna Stacey Crawford was a sweet, quiet child.
She, a brother and her mother, Mary Corbin, lived in the P.T. Barnum Housing Project on Taylor Drive in Bridgeport.
When Corbin left for work on June 5, 1981, she didn’t know it would be the last time she would ever see her little girl.
Just three months shy of her second birthday, Jovonna disappeared without a trace.
Corbin had asked her then-boyfriend and family friend, Ronald Garrett, to briefly watch Jovonna until it was time to bring the girl to her maternal great-grandmother, who lived in the same complex.
“The family friend reportedly gave Jovonna to an unidentified juvenile male who was to deliver Jovanna to an adult female relative. Jovonna has not been seen since,” the missing persons poster reads.
Garrett told Corbin and police that a Black boy around 10 or 11 years old with braids in his hair came to the home just before 10:30 that morning and said he was to bring Jovanna to her relative’s nearby apartment. Garrett said he recognized the boy from the neighborhood, thus he allowed him to take the baby, according to police.
The boy has never been found or identified, and officials are unsure whether he ever existed.
Jovonna never made it to her great-grandmother’s house.
Garrett, who has since moved out of state, was arrested a few days after the disappearance and eventually served 10 months in prison for risk of injury to a minor, but he maintained his innocence, and even when speaking with Corbin later, insisted his story about the boy picking the girl up was true.
In a 2011 interview with the Connecticut Post, Corbin said she believes her daughter is alive, but is living somewhere else and most likely unaware of who her real mother is. She said her dream ia to finally have her daughter back home, even if she would now be an adult.
If Jovonna is still alive, she would be 45 years old today.
When she disappeared, Jovonna was 2-foot-1 inches tall and weighed 30 pounds. She is Black, with black hair and brown eyes, and her ears were pierced. She was last seen wearing a blue and white jumpsuit.
Some agencies have used alternative spellings of her name, “Jovanna,” and "Stacy" in their missing persons reports. Anyone who may have information related to Jovonna’s disappearance is asked to call the Bridgeport Police Department at 203-581-5100.