On a Friday night in August 1985, Russell Yates did not come home to his wife. The next morning, Elaine Yates found her husband on the family boat in Warwick, R.I., with another woman.
In the all-day argument that followed, Russell Yates punched his wife, a blow that sent Elaine to the hospital with a cut on her forehead, he later acknowledged.
Three weeks later, Russell Yates returned to their Warwick home late from Copperfield’s, a bar and pool hall the couple owned, to find his house empty. His wife had disappeared, along with their two young daughters, Kimberly, 3, and Kelly Ann, just 10 months old.
What followed was a three-decade mystery, involving numerous court cases, nationwide searches by police and private investigators, an appearance on “America’s Most Wanted,’’ and jail time for Elaine Yates’s 77-year-old mother, after she was held in contempt of court for insisting she did not know the location of her daughter and two granddaughters.
Now, 32 years after they disappeared, the mystery has been solved, Rhode Island State Police say. An anonymous tip just before Christmas led them to Houston, where they say Elaine Yates, now 69, had been living under the alias Liana L. Waldberg. The two daughters have also been located in the Houston area, according to authorities. Kelly is 32 years old; Kimberly is 35.
Elaine Yates was arrested without incident by Texas Rangers and Rhode Island State Police on Monday at her home in Houston. Authorities say she confirmed her true identity after being taken into custody and waived extradition. She was being transported back to Rhode Island and will be arraigned Wednesday in Kent County Superior Court.
Russell Yates, who was interviewed by television reporters outside his Rhode Island home Tuesday, said he was thankful to have finally located his children but stopped short when asked if his former wife should be prosecuted.
“That ain’t going to help her, me, or anybody else at this point,’’ he said. “I just want to see my kids.’’
Rhode Island State Police Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Philbin said the daughters were given their father’s contactinformation and it was up to them to choose to reach outto him. He said it was unclear whether the women knew their true identity or that they had been taken from their father without his permission. “We didn’t discuss that part of it with them,’’ Philbin said.
Philbin said Elaine Yates had been charged with two counts of child snatching, which carries a maximum sentence of two years.
In a lengthy story published in 1988 in the Providence Journal Sunday magazine, Russell Yates told a reporter that his wife had threatened to get even with him for his aggressions and infidelities by moving out in the middle of the night and taking their two children with her.
When she followed through on that threat, Russell Yates began a decades-long quest to locate his daughters. He hired private detectives. He pestered law enforcement. He wrote thousands of letters to pediatricians and elementary schools, looking for any signs of his daughters.
He also got involved in several legal battles, the first of which was to gain legal custody of his children so that they could be classified as missing. He was awarded custody after his wife failed to show up for the hearings, though he still had to fight to get authorities to issue a warrant for his wife’s arrest because there was no evidence the mother knew she had lost custody of her children.
Russell Yates then went after Elaine’s mother, Mary Pigeon, claiming in a $1 million civil suit filed in 1986 that she knew the whereabouts of the missing girls. The case dragged on for years; Pigeon initially said she had received two phone calls from her daughter shortly after she disappeared but maintained that she did not know her current whereabouts.
In 1990, a judge sentenced Pigeon to prison to try to force her to disclose the whereabouts — a move that drew widespread criticism from women’s groups and then-Governor Edward DiPrete — but released her after eight days. Pigeon died in 2000, according to the Providence Journal.
Russell and Elaine Yates were high school sweethearts at Pilgrim High School in Warwick and married when they were just 18, according to the 1988 Providence Journal story. During their first year of marriage, Russell Yates was drafted into the Vietnam War. Elaine’s brother, Joseph Pigeon, also fought in the war, and just as both men were preparing to return home, Joseph Pigeon was killed in action.
Russell’s tour in Vietnam ended when he escorted the body home to Rhode Island.
Billy Baker can be reached at billy.baker@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @billy_baker.
