We have been seeing it every day on the news: Mother runs with children from CPS, Mother runs from Family Court with children.

Baby Gabriel Likely Still Alive, Cops Say

"People need to be aware of what is going on in our court system, especially in family court where everything is so hushed," Jennifer says. "I feel so failed by the court, and I hope people see from our story that the system is flawed, and they fix it. It's so sick, but what happened to me and my brother is happening to other kids right now."  

A missing 8-month-old Arizona baby is likely still alive, despite his young mother's claim that she killed him, according to police.

Gabriel Johnson's biological father, Logan McQueary, is begging for the return of his son, who was taken cross-country by his mother, Elizabeth Johnson, last month. He and police believe Johnson may have left the couple's son with people she met in San Antonio, Texas, in an effort to hide Gabriel from McQueary.

"Please, do the right thing and turn him over. Don't worry about getting in trouble or anything like that," McQueary said on "Good Morning America" today to whoever knows where Gabriel is. "Please. I want my son back."

Although police say they now have indications to the contrary, McQueary said he received text messages from his ex-girlfriend while she was on the run, claiming to have murdered their baby. She was arrested Dec. 29 in Miami Beach without Gabriel and charged with interfering with custody.

"The last indications that we have was that Gabriel was alive and well in the San Antonio area on Dec. 26," Tempe Police Sgt. Steve Carbajal told "Good Morning America" today. "We are receiving some indications that Gabriel is still alive and we're very optimistic about that."

In a jailhouse interview this week with a Phoenix CBS affiliate, Johnson, 23, of Tempe, Ariz., denied harming their son, saying she told McQueary she had killed Gabriel to get back at him.

"He had ruined my life and he hurt me and I wanted to hurt him," she said. "And that was the only thing I could say that would hurt him."

She claimed in the same interview to have left her son with a random couple she met in a San Antonio park, but that she didn't know anything about them other than that they seemed trustworthy.

Johnson's grandfather, Bob Johnson, told ABC News that he doesn't believe his granddaughter's story that she simply left her child with an unknown couple.

"I think that she has given the baby to somebody and I think she knows who it is," he said. "I think it's in San Antonio in somebody else's house and she just ain't given it up.

"She has an anger-management problem and she's working on that," Bob Johnson said.

Cops: Couple Claiming to Be Gabriel's Adoptive Parents Have No Rights to Child

The bizarre custody dispute began before Christmas when Johnson fled after McQueary refused to sign paperwork relinquishing his rights to Gabriel.

Johnson, who had been in talks with an Arizona couple to adopt Gabriel, lost custody of Gabriel after failing to appear at a Dec. 28 court hearing.

"We want to be clear that the court has made a determination here in Arizona that Logan is the father," he said. "Logan has stated numerous times that his desire is to raise his son Gabriel."

Tammi and Jack Smith are sticking by Johnson, talking to her in jail and saying she hid Gabriel to protect him. 

"What she is telling us is that she met a family, a Caucasian man and woman with no child -- young," Tammi Smith told "Good Morning America."

"And she met them in the park. And she was crying and distraught and they came up to her and said, 'How can we help you?'"

When pressed for details about the couple, Smith said Johnson didn't remember much despite having spent three days with them, just that the woman's first name was "Cheryl." Tammi Smith said Johnson told her she purposely tried not to focus on their car or last names so she wouldn't be tempted to change her mind and get her son back.

"She believed she was doing a closed adoption," Tammi Smith said.

Police have also questioned the Smiths and searched their home but found no clues to indicate where Gabriel might be.

Johnson is scheduled to be extradited to Arizona this week. A search of her car -- found Tuesday by the FBI in San Antonio -- yielded no obvious clues or evidence of violence, police say.

Motherhood was never really Johnson's strong suit, Bob Johnson said.

"She discovered after eight months that there's more to this parenting than she wanted to get involved in," he said. "It was not her thing. She was into fashion." Father of Missing Baby Gabriel Says He Was Pressured to Give Up Child

Jack Smith admitted he thought the entire adoption process with Johnson "felt strange," but that they all lived nearby and they had bonded with the baby after keeping him for a couple of weeks in December.

McQueary has charged that the Smiths pressured him into giving up the rights to his child.

 paperwork and she will bring him back to us and you will know that he is safe,'" McQueary said.

The Smiths deny the accusation and said they were simply passing on that message from Johnson and that they told McQueary they knew such papers wouldn't hold up because he signed them under duress, though it might bring the baby back.

"The father and Jack and I were in constant contact when we found out Elizabeth fled with the baby," Tammi Smith said. "When we finally got to speak to Elizabeth, she was so angry with the whole situation and told me, 'I have one message to give to Logan.'"

That message, Smith said, was sign the papers and the baby will be brought back.

Anyone with information about Gabriel Johnson is asked to call the Tempe Police Department at 480-350-8311.

The battered woman fled to Amsterdam with her children in defiance of a court order

 Holly Ann Collins walked off a plane and stood on Minnesota ground for the first time in 14 years. Her friends cheered, waving signs in celebration. "Holly, a champion for children," one read. Another said, "Welcome home."

"It's not a nightmare anymore," said a friend as she held Collins's hand. "You're back. This is the real thing."

Collins slowly surveyed the crowd who had come to greet her. One by one she recalled the people from her past. There was John, the boy she used to babysit when he was four years old. "He was just this high," Collins said, looking the young man over. Tears rolled down her face as she made her way through the group. "I can't believe it. Look at all you."

Collins stopped short when she saw one supporter wearing a protest button from the early 1990s, when she lost custody of her children. She gently touched the aged orange relic. Her hand trembled as she started to read the text aloud. Her voice cracked, tears again welled in her eyes, and suddenly she fell silent. "...The children are still in the custody of their abusive father," read a friend who stepped in to finish. "What can you do to help?"

"Kidnap them," Collins joked, getting a laugh from the crowd. Wearing jeans, a purple polo shirt, and a lapel pin with the American and Dutch flags on it, Collins wiped the tears from her eyes. "I can't believe I'm here," she said smiling.

A fugitive, Collins returned to Minnesota to turn herself in, yet there were no police waiting for her at the airport—only friends greeted her and her daughter Jennifer. After dining together, the group planned a tour of the lakes and a drive past the St. Louis Park home where the family had once lived. The last time Collins saw her friends from Minneapolis, she said she was moving to Edina. Instead, she fled the country, two children and a baby in tow.

"It was a choice between everything I had and my kids, and of course I chose my kids," Collins says.

On December 22, 1992, after a brutal court battle, Collins lost custody of her children. Despite warnings from doctors and psychiatrists that her ex-husband was dangerous, and claims from the children that their father was hurting them, Hennepin County Family Court Judge Michael J. Davis awarded Mark Collins of Crystal full custody of Zachary and Jennifer, then ages 7 and 9. Holly Collins, the judge argued, suffered from a "personality disorder"—most likely Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare illness in which a mother secretly hurts her kids to gain attention.

Letters flooded the court and protests were held regularly at the Government Center. Even Collins's court-appointed psychologist expressed skepticism at the diagnosis. Collins's problems were "the result of marital abuse or battering," the expert wrote. Nonetheless, the state Court of Appeals refused to reverse custody. Evaluators were convinced that Collins had been coaching her children to claim abuse by their dad and that they were actually safer in his care.

"Anything that happened to my children after the court was made aware they were being abused, Hennepin County is responsible for," Collins says. "I'll take responsibility for marrying the guy, for staying so long, but after the court knew, after they saw the medical records, everything that happened after that, every single beating, Hennepin County is responsible for. And I think they should make amends for that."

More than a year later, when the children claimed continuing abuse at the hands of their father, Collins devised an escape plan. She secretly met the children at a local video store, where the kids ditched their bikes and jumped into her car. After months on the road in disguises, Collins and her three children ended up in the Netherlands, where in 1997 they were granted asylum.

Collins was charged by the state of Minnesota for deprivation of parental rights and by the FBI for fleeing to avoid arrest. The family remained in hiding until 2006, when they were discovered. The Dutch government declined to extradite her, and federal charges were eventually dropped.

But Hennepin County refused to budge. Deputy County District Attorney Pat Diamond told City Pages in July, "Look, we are not going to negotiate with someone who is in a country with a non-extradition treaty, fleeing from a crime. That's just not how we do things."

Yet as the case received increased attention from the media and politicians, the hard-line stance started to soften. Earlier this month, Collins's lawyer, Alan Rosenfeld, got word that charges would be dropped.

"You'll have to go to Minneapolis and turn yourself in, but you will be let go," Rosenfeld told her.

"I started screaming, 'See, see they know we're telling the truth. Even the DA knows we are telling the truth,'" Collins says. "That's the most important thing, that we are believed, that my kids are believed. It just feels like a little bit of validation that I did the right thing."

For months, Jennifer, now 23, has been lobbying U.S. lawmakers to drop the charges against her mother. On September 14, she was awarded the Medal of Courage by the California Protective Parents Association after speaking to a crowd of custody evaluators in San Diego. She plans to move to Washington, D.C., and become a lobbyist for children's rights.

The next Tuesday, as she waited for the hearing, Collins huddled in the corner of the room with her daughter. Nearly two dozen supporters sat around her in the galley. Some wore protest buttons from the early '90s, yellow pins with a picture of Holly and her kids torn apart and the words "Domestic Violence Destroys Families." Others wore blue ribbons that Jennifer made in support of her mother.

Still considered the victim in the case, Mark Collins had the option to attend the hearing. He didn't show up, but Hennepin County prosecutor Elizabeth Cutter said he was in agreement with the sentence. "It would have been nice to confront him," says Jennifer Collins. "I have no desire to see him again, and this was going to be the moment where I told him how I felt, but it's over for me now."

As promised, the felony kidnapping charges were dropped in exchange for Holly Collins pleading to a lesser charge. In a quiet voice, Collins told Judge Margaret Daly, crying, " I admit I'm in violation of contempt of court. This court didn't protect my kids, and I just want to say, I still to this day believe them."

She was sentenced to unsupervised probation for one year, or until she completes 40 hours of community service, which she plans to serve in the Netherlands by either volunteering at a shelter for domestic violence victims or working with refugees. "Without them actually putting it in words, they are basically admitting they made a mistake," Collins says of the reduced charges.

After the hearing, her supporters stood near the fountain on the second floor of the Government Center holding signs while media cameras rolled. "Listen to children," one said; another proclaimed, "It shouldn't hurt to be a child." Then Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman addressed reporters. "We have learned a lot more about this case since [July]," he said. Freeman said that his office had dug up more information and agreed to the negotiations because there was insufficient evidence and it seemed unethical to call the children as witnesses against their mother. "This is a very difficult case that has been made more difficult because she took them 14 years ago," Freeman said.