A woman whose estranged husband picked up their 21-month-old daughter for an overnight visit in 1976 and never returned her has been told by police that the daughter has been found living in Arizona.

Laura Gooder's estranged husband, Eric Douglas Nielsen, who had been wanted on a kidnapping charge, was traced to an Arizona jail last week, where he was being held under a different identity on an unrelated charge.

The news of 31-year-old Genevieve Rachel Nielsen's whereabouts came after police visited him there. She had been told that her mother died in a car accident.