An anonymous child welfare tip in July 2016 led authorities to a troubling discovery when one of five children in a Miami family could not be accounted for.
Angela Marjorie Dufrene had been born on April 25, 2014, alongside her twin brother. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement list November 22, 2015, as her missing date. When Miami police issued a public appeal in July 2016, detectives said Angela had possibly last been seen sometime that November.
However, by then, investigators were trying to reconstruct months of conflicting accounts about where the little girl had gone.
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Child Welfare Workers Had Been Involved With the Family
Angela and her twin were born while their mother, Marjorie Dufrene, was already known to Florida’s child welfare system.
Records reviewed by the Miami Herald and republished by Florida’s Children First showed that Marjorie had been under state supervision following a child abuse arrest and several previous investigations involving her older children. Despite those concerns, child welfare administrators did not add Angela and her twin brother to the existing court case involving their siblings.
DCF Secretary Mike Carroll later acknowledged that decision was a mistake.
“If the older children were not safe, how in the world can a newborn be safe?” he told the Herald. “It defies logic.”
Meanwhile, the agency continued to receive reports about the children in the household. Yet Angela’s absence wasn't discovered until July 2016, when another report prompted a DCF investigator to examine the family more closely.
The family’s landlord reportedly told the investigator he did not know Angela existed and believed Marjorie had four children, not five.
Her Mother Gave Several Accounts of What Happened
The landlord’s comments were supported when investigators questioned Marjorie, and she initially said she had four children. After detectives confronted her with Angela’s birth certificate, she said Angela was staying with a man she identified as the child’s biological father, Henry Mathieu.
However, that explanation did not hold. According to reporting based on DCF records, Marjorie supplied an incorrect phone number for Mathieu and later changed her account, saying Angela was with Mathieu’s mother. The woman denied that Angela had been staying with her.
Marjorie later gave police different accounts in which Angela had died. One version involved Angela being dropped during an argument, while another involved the child falling from her mother’s arms, coughing up blood and dying before her body was placed in a garbage bag and discarded in a dumpster.
Mathieu and Marjorie’s boyfriend denied portions of the accounts that implicated them.
During a July 2016 court hearing, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman directly asked Marjorie about Angela. According to CBS Miami, Marjorie told the judge her daughter was “no longer with us.” When Lederman asked whether she meant Angela was dead, Marjorie said yes.
She was not charged in connection with Angela’s disappearance. Without Angela’s remains or evidence establishing exactly what happened to her, authorities continued searching for the child.
In 2021, the Miami Herald reported that Marjorie remained a suspect and that investigators believed Angela had likely been killed, but the case had not resulted in criminal charges.
Angela Dufrene: What To Know
At the time of her disappearance, Angela Dufrene stood approximately 2 feet tall and weighed about 30 pounds. She has brown eyes and black hair.
NCMEC has released an age-progressed image showing what Angela may have looked like at age 11. Her NCIC number is M773386304.
Anyone with information about Angela Dufrene should contact the Miami Police Department Special Victims Unit at 305-603-6300 or 305-579-6111. You can provide anonymous tips to Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS (8477).
Please share Angela Dufrene’s story so the unanswered questions surrounding her disappearance remain visible. She is our sister, and her life matters.
Case Number: 160722-221569
Agency: Miami Police Department Special Victims Unit
Phone: 305-603-6300 or 305-579-6111
Email:
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