A woman and her husband made headlines around the world when they tried to buy two baby girls online. Just over 20 years ago, Judith Kilshaw, now Sillet, with then husband Alan were involved in what has become known as the first story to break the internet.
The couple, from Wrexham, paid £8,200 to adopt the babies, who they renamed Kymberley and Belinda, and flew to America to collect the girls. However, the situation wasn't as straight-forward as they had hoped, Wales Online reports.
The girls' mother Tranda Wecker, who originally named them Kiara and Keyara, was already a mother to five children. The 28-year-old put her daughters up for adoption when they were four months old.
However Judith and Alan weren't the girls first adoptive parents. They had already been taken to live with Richard and Vickie Allen, a Californian couple who agreed to pay £4,000 for the babies.
They had been placed with the family for several weeks before Tranda made one last visit. She said she wanted to take the girls "out for the day", but never returned.
This is because the biological mother had received a higher offer from Judith and Alan, who were prepared to pay £8,200. The Kilshaws handed over the money to an agency under the assumption it was fees for the adoption.
The couple then flew to San Diego on December 1, 2000, where they met the girls for the first time and took them back to their hotel. However, they soon discovered that they weren't the only hopeful adoptive parents.
During an appearance on This Morning in 2019, Judith shared her side of the story, She said: "In America the law is different, they have a cooling off period so they can place the child with a couple and I think it is something like 60 days and on the 59th day they could go I've changed my mind, and there is nothing you can do.
"She told them she wanted them for the weekend, she would bring them back there wasn't a problem, the Allen's said ok, I don't suppose they were very happy but they let them go for the weekend, and during that weekend she placed them with us."
According to reports, Vickie Allen's brother tracked down the Kilshaws that weekend and demanded they return the girls to their original adoptive parents. Terrified of the girls being taken away from them, the Kilshaws packed their bags and travelled to Arkansas.
Here, the adoption process was completed in a five-minute hearing. The couple then flew back with the twins (renamed Kymberley and Belinda) to their home in Buckley, Wales.
Once they arrived back in the UK, former solicitor Alan wanted to warn others of adopting children through the same process and went public with their story. However, his decision soon backfired, and social services were alerted to the case within days.
Following a tense three hour stand-off, Kiara and Keyara were taken from their adoptive parents under an emergency protection order and placed into care on January 19, 2001. Over the next few weeks, the FBI launched an investigation into how the girls had been sold online to two different couples, while Tony Blair vowed to ban the "deplorable" babies-for-cash trade.
Meanwhile, the Allens begged Tranda to let them take the babies back to their California home, where they'd spent a third of their young lives. They even confronted the Kilshaws, who also wanted the girls back, on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
A court in Missouri later awarded custody of the twins to Aaron Wecker, their biological father, who said Tranda had neglected his daughters by trying to sell them online. Tranda herself even attempted to get the babies back but was unsuccessful. When the girls were returned to the US, they were placed with an adoptive family and given new identities, which have been protected over the last 20 years.
Judith Kilshaw has spoken out several times over the last two decades, discussing her hopes with the girls and pleading with them to reach out once they were old enough to make the decision for themselves. Judith and Alan divorced in 2006 but remained close friends.
Alan even walked Judith down the aisle when she remarried a younger man called Stephen Sillet in 2008. Alan sadly passed away in 2019, with Judith later revealing that it was his dying wish was to be reunited with the girls.
Speaking on This Morning in 2019, Judith said she came to the decision to stay out of the girls' lives. She told Eamon and Ruth: "I stayed out of their lives because I wanted them to have a stable upbringing. To reach the age where they knew what was happening and could make decisions.
"I’m not going to force myself on them. It's up to them. If they want to have contact I’d be willing to meet and talk about the past. I’m not saying come and live with me and be my best buddy, but if you want to know what happened and how it worked out."
Judith said she would liken to know what happened to the Allen family, and it seems she soon will. Amazon Video is releasing a three-part documentary on the scandal, which features Tranda Wecker, Judith Kilshaw and Vickie Allen, telling the story from their own point of view. The series will be available on Amazon Prime on November 18.
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