RENO, Nev. — Melissa Reed was applying for what she thought was a routine marriage license two weeks ago when she learned a stunning secret: She had been abducted as a child and was living under an assumed name.
The woman was actually a former New Jersey girl named Eva Marie Fiedler who was 6 years old when she disappeared with her mother during a bitter child-custody battle. Her mother, Nancy Dunsavage, says she fled with her daughter and changed their names to save them from an abusive man.
Dunsavage lived with the secret for all these years but confessed to the double life when her 32-year- old daughter couldn’t get a marriage license because she lacked proper identification.
She said she couldn’t bear to keep the secret any longer, knowing that she had deprived Eva of a chance to get married.
“I learned the reason that for all these years I have not had a proper ID or valid Social Security number for ‘Melissa Reed’ and why I could not get a driver’s license, bank account, passport or travel by plane,” Eva said.
The discovery touched off a bizarre chain of events that has landed her 57-year-old mother in jail in Reno on a 1985 fugitive warrant out of New Jersey.
Prosecutors in New Jersey want to bring her there to face charges in what they consider a parental abduction.
Eva said the revelation hasn’t changed her view of her mother.
“My mother has cared for me throughout my life and has provided a good home for me,” she said in court papers. “I know her and trust her and now I have learned of my past.”
