OK, this has gotten way, way, way out of hand. Especially when you read the callous comments of the CNN producer.
It turns out that Francine's family had doctored the photo released to police and the media in order to make her "more appealing" and spur a wider rescue effort. In the picture, she is a perky, cute blonde girl somewhat resembling Lindsay Lohan.
"In actuality, Francine is neither perky nor blonde," said a grim-faced Perry. "In fact, her picture is mainly a testament to her father's skills with Photoshop."
Media networks are squirming, faced with the fact they cannot avoid airing pictures of the girl after the intensive media coverage of the search all last week.
"This is supposed to be the windfall time; the triumphant return of a photogenic kidnapping victim plays great with the 18-35 viewing audience, and can boost advertising revenues for months with follow-up stories on her return to normal life," said Stacy Umbridge, a producer at CNN. "For crying out loud. The girl's got a gap between her front teeth big enough to drive a car through."
UPDATE:PUNK'D Thanks to Snay for the "should have done more homework before posting lesson". This is how internet rumors and urban legends get started. When people start believing what they read in "The Onion" and "News of the weird". A sucker was born at 11:15 PM.
That's funny snay. I did the exact same thing. And I had the same reaction when googling got me absolutely nowhere, except to that article that Linda already linked to.
The scary thing though is that it's almost believable, given how much coverage is given to attractive abducted kids.
Linda,
I smell snark.
Evidence: the only Google hits for both Stacey Umbridge AND Francine Keyes came from the article you linked to.
If Francine Keyes was all over the news, I think there would have been more.
Sounds like someone decided to borrow a page from The Onion what with the rash of dissapearing kids in the media these days.