John and Yoko’s daughter comes out of 50-year hiding to expose KIDNAPPING horror: Shaking, she bravely relives the instant of reunion together with her long-lost mom

Kyoko Ono waited till she used to be 30 years previous ahead of she in any case made the phone name.

Wracked with nerves, she took a breath and dialed. When the go back name sooner or later got here, it used to be a voice she hadn’t heard in a long time. It used to be her mom.

The aid used to be immediate. Suddenly Kyoko’s fears fell away in conjunction with the guilt and disappointment that had haunted her grownup lifestyles.

Now, sitting for an unique interview with the Daily Mail, the 61-year-old daughter of Yoko Ono is telling her tale for the primary time.

It is a story as dramatic as any blockbuster mystery – certainly it has featured in numerous biographies and documentaries about her well-known mom and stepfather John Lennon. But it’s person who Kyoko herself hasn’t ever instructed, till now.

Kyoko used to be simply 8 years previous when she had remaining noticed or heard from her mom. That used to be the 12 months she used to be snatched by way of her father – Yoko’s 2nd husband, Anthony Cox – who abducted her amid a sour custody fight and concealed her away within the vastness of rural America.

She then grew up in a cult and knew not anything of Yoko and John’s frantic efforts to seek out their lacking kid. Their bid used to be as determined because it used to be public, costing $1.5million in as of late’s cash. It used to be the stuff of headlines and late-night communicate presentations.

And so as of late, the very first thing Kyoko desires to make it transparent is that she knew not anything of the couple’s frantic seek.

‘When other people pay attention about my tale, they do not perceive what it used to be like ahead of Facebook,’ she says. ‘There’s my mother and John doing these kind of issues to attraction to me. 

‘It makes me sound heartless. But I used to be residing on a farm in Iowa. We did not personal a TV. And a large number of other people do not take into account that there may be an approach to life like that.’

The echoes of Yoko are simple. Sure, Kyoko is taller – however stocks her mom’s subtle options and fine-boned body.

Often emotional all the way through our interview, she stays cautious – in some way that handiest the kid of mega-celebrity could be.

Kyoko lives a quiet lifestyles in Colorado, having divorced her husband, attorney Jim Helfrich, in 2018. They have two youngsters in combination: Emi, 27, and John, 25.

‘I’m now not in point of fact interested by being a public determine. But I’m additionally my mother’s daughter, and I need the tale to be informed correctly,’ Kyoko says, visibly shaking with nerves.

‘I used to be there when my mother and John first were given in combination,’ she issues out, ‘Look at how extraordinarily John Lennon used to be handled.’

Yoko did not fare a lot better, she says, relating to the racialized insults automatically thrown at her Japanese mom who used to be by way of turns slammed as an untalented groupie and blamed for breaking apart the Beatles.

Kyoko used to be born to Yoko and American filmmaker Cox in 1963. Three years later, Yoko met John at a gallery in London the place she used to be making ready an showcase, sparking an immediate chemistry.

They’d each depart their spouses to be in combination.

At first, Yoko’s preparations with Cox to seem after Kyoko have been casual and amicable.

Cox remarried – to Melinda Kendall – and the 2 {couples} even spent New Year’s Eve of 1969 in combination in Denmark, the place he and Melinda have been residing.

Meanwhile, Kyoko frequently stayed together with her mom and stepfather at their expansive London house and travelled with them across the world.

When John and Yoko staged their notorious bed-in in Montreal, photographers captured a tiny Kyoko amidst the sheets.

Today Kyoko admits, ‘I used to be very scared by way of that status.’ There used to be, she says, ‘a large number of pageant for John and my mother’s consideration from folks – even the nanny.’

As frontman of The Beatles, Lennon used to be in all probability probably the most well-known guy on the planet; the drive used to be monumental. And amid all of it, the peace between Cox and Yoko unraveled.

In 1971, Cox and Melinda vanished with 7-year-old Kyoko to Spain, enrolling her in a transcendental meditation preschool in Majorca.

Yoko, who handiest discovered of the transfer thru her legal professionals, in an instant flew to the Mediterranean with John, picked Kyoko up after categories and took her to their lodge, the place she and John have been promptly arrested.

Ironically, Spanish college group of workers had known as police to record Kyoko abducted.

She used to be returned to Cox and the topic hushed up, however now not ahead of a demanding look in a Spanish courtroom, all the way through which Kyoko needed to make an agonizing selection.

‘The pass judgement on mentioned to me, “Who do you want to go home with?”,’ she remembers. ‘And I’m like, I will be able to’t make that call.’

But the pass judgement on insisted.

‘So, I mentioned my dad, and my mother used to be disenchanted… I felt like I had an inconceivable option to make.’

Kyoko liked her mom and concept John used to be ‘beautiful cool’ however, she says, ‘My mother and John have been extremely busy other people. Usually once I went and stayed with them, I had a nanny, and I occasionally would not see all of them day lengthy. And [with] my dad and my stepmother, I’m their handiest kid.’

Following the Spanish pass judgement on’s ruling, Cox let Kyoko discuss with her mom again in London, nevertheless it wasn’t lengthy ahead of he took her away once more – this time to his local US.

Yoko and John adopted and filed for custody. In September 1971, a pass judgement on present in Yoko’s prefer, however the ruling had no sensible impact – by way of then Kyoko’s whereabouts have been unknown.

A couple of months later, Cox went to a courtroom in Houston – and this time, the pass judgement on dominated in his prefer, granting Yoko handiest visiting rights, which, in any match, Cox refused to honor.

On Christmas Eve 1971, he failed to supply his daughter on the court-appointed time and used to be jailed.

Released on bail he seized his probability and vanished with Kyoko for what would become everything of her formative years.

Cox and Melinda were experimenting with other religions and philosophies even ahead of they changed into fugitives – together with time in communes and at a UFO cult. Kyoko used to be to be taken alongside for the journey.

They began attending the Assemblies of God, described by way of Kyoko as ‘a standard, charismatic, Pentecostal church.’

‘When we left Houston, we have been at the lam,’ Kyoko remembers. ‘And we went to Los Angeles and we went to a church attached with our church in Houston… they usually took us in for a brief time period.

‘Then [the congregation] instructed us, “We’ve prayed about it and you really need to return Kyoko to her mother,” which used to be now not what my dad sought after to listen to.’

According to Kyoko, her father driven again, afraid he would move to jail. 

‘They have been giving him in point of fact excellent and Christian recommendation, however he did not accept as true with them. He nonetheless had an overly Sixties mentality. They simply didn’t accept as true with the police or jail or the rest like that.’

Then got here any other, extra unhealthy transfer… right into a full-blown cult.

The Living Word Fellowship started in California in 1951 underneath the management of John Robert Stevens, who established a farm retreat group and headquarters in Iowa. (The group sooner or later folded in 2018 amid sexual misconduct allegations).

Kyoko displays: ‘Today, as an grownup, the most important irony to me is we left a cult, in some way, once we left the Beatles and John and Yoko. People are fanatical [about them] at the degree of being cult contributors.’

‘I used to be very scared by way of that status,’ she says. ‘So being on this quite simple Christian group appeared very protected, like an more straightforward lifestyles.’

Cox moved the circle of relatives to an Iowa farmhouse ‘in the course of nowhere.’ Kyoko stored busy with chores corresponding to cleansing and husking dried beans whilst paying attention to recordings of cult-leader Stevens’s sermons.

Cut off from the arena, she had no manner of understanding that Yoko and John have been making common public pleas to seek out Kyoko and making an attempt to achieve her thru their tune.

In one determined 1972 interview on The Dick Cavett Show, Yoko confirmed an image of her daughter, lamenting, ‘John has to change the TV to any other channel on every occasion I see a kid, as a result of I simply can’t stand seeing a kid.’

But on the farm, Kyoko says, ‘We by no means mentioned my mother and John. We have shyed away from individuals who would speak about it. Going right into a cult used to be like the easiest position to move in case you have been petrified of being tracked down by way of the FBI.

‘Nobody there gave a rattling. They have been in love with the cult chief and looking to learn the Bible and do regardless of the cult chief mentioned and concentrate to his sermons.

‘They did not even concentrate to mainstream Christian tune.’

It used to be, she says, frequently ‘lonely’, however there are some satisfied reminiscences.

Melinda taught her to learn. ‘She used to be glorious,’ Kyoko says. ‘She’s a lovely necessary particular person.’

Still, Kyoko pestered her father to let her touch her mom.

‘There have been such a lot of instances that I mentioned to my dad, “I really want to get back in touch with my mom”,’ she says.

‘And he would say, “Well, if you do, first of all, it’s not what God wants you to do, and then second of all, you’ll put me in jeopardy. Your mom is for sure going to put me in prison”.’

And so Kyoko relented. 

Cox let her name her Yoko handiest as soon as for Christmas – a brief dialog that her half-brother, Sean Lennon, remembers overhearing from his mom’s finish of the road.

Quoted in journalist David Sheff’s biography of Yoko, Sean mentioned: ‘After some time, I heard my mother ask, “So where are you?” and there used to be a click on. I’m certain [Cox] hung up. Then my mother had tears in her eyes.’

When the cult moved from Iowa to California, Kyoko, her father and Melinda moved too – with Kyoko now enrolling at a Junior High in Los Angeles.

It used to be there that she learn the diary of Anne Frank.

‘I used to be enthusiastic about it. I’d by no means heard of the Holocaust ahead of I used to be 13,’ she says. ‘So, I went to the library, and I seemed up the Third Reich and I spotted that it used to be like my church.’

Around the similar time, the Fellowship took a sinister flip and, Kyoko says, changed into ‘more or less Charlie Manson-scary’, with ‘products and services the place we’d pray for the loss of life of other people.’

It used to be at this level that Cox, in any case, began to doubt the Fellowship. But, sensing his rising skepticism, different cult contributors started escorting Kyoko to and from college.

And so in the future, her father arrived early they usually fled.

But if Kyoko was hoping her father had noticed sense, she used to be left upset.

‘When we were given out of the cult, he mentioned: “We’ve been gone for so long. The best thing for me to do, and I can earn money doing this, is to make a documentary film about what happened to us, so that John and your mom will forgive you.”‘

Kyoko describes her father as ‘inconceivable,’ ‘self-deluded’ and a ‘main narcissist.’

And in spite of his departure from the cult, Cox remained steadfastly spiritual and insisted Kyoko attend conservative Christian Wheaton College in Illinois, the place she met her long run husband, Jim Helfrich.

Cox used to be now not willing at the fit. He mentioned Helfrich wasn’t Christian and he ‘didn’t need me to be concerned with any person who may just probably assist me get again in contact with my mother.’

He used to be proper to be involved. Helfrich, a attorney, instructed Kyoko it used to be extremely not likely that Yoko or the federal government would prosecute Cox if she ever reached out to her mom.

Indeed, Cox used to be by no means imprisoned for kidnap.

Kyoko married Helfrich in 1992, nevertheless it wasn’t for 2 extra years that she in any case picked up the telephone to name her mom.

She used to be 30 years previous, and he or she hadn’t spoken to Yoko for greater than 20 years.

‘By that time, I’d been educating at public college for 6 years. And I in point of fact understood youngsters and households higher than my folks ever had,’ she says.

So why had it taken her see you later to make touch?  

Perhaps there’s no easy solution. She apprehensive, she says, that her mom could be indignant or dislike her. And, in spite of her husband’s assurances, a part of her remained petrified that her father may just move to prison. 

But Kyoko’s estrangement from her mom weighed heavy. It used to be a continuing pain and shortage. She grew depressed and concerned, and in the end knew the one treatment could be to confront her fears and achieve out to Yoko.

And if truth be told, when she did, her preliminary name resulted in sadness: Yoko didn’t select up. 

But she known as again – and it used to be briefly obvious that she had little interest in punishing her ex-husband. She sought after handiest to be reunited with the daughter she had misplaced such a lot of years ahead of.

‘She sought after to peer me instantly after which we simply began spending time in combination,’ Kyoko says.

The mother-daughter connection used to be so herbal and rapid that, Kyoko provides, proper from the beginning it felt like that they had spoken simply, ‘the day prior to this.’ 

Kyoko has since cast a loving, shut dating together with her 92-year-old mom.

And now, reflecting on her storied upbringing, she is remarkably forgiving of the chaotic adults who let her down as a kid.

‘They have been all such youngsters. They have been similar to little kids, they all. It’s in point of fact loopy. Being a dad or mum – it is a laborious factor to do.’