Pennsylvania Mother Arrested on Charges She Faked Abduction With DaughterWednesday, May 27, 2009
A Pennsylvania woman was arrested Wednesday after her story about being abducted with her daughter unraveled -- quickly turning from a mysterious missing persons case into a criminal investigation that ended in her capture at the Walt Disney World resort in Orlando.
Bucks County, Pa., District Attorney Michelle Henry said 38-year-old Bonnie Sweeten of Feasterville was taken into custody in Florida around 8 p.m. Wednesday. Henry said Sweeten's 9-year-old daughter, Julia Rakoczy, was with her and is waiting in Florida for her father to meet her.
Sweeten used a co-worker's driver's license and presented it as her own when she bought an airline ticket and flew to Orlando, Fla. on Tuesday, Henry said, adding Sweeten also used the license to check into the Grand Floridian Hotel at Disney World.
Tony Rakoczy, Sweeten's ex-husband and Julia's father, will pick the girl up, Henry said.
A security camera reportedly showed Sweeten and Rakoczy at Philadelphia International Airport, just hours after Sweeten made at least two 911 calls by cell phone saying she was locked in the trunk of a dark-colored 1990s Cadillac.
"It's a terrifying thing for a local community to hear that allegedly two black men in a Cadillac took a woman and her daughter," Henry told reporters at a press conference Wednesday night.
"The fact that she would accuse anybody of doing something ... was a total fabrication on her part," Henry said.
The case was cracked because a combination of factors didn't add up, she said.
Investigators uncovered that Sweeten allegedly was involved in stealing about $300,000 from her former employer, an attorney in suburban Philadelphia, ABC reported.
Detectives and reporters had been puzzled by holes in Sweeten's story, and FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver confirmed earlier Wednesday the existence of "inconsistencies" in her account of the accident and abduction. But he declined at the time to elaborate and said those aren't the focus of the investigation.
Sweeten had told emergency dispatchers that she and her daughter were snatched in the middle of the day Tuesday by two men who rear-ended her SUV in suburban Philadelphia, according to police.
When investigators arrived at the scene, they found no evidence of the crash and the FBI and local police found no witnesses who saw the accident that the missing mother described.
And although Sweeten said the accident took place in Upper Southampton Township, a suburb of Philadelphia, Klaver said authorities discovered her 2005 GMC Denali SUV on Wednesday in Center City, 40 minutes away, along with a parking ticket that indicates it was there about 20 minutes after she dialed 911.
The 911 calls were traced to downtown Philadelphia, about 20 miles from the site of the reported fender-bender and abduction. One was picked up by a cell tower only two blocks from where Sweeten's car was found.
Tony Rakoczy had said earlier Wednesday that the sequence of events didn't add up.
"I don't think it makes any sense, the timeline and everything else," Rakoczy told FOX News.
Sweeten has two other daughters, an 8-month-old with her current husband and a 15-year-old from a previous marriage.
Sweeten's oldest daughter Paige wrote on Facebook, "I'm asking everyone, to please pray for my mom and sister."
Another evil witch attempting to instigate racial discord to cover up her crimes.
