Lauren Burns was dressed in a cheerleader costume for Halloween weekend in 1987 when she climbed into her father’s car. But instead of taking her trick-or-treating, he drove the 7-year-old to the airport and flew her thousands of miles from her Dallas home.
Ali Bayan assured the little girl that the trip to his home country of Jordan was a “surprise” — and that her mother, Cathy Mahone, knew all about it. But as days turned into weeks and her father refused to let her speak to her mother, Burns began to realize she might never return home.
“I didn’t think I would ever see my mother again,” Burns recalled to Fox News Digital.
Burns recounts the abduction and the international rescue mission it sparked in her memoir, “Stolen.” Her childhood friend, country music superstar Miranda Lambert — whose family played a crucial role in bringing Burns home — wrote the foreword.
Fox News Digital reached out to Lambert for comment.
“By the time I was six weeks old, my parents got divorced,” Burns said.
WATCH: MIRANDA LAMBERT’S FRIEND RECALLS BEING KIDNAPPED BY FATHER AT AGE 7
“All I ever knew was that kind of upbringing. I went between two homes. My mother had full custody of me when I was six weeks old, but she did not want to keep me from my father. He was a good dad. He was loving and kind. I saw him almost every other weekend or maybe extra if she needed help. They had a good relationship despite the reasons that they had gotten divorced.”
During the drive to the airport, Burns wondered why her stepmother and siblings weren’t coming along.
“He’d never done anything to make me feel like I couldn’t trust him,” Burns said. “He was my dad, my provider. He was the one that loved me dearly. So, if he tells me something, I’m going to trust him. But it didn’t quite add up.”
Burns’ parents met while Mahone, a Christian, was working as a waitress and Bayan, a Muslim, was studying engineering in Texas. Mahone had full custody, but Bayan, who owned a restaurant in Dallas, saw his daughter regularly. There were “no red flags,” Burns said, until that Halloween weekend.
The Monday after Halloween weekend, Mahone went to Burns’ elementary school to have lunch with her, as she typically did. She expected to hear about her daughter’s weekend of trick-or-treating with her father. Instead, she discovered that Burns had never arrived at school. She soon learned that her ex-husband had abducted their daughter and taken her to Jordan.
A desperate Mahone rushed to a pay phone. She called the one man she believed could help her: Miranda Lambert’s father, Rick Lambert. The former Dallas police officer ran a private detective agency with his wife, Beverly.
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“Rick and Beverly were home,” Burns said. “They got Miranda, they moved out of their house, and they were with my mom day and night trying to figure out a way to help my mom get me back. They were calling everyone they knew. Rick pulled some strings and got an appointment at the Dallas County Courthouse, so my mom could try to get a warrant out for my father’s arrest.”
The Lamberts had known Mahone for years, long before Burns and Miranda were born. Their friendship began when Mahone worked for Miranda’s grandmother, Wanda, at an apartment complex.
Until then, Burns had traveled only to Florida to visit her grandmother. Now, the 7-year-old was in the Middle East, unable to speak Arabic and struggling to adjust to unfamiliar customs and a different way of life.
“I had to cover my hair,” Burns said. “I could not wear shorts. We had to take our shoes off and wash our feet. There were no toilets. It was a hole in the ground with a chain above. I had never seen anything like that. Even the way we ate, it was a communal type of eating. You would sit on the floor with a big rug that was underneath and big plates of food, fresh food. You could smell all the different spices and the fresh hummus. We would all sit together, and you would eat with your hands.”
But for Burns, the most painful change was in the father she had always trusted. Once in Jordan, the man she viewed as her protector became “distant.”
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“I quickly realized that my father was not going to take care of me in Jordan, like he did in Texas,” she said. “It was different roles that I didn’t quite understand. I quickly got the sense that it was my grandmother and aunt’s job to take care of me because it wasn’t the man’s job to take care of the child. But at a time in my life when there was so much confusion, I really needed my father. I really needed my mother, and I didn’t have that either.”
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Back in Texas, Mahone learned that the lack of an extradition treaty with Jordan severely limited the U.S. government’s ability to help her.
Determined to get her daughter back, Mahone turned to a North Carolina-based security firm staffed by former special operations personnel. She paid the team $80,000 and sold her jewelry to cover living expenses. There was no guarantee she would see her daughter again.
The team spent weeks searching for Burns before tracking her to Jerash, Jordan, where Bayan had enrolled her in school. Mahone accompanied the team to Jordan, disguising herself as they prepared to rescue her daughter.
Burns was sitting on a school bus when she spotted her mother.
“My mom had her hair covered,” Burns said. “She came over and tapped the window. I looked straight into my mother’s eyes and all I could think of was that it looks just like my mom, but how can it be? I thought I was dreaming. My mom started motioning me to come and get off the bus, but I froze. So, she had to push her way onto the bus.”
As Mahone boarded the bus and grabbed her daughter, a school chaperone jumped on Mahone’s back and tried to stop her. Mahone fought back, punching the woman in the nose before rushing Burns off the bus and into a waiting car.
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The rescue team then drove Burns and Mahone toward the Israeli border, crossing the Allenby Bridge into Israel before making their way back to the United States.
“They put me on the floorboard of a car, they covered me up with blankets, and we sped off,” Burns said.
Three months after her abduction, Burns finally returned to the United States, where family and friends — including a young Lambert — were waiting to welcome her home.
“The first person I saw when I was coming down that runway was Miranda,” Burns said, fighting back tears.
“She was probably four or five years old, a little thing with this blonde hair. She was running and pushing past all the other people … And when we got home, my aunt had left every single Christmas tree up. She refused to take down the decorations because she said, ‘Lauren will come home and we will celebrate Christmas.’ So we celebrated Christmas and opened presents that year in January when I returned.”
But returning home did not mean the ordeal was over. Fearing Bayan might abduct Burns again, Mahone kept her daughter in hiding, repeatedly moving to protect her. Burns said she had moved 14 times by the time she reached high school, leaving her struggling to find a sense of stability.
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As a teenager, Burns grew increasingly angry. Beverly urged Mahone to let Burns stay at the Lamberts’ farmhouse in Lindale, Texas — the same home Miranda Lambert later sang about in “The House That Built Me” — to help her through a difficult period.
Beverly quickly welcomed Burns into her church community and even “handpicked my friends,” as Burns recalled, determined to surround the struggling teenager with positive influences. With the Lamberts by her side, Burns grew stronger in her Christian faith. She “hated Father’s Day” for years, but always wrote a card to Rick Lambert, who became a father figure in her life.
The bond endured as Burns grew up alongside Lambert, whom she described as “like a little sister to me.” Long before Lambert became a country music superstar, Burns knew her as the little girl whose family had welcomed her into their home.
Bayan was indicted while abroad and arrested in 1990 after returning to the United States, People magazine reported. He was sentenced to eight years’ probation.
Burns was in high school when she finally confronted him, asking why he had abducted her.
“He wanted to raise me in his country, with his family,” Burns said. “The only way he could do that was to take me. He wanted me to be raised in his beliefs and his culture. He said, ‘I felt like I was doing the best thing for you.'”
While Burns forgave Bayan, they have not spoken since 2019, People magazine reported. Fox News Digital could not reach Bayan for comment.
“If my seven-year-old self could look at my life today,” Burns said, “she would say, ‘There is hope.’ There is healing on the other side of forgiveness. There is freedom when you can let go. There is life, abundant life. And there is a way out.”
