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OREM — Two girls missing since 2014 were found Sunday morning in Pleasant Grove. Their mother was booked into jail, according to the Orem Police Department.
Danielle and Sydney Wolferts disappeared in Orem in May, 2014.
The two girls were living with their father, Brian Wolferts, in Topeka, Kansas. He said at the time he had full legal and physical custody of his daughters for the previous four years. He said after they came to visit their mother in Orem for the summer, they never made it back home.
Sydney, 15, and Danielle, 13, flew to Utah from Kansas for a scheduled custody visitation to see their mother on May 30. Since then, their father claimed he had no communication or contact with his ex-wife or his two girls.
On July 11, the girls' mother, Michelle Wolferts, filed a report with Orem police saying her two daughters had run away.
In a press conference Sunday afternoon, Craig Martinez with the Orem Police Department emphasized how complicated the matter was.
"It's a very interesting case," he said. "You've got two sides of the fence. You're either on one side or the other."
Part of the issue, Martinez said, was how many resources were dedicated to finding the two girls after being reported missing.
"We've spent countless and countless of hours investigating the whereabouts of these two girls, and it's a bit frustrating when it ends up being with the person that reported them missing in the first place," he said Sunday. "You can understand our frustration ... with the amount of hours and detectives we had working on the case."
The Wolferts girls were found in PG this am. They are in custody waiting to be picked up and their mother was booked into jail by @OremDPS
— Orem Police Dept. (@OremDPS) January 3, 2016Orem police reported Sunday morning that the girls were in custody waiting to be picked up by their father, which is also a complex matter.
"There's going to be a process," Martinez said. "The father wants to do what's best for the girls. He doesn't just want to bring them into a situation if they're uncomfortable, so he's probably going to be working with DCFS to integrate them back into the home."
On the 11th of July 2014, Danielle (15) and Sydney (16) Wolferts were reported as Runaways by their mother, Sonja "...
Posted by Orem Police Department on Sunday, January 3, 2016
Contributing: Nicole Vowell
