For most of her life, Kyoko Ono kept her story tucked away in silence.
The daughter of avant-garde artist Yoko Ono and stepdaughter of Beatles legend John Lennon had lived through what felt like a movie script—kidnapping, life in a cult, and decades of separation from her famous mother.
But it wasn’t until she was 30 that Kyoko made the call that changed everything.
Nervously, she dialed the number and said the one word she hadn’t spoken in 20 years: “Mom?” On the other end of the line, Yoko Ono was stunned.
That single moment unraveled years of pain, guilt, and secrecy.
Now, at 61 and speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Kyoko is finally ready to share her side of the story—the one that’s often been told about her, but never by her.
The Day Everything Changed
Kyoko was just eight years old the last time she saw her mother.
It was 1971, and in the middle of a heated custody battle, her father, American filmmaker Anthony Cox, disappeared with her.
What followed was a complete vanishing act—no contact, no clues, and no trace.
As the world watched Yoko Ono and John Lennon desperately search for Kyoko, spending what would now be more than $1.5 million in the process, the little girl was being raised in isolation on a farm in Iowa, completely unaware of the media storm her disappearance had caused.
“People today don’t understand what it was like before Facebook,” Kyoko explains.
“My mom and John were doing everything to reach out, but I didn’t have a TV. I had no idea.”
Growing Up in the Shadows of Fame
Despite living off-grid, the echoes of her mother’s fame still reached her.
Kyoko shares the same delicate features and gentle frame as Yoko, but she’s lived a life that couldn’t be more different from the spotlight her mother and stepfather endured.
Now residing in Colorado and divorced from her husband, attorney Jim Helfrich, with whom she shares two adult children, Kyoko leads a quiet, private life.
And yet, she’s still wary about speaking out.
“I’m not trying to become a public figure,” she says softly.
“But I am my mother’s daughter, and I want the truth to be told—my truth.”
A Childhood Interrupted
Kyoko was born in 1963, the daughter of Yoko Ono and Anthony Cox.
By the time she was three, Yoko had met John Lennon at a London art gallery.
Their chemistry was instant, and both left their partners to be together.
At first, everything seemed amicable. Cox remarried, and the blended families even celebrated New Year’s together in Denmark in 1969.
Kyoko would stay with Yoko and John in London, even appearing in the background of the couple’s famous bed-in protest in Montreal.
But the harmony didn’t last. In 1971, Cox fled with Kyoko to Spain.
Yoko and John, desperate to find her, traveled to Majorca and took Kyoko from school—only to be arrested after the school reported a kidnapping.
A Spanish judge ordered Kyoko returned to her father, forcing the child to make an impossible decision between her parents.
“I was told to choose,” she remembers. “I said ‘my dad’ because I felt I had no other choice. But it broke my mom’s heart.”
The Disappearance—and a Life in Hiding
Though a UK court eventually ruled in Yoko’s favor, it was too late—Cox had already taken Kyoko to the U.S. and disappeared again.
Even when an American court ruled that Yoko could have visitation rights, Cox ignored the order and vanished.
By Christmas Eve of 1971, he’d gone completely off the grid with Kyoko.
What followed were years of being shuffled through communes and religious communities, starting with mainstream churches and ending in a full-blown cult.
“At first, we were part of a Pentecostal church,” Kyoko says.
“But when they told my dad he should return me to my mother, he got scared.”
Into the Cult
That fear led them to The Living Word Fellowship, a cult based in Iowa founded by John Robert Stevens.
Isolated on a rural farm, Kyoko spent her days doing chores and listening to taped sermons.
She had no idea that John and Yoko were publicly pleading for her return.
In one 1972 interview, Yoko cried on national television, saying she couldn’t even watch children on TV because it reminded her of Kyoko.
But in the cult, Kyoko says, “We never talked about my mom or John.
Nobody there cared—they were focused on the leader, reading the Bible, and obeying his rules.”
Glimpses of the Outside World
Despite the loneliness, there were brief moments of joy.
Melinda, Kyoko’s stepmother, taught her how to read. “She was wonderful,” Kyoko recalls warmly.
But the yearning to reach her mother never went away.
“I’d ask my dad to let me contact her,” she says.
“But he’d say it wasn’t what God wanted—and that if I did, my mom would send him to prison.”
He allowed one call—on Christmas. The conversation was short, and Kyoko’s half-brother, Sean Lennon, later recalled Yoko crying after the line suddenly cut out.
Breaking Free—Almost
As the cult relocated to California, Kyoko entered junior high and read The Diary of Anne Frank. It opened her eyes.
“I had no idea about the Holocaust,” she says.
“When I read about it, I realized my church was kind of like that—strict, scary, with people praying for others to die.”
Eventually, Cox started questioning the cult.
When other members began controlling Kyoko’s every move, he decided to flee with her once more.
A Final Attempt at Redemption
But even outside the cult, Cox didn’t plan to reconnect Kyoko with Yoko.
Instead, he had a new idea: make a documentary about their experience and use it as a peace offering.
“He told me, ‘We’ve been gone so long. Maybe if I make a film, your mom and John will forgive us.’”
Kyoko’s story, once shrouded in mystery and myth, is finally being told—from her own perspective.
And while her childhood was fractured by forces beyond her control, her voice now offers clarity, honesty, and a long-overdue piece of the puzzle in one of the most dramatic family stories in rock history.