THE FIRST BULLETIN Tuesday that a Bucks County woman and her 9-year-old daughter had been kidnapped made national news because it was all just so unbelievable - a car crash on a busy street, mysterious men in a black Cadillac and a mom who made a frantic 9-1-1 call while trapped inside a trunk.
Yesterday, the world learned exactly why the saga of 38-year-old Bonnie Sweeten and her 9-year-old daughter, Julia Rakoczy, was so incredible.
It just wasn't true.
And in an ending that was ironic beyond belief, mother and daughter were tracked down last night in America's ultimate land of make-believe, Orlando's Disneyworld, where police learned the pair had fled Tuesday on one-way airline tickets with $12,000 in cash.
"I think I'm in a dream," her husband, Richard Larry Sweeten, told a reporter from 6ABC before his wife and stepdaughter were found. "This has taken me by such a surprise. I just want her to know she has tons of support, and whatever it is, we can work through it." He then implored: "Don't do anything stupid."
The husband, like other family members and friends, seemed at a loss for Sweeten's bizarre behavior.
The kidnapping ruse began to unravel early yesterday, when investigators found Sweeten's undamaged SUV on a Center City street close to where she'd apparently made the frantic phone call. A parking ticket on the windshield called into question her entire account.
They also learned yesterday about Sweeten's recent and abrupt withdrawal of her 9-year-old daughter from the elementary school she attended in Bensalem - and about her alleged money problems.
Last night, Sweeten's former employer, a Bucks County attorney named Debbie Calitz, who also runs a charity, alleged to the Daily News that her ex-assistant Sweeten "stole money from my law practice."
Indeed, Bucks County D.A. Michelle Henry confirmed that Sweeten was under investigation for theft and was also dealing with domestic problems. Last night, the suburban mom had already been charged with making a false report and with identity theft for allegedly using a friend's driver's license to buy the airline tickets.
By then, the story - like Sweeten and her daughter - had traveled a long way from its original incarnation as a chilling tale of suburban abduction by sinister strangers.
A mom's frantic call
It all started about 2 p.m. Tuesday with that alarming 9-1-1 call that was picked up by police in Philadelphia.
Sweeten - described on Tuesday by police as "very distressed" - told the operator that she was calling from the trunk of a black Cadillac after a fender-bender between that car and her GMC Yukon Denali that had happened just moments earlier.
She told the 9-1-1 operator that after the collision on heavily traveled Street Road in Bucks County's Upper Southampton Township, that "black men" from the Cadillac forced her into the trunk and sped off. Clearing up initially conflicting accounts, police said yesterday she had told operators during two calls that her daughter was in the trunk with her.
But from the very start, there were good reasons for authorities to be suspicious. There was no sign of Sweeten's SUV at the intersection where she said she had been abducted, and something about her call sounded fishy to investigators.
"They were supposed to be squeezed into a trunk together, but we never once heard the daughter crying or even breathing, for that matter," one investigator said.
Still, the serious nature of the allegation was enough to spark a massive police investigation and a search for the Cadillac and her SUV. Investigators enlisted the FBI and broadcast an Amber Alert for the missing child.
The hunt was also tailor-made for the throbbing cycle of the 24-hour news media. And so by early afternoon, viewers around the globe saw pictures of Sweeten - blond, blue-eyed and tall - and of her adorable daughter by an earlier marriage. By yesterday morning, the ongoing Amber Alerts on electronic highway signs were slowing traffic throughout the Philadelphia region.
TV viewers also learned that Julia was an avid softball player and cheerleader at Belmont Hills Elementary School in Bensalem and that her father - Sweeten's ex-husband, Anthony Rakoczy - had described her as an energetic girl who "will talk your ear off" and "never keeps her room clean."
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