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A recent (late-1996) twist on this old tale that moves the story from its previously-given locale of either Miami or New York City to someplace along the Mexican/American border. In this newer telling of an age-old scare story, a young child disappears from his parents' sight at the border; maybe a half-hour later, the mother sees her sleeping child being carried by a man trying to clear Customs. She gives chase, he drops the child and gets away, and it's only then she discovers that her little boy has been brutally murdered and hollowed out to turn him into a smuggler's carrying case. It's a horrifying tale, and it's meant to drive home the message that those who deal in drugs are inhuman and there are no limits to their depravity. The tale is sickeningly fascinating (thus ensuring it will be told and re-told), and it plays right into what we want to believe about those in the drug trade: They're through-and-through evil. Both those factors have contributed to this story's longevity. As a never forget, never end the war on drugs story, it's a blood-boiler, one guaranteed to outrage and turn the stomach of even the most sanguine. (Indeed, the example cited above suggests a depraved couple so single-mindedly determined to smuggle drugs into the USA that they're willing to sacrifice their own child to the cause.) Yet as horrible as this story is, there are no documented cases of its occurrence, much less any evidence of its being a common practice in the drug trade. A major outbreak of the story took place in 1985, at which time a Washington Post article about crime in Miami that presented the story as true. A week later that paper printed a retraction after discovering they had fallen for an apocryphal tale: A 1990 United Press International report noted this legend's staying power: In yet another demonstration of how urban legends are resurrected whenever they serve a purpose, this legend was reported as true by the international press (in this case the UK's Guardian) in May 2000 with a Middle Eastern setting: Once again, we have a story with a curious lack of detail: absolutely no information (such as names or ages) is given about either the victim or the perpetrators, and the location where this crime supposedly took place is suspiciously vague (a Gulf state). And how was this crime revealed to the world? Not in a government or police press conference, but in a talk to university students by the head of the drugs squad. If you're a government official tasked with keeping a handle on your country's drug problems, what better way to call attention to the issue than by relating a horrific story about the depravity of foreign drug traffickers to a hall full of college students? It serves as a warning about the perils of drug use, it blames the problem on evil foreigners, and it garners terrific press coverage — even if it is merely a bit of fiction. The next time someone tries to pass off this legend as an actual occurrence, the media would do well to heed the experience of Miami Herald crime reporter Edna Buchana before running the item as a news story: Sightings: The 1985 Dan Simmons novel Song of Kali includes a kidnapped baby who is found at an airport, dead and stuffed with stolen jewels.
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