Families still apart after Amber Alert
North Idaho police have declared Kootenai County’s first test of the Amber Alert system a success even though the two children who triggered the alert were apparently never missing, the man who apparently never kidnapped them remains in jail on other charges and two young mothers have to fight to get their kids back from foster care.
“This is preposterous,” Yvonne Seibert said Tuesday.
Siebert, of Salmon, Idaho, and her sister Jennifer Anderson of Boise said Tuesday they feel victimized by the late July Amber Alert. They are living in an RV campground near Sandpoint awaiting a Sept. 7 hearing in Bonner County court to try and regain custody of five children ranging in age from 5 months to 5 years.
Late last week Kootenai County prosecutors said there is no evidence that John Marc Thompson, 56, ever kidnapped the two children riding in his car and said there would be no charges against Thompson arising from the Amber Alert. Thompson remained in the Kootenai County Jail on Tuesday, however, awaiting extradition to Fort Collins, Colo., where he is wanted on charges of vehicle theft.
After Thompson was found Aug. 2 and told authorities that the kids were at a campsite near Priest Lake, Bonner County Sheriff’s Office investigators steered the kids into foster care because they appeared to be in need of food and medical attention, Lt. John Valdez said in early August.
“I know the family is probably feeling a little bit like they didn’t get a fair shake, but I hope in the end they are going to get the resources they need and will feel they did get a helping hand,” Sgt. Christie Wood, information officer for the Coeur d’Alene police, said Tuesday. “The overall goal is to reunite the families. These agencies are not in the business of taking kids away from their mothers.”
But that’s what it looks like at the moment, Siebert and Anderson said.
By Sept. 7 they will have waited five weeks just for a chance to speak up in court and try to regain custody of their children. The hearing date is also the one-year anniversary of the death of Anderson’s infant daughter in a trailer fire in Moscow. The cause of the fire is listed as accidental with local and state investigators focusing on an apparently faulty electrical panel, several reports show.
Siebert and Anderson were part of three generations of family driving the back roads of Idaho to spend a summer in the woods, they said, as a way to escape various stresses – the loss of a child for Anderson, the loss of a job for Siebert.
The family caravan included three battered rigs loaded with possessions, pets and six kids. They started near the Salmon River town of North Fork, journeyed into southwestern Montana and then back across north-central Idaho.
Along the way, the group met up with Thompson, a self-described traveling preacher who introduced himself as Jack and who drove a gold Lincoln Town Car. As the group drove north from the Lewiston area to find a campsite in Bonner County in late July, two children, Siebert’s 4-year-old daughter Tatiana and Anderson’s 5-year-old son Ford Ware, were riding with Thompson because he had more room in the Town Car.
The four-vehicle caravan became separated at the interchange between Interstate 90 and U.S. Highway 95.
Siebert, her boyfriend, her 8-year-old-son and her mother, Bonnie Moore, lost track of the Town Car and of the Ford Explorer carrying Anderson, her boyfriend and three kids. Siebert and Moore drove their two rigs to Sandpoint, waited three hours for the others to show up, Siebert said, then drove back to Coeur d’Alene where they eventually contacted police July 29.
They could only tell police the kids were riding with a man named Jack. Jack didn’t give his last name and nobody ever asked, Siebert said.
“I went to the police station for an ‘attempt to locate,’ it was blown into an Amber Alert a day later based on what police found out about Jack, and they took my children away and my sister’s children away, and we still haven’t seen the doctor’s report they are going to use against us,” Siebert said.
They would like to challenge the doctor’s findings the children exhibited a “failure to thrive,” akin to neglect or malnourishment, and that they had open sores and infections. Both mothers showed photographs of their kids, taken after two days in foster care, which show the kids to appear healthy and happy.
When police tracked the license plate of the Town Car, it came back registered to a woman in Louisiana and reported stolen. Police asked Siebert for a description of Jack. It matched that of Thompson, who turned up on a police computer search with warrants for his arrest in four states.
Siebert said she never felt uncomfortable around Thompson but became alarmed when police told her of his criminal history without being specific. “I had to ask, ‘Is he wanted for murder? Pedophilia? Kidnapping?’ ” Siebert said. “They said he was wanted for scamming churches and theft.”
Siebert said she never accused Thompson of kidnap. Coeur d’Alene detective, Lt. Don Jiran, who spent five days sorting through confusion and partial stories and assigning officers to an ever-widening search, said a simple phone call could have avoided all the hassle.
But Siebert and her mother were in Coeur d’Alene at the mercy of the Amber Alert machine, Siebert said. The group had headed north without a specific destination, she said, so she was unable to help police narrow their search.
Anderson and her boyfriend Les Ward were at a campsite near Priest Lake with Thompson and five of the six kids. They left a paper plate on a tree to alert Siebert and Moore, but didn’t get too worried when the adults didn’t show, Anderson said. Without newspapers or TV or even a radio station with clear reception, they didn’t know they were the targets of a massive search.
Siebert and Anderson bristle at accounts they are transient or homeless. They contend they were on an extended camping trip, even though they left their homes, crammed their rigs full of their stuff and hoped to find odd jobs to help with gas and food money.
They were coming to Bonner County to pick berries, Siebert said. Nobody gets alarmed, she said, when rich or middle-class families take off for weeks at a time in RVs.
“It depends on your comfort level. We felt comfortable with what we had,” Siebert said. “Here is the fine line as to whether we were transient or not: This was our choice. We were camping.”
Police disagree, especially when it comes to the choice of bringing along children age 5 and under, Jiran said earlier this month.
“If we had to do it over again, we would do the same thing. We always err on the side of the children,” Wood said. “This is a family in need of assistance and I am sure this will result in help and education.”
Plus, Wood said, as they wait for the custody hearing, Siebert and Anderson could offer a little thank-you to the many people who volunteered time to search for the kids.
“They don’t even have to say it out loud,” Wood said. “Just think of the big picture – a lot of people came together to make this have a happy ending. And I think there might be an even happier ending because I am sure these kids will be reunited with their families after they get some things that they need first.”