A man was just arrested for allegedly kidnapping his son in Texas. The kicker, though, is that he is said to have done the deed 23 years ago.
After that, he laid low. He lied about his name and moved to Medina. There was never any indication that he was a fugitive, and the police chief in the area said that he did not have any prior arrests.
However, more than two decades after that fateful day in 1992, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pieced everything together. They called the police chief and told him what they knew. Armed with that information, he went to the man’s house and arrested him.
The kidnapping apparently happened because the man and his spouse could not agree on custody of the young child while they split up. It turned into a battle, and the man ran to keep his wife — the child’s mother — from winning. Then he disappeared and didn’t turned up again for years.
The police did say that he cooperated when they arrived to confront him. The man’s son, who is now 24 years old and in college, wasn’t around for the arrest. The officials are not sure at this time if he even knows what happened when he was a child, or if his father has kept him in the dark about it this entire time. If so, it will surely come as a shocking revelation.
This is an extreme example of how child custody cases can play out, but it underscores the need for legal, organized proceedings that can find a custody arrangement that works for both parents.
Source: Watertown Daily Times, “After 23 years, fugitive’s trail cooled, but case was never closed,” Scott DeSmit, Johnson Newspapers, June 19, 2015
