Well this is one of the most bizarre stories I've heard in a while.
On November 29, four West Jordan, Utah, children, ages eleven, eight, seven, and three, went missing. On December 2, the West Jordan Police Department went to their home for a welfare check. They apparently found the home unlocked and unoccupied. On December 10, the Utah Department of Public Safety issued an "endangered and missing children" advisory. A few days later, charges were formally filed against Elleshia Anne Seymour, the children's mother. She was charged with four counts of custodial interference and removing a child from the state — all third-degree felonies.
The welfare check came after friends and coworkers said she wasn't answering her phone. A former boyfriend told police that she'd been talking of getting passports for the children and leaving the country. At some point, she also called one of fathers of the children — there are two — and told him that she was in France with the kids and looking for a permanent place to live because "end times" were coming.
According to ABC, "Investigators reportedly found a notebook in Seymour’s residence with plans to shred documents, discard phones, and take passports. Additionally, they determined that Seymour’s vehicle was left in a parking lot at the Salt Lake City International Airport." Sure enough, police viewed video footage from the airport, and Seymour and the children were on it. They took a one-way trip to Amsterdam.
A Utah father said four children missing from West Jordan since late November have been found at an orphanage, while their biological mother is in Croatian custody.
— KSL 5 TV (@KSL5TV) January 27, 2026
Full story: https://t.co/Gmai3992g2
📸: Kenny Seymour via GoFundMe pic.twitter.com/QqdMDUuwvF
Both fathers, who share custody with Seymour, were quite upset — neither had consented to their children crossing state lines, much less leaving the country. Plus, the children were supposed to be returned to the fathers on a certain date, and that time had passed. Officials also determined that she had no intention of ever returning to the United States.
The father of three of the children said that he didn't know until all of this happened that Seymour had these doomsday beliefs. He found out when someone discovered that she had secret social media accounts, where she talked about them.
"I didn’t know about any of these ideas of hers until a couple of weeks ago when someone found her TikTok account," he said. "She thinks Salt Lake is going to be destroyed and she is trying to get the kids to safety. My only hope is that she is motivated to protect them. There were no signs of that when we were married or divorced in the last five years."
He accuses her of forging passport documents and leaving a note "dictating a delusional message from God promising her she would be in Italy by Christmas."
Anyway, the kids have now been found... in a Croatian orphanage.
The father of the oldest three had set up a GoFundMe so that he could raise money to go to Europe and try to find his children. He's currently in Europe, but over the weekend, he updated it:
The kids are trapped in Croatia in a state-run orphanage. We are in the country, trying to get the kids out of the custody of the local government. We have to hire Croatian lawyers who specialize in child abduction, create and submit Hague Convention applications, hire court-approved translators, and extend our stay here by an unknown amount of time. All to work on getting the kids released from government custody.
What's even stranger is that the father also mentioned that there is a fifth American child in the orphanage.
There is also a fifth American child in this children's home. My children were traveling with him and his mother. The fifth child’s situation is even more difficult than my own kids’ status. We would like to help him as much as possible — his situation is going to need more legal help and strategy than ours.
It's not clear what Seymore's connection to this child and his mother are or why these kids were dumped in an orphanage, but it sounds like this situation could be bigger than what we know right now. It also sounds like this woman needs some major mental health help. Thank goodness the kids are okay, and will, hopefully, return to their fathers soon.
Croatia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Monday that Seymour was arrested in Dubrovnik, a beautiful coastal tourist destination. Apparently, the FBI and the U.S. State Department were aware of the situation and/or involved, but both have declined to comment.
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