The day Bonnie flew off

IN THEIR colonial-style Feasterville home, Bonnie Sweeten scrawled a note for her husband telling him he's a great father and she loves him. On the granite kitchen counter, she left $200 in cash. On the fridge, she posted a list of things their infant daughter needed for day care - diapers, baby food, etc.

She then backed her silver SUV out of the driveway and was gone.

It was early morning on May 26, the day Sweeten alarmed the region when she faked her kidnapping and that of her 9-year-old daughter.

While police and the FBI searched for the kidnappers, Sweeten and her daughter, Julia Rakoczy, were on an airliner to Disney World. An aide to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, of Florida, sat next to a flirty Sweeten on the plane and said she suggested they get together for drinks or dinner.

Court documents and police interviews provide a rare, detailed account of Bonnie Sweeten's final desperate hours and of the tailspin that dragged her family and friends into a grotesque hoax.

The documents portray a seemingly happy, typical suburban mom who had, bit by bit, built a teetering tower of lies: She posed as a lawyer and made up phony business cards; she took $280,000 from the retirement fund of her ex-husband's senile grandfather; she allegedly swiped about $4,000 from a former co-worker's 401(k) account; she allegedly stole thousands of dollars in settlement payouts and civil damages awarded to clients of the law firm where she'd been a paralegal.

The day Sweeten vanished, that tower of lies had begun to tumble: People were asking where their money was and she was running out of answers. Her only way out was to tell the biggest lie of her life.

"Bonnie Sweeten's past caught up with her on May 26, 2009, and she had a complete mental and emotional implosion," attorney Louis R. Busico, later wrote.

Misleading text messages

Those closest to the Bucks County woman had no idea of what she was about to do.

"Finally perfect weekend. We all had a good weekend together. We are all happy," Sweeten texted her boss, Debbie Carlitz, at 8:33 a.m. on May 26.

Sweeten told Carlitz that she'd be a bit late to work. She needed to take Julia to a doctor's appointment.

About an hour later, Sweeten texted her husband at work. Julia had a rash. She was in the pediatrician's office, she wrote.

But Sweeten wasn't at the pediatrician. At 10 a.m., she showed up at the Feasterville home of a good friend, Katie Gleave. Visibly upset, Sweeten slipped inside, leaving Julia and her 9-month-old daughter Faith in the car. She was having "problems" with her husband, Larry, she explained. She had to "get out of here." She thought of suicide, but couldn't do that to her kids.

When Gleave wasn't looking, Sweeten rifled through Gleave's purse and stole her driver's license. She begged Gleave not to tell anybody that she had been there. Then she left.

It was nearly 12:30 p.m. when Carlitz began to wonder why Sweeten wasn't yet at work. For some 13 years, Sweeten had worked at Carlitz's law firm as a paralegal and office manager. When Carlitz closed her law firm last year and started a company that sells mattresses to chiropractors, she hired Sweeten as her marketing director.

"Are you alive?" Carlitz texted Sweeten at 12:26 p.m.

"At doctor with Julia. She has infection. Can't use phone," Sweeten instantly replied.

Sweeten had dropped Faith off at day care, stopped at a bank to get money, and told Julia they were going to Disney World.

She then headed back to Gleave's house. She confessed to Gleave that she had taken her driver's license to rent a car, but felt bad and wanted to return it.

Sweeten, Gleave noticed, seemed "more under control." This time she told her friend that she was in deep trouble.

Money was missing at work. The police were interviewing her boss [Carlitz] at that very moment. She knew her boss would blame her and she'd go to jail, even though she was innocent, she told Gleave.

(Carlitz maintains that she, too, was victimized by Sweeten.)

Sweeten left Gleave's house and texted Carlitz, "I will be done in 5 minutes . . . I will be there before 1:40 p.m."

Sweeten had no intention of showing up.

Instead, she drove to the Feasterville home of Jillian Nicole Jenkinson, a former legal assistant at Carlitz's firm. Jenkinson liked Sweeten a lot. She thought of Sweeten as smart, caring, "not selfish." When Jenkinson's son needed surgery, it was Sweeten who called to see how he was doing.

A month earlier, Jenkinson got a letter about her 401(k) retirement fund, saying she had a zero balance. She asked Sweeten about it. Sweeten explained that Carlitz had to close the retirement accounts when she shuttered the law firm. Jenkinson would get a check in the mail.

Now, Sweeten was at Jenkinson's house, saying she needed her driver's license to roll over her money into a new 401(k) account. Jenkinson didn't hesitate. She had no idea that Sweeten already had cashed out roughly $4,000 from her 401(k), prosecutors say.

Sweeten used Jenkinson's name to buy two one-way US Airways tickets to Orlando. She would use Jenkinson's driver's license to check in at the airport.

But Sweeten had one more piece of unfinished business before she and Julia headed to the airport. It involved Larry Kajkowski.

Kajkowski, 57, a plumber from Bensalem, had hired Carlitz's firm about four years ago to represent him and his wife in a personal-injury claim that stemmed from an auto accident. Sweeten was his point of contact. Kajkowski didn't deal with Carlitz; he had no idea that Carlitz had closed her firm in 2008 after her law license was suspended.

In 2007, Kajkowski's insurance company settled his claim for $475,000. But he and his wife had received only $200,000. Sweeten told him that his insurance company was fighting the original settlement amount in court.

In the days leading up to her disappearance, Sweeten sent Kajkowski a string of text messages saying she was meeting with a judge on his case.

At 1:33 p.m. - about 10 minutes before Sweeten dialed 9-1-1 to report her kidnapping - she called Kajkowski.

She had seemingly good news. The judge was "looking over documents to make a determination on whether to release the rest of his funds," Sweeten told him.

Twelve minutes later, at 1:45 p.m., she called 9-1-1 to report that two "black men" had rear-ended her SUV on busy Street Road in Lower Bucks County. She got out to check the damage and the men struck her and Julia and forced them into a black Cadillac, she told the dispatcher. She said she was calling on her cell from inside the Cadillac's trunk. The 9-1-1 tape recorded her desperate words:

Please, oh God . . . The car is stopping. We have to be quiet. We gotta be quiet. The car is stopped. They're gonna hear me. OK, it's going. It's going . . . Please help!

By 1:54 p.m., Sweeten was in Philadelphia. She parked her 2005 Yukon Denali on Chestnut Street near 15th. Julia sat on the sidewalk, perched atop their suitcase. Sweeten made her final cell-phone call:

"If I don't make it, tell the children I love them. I love you," she sobbed hysterically in a voice-mail message left at 2:01 p.m. on Larry Sweeten's cell phone.

Then she hailed a cab to Philadelphia International Airport.

Where dreams come true

At the airport, Sweeten and her daughter ate fruit salad and drank Pepsi. They shopped for clothes.

In the print of a fourth-grader, Julia scrawled a list of eight things she wanted to do while in Disney: "Aero Smith, the island thing, haunted mansion, mgm, space mountain, pirates of the caribean, epcot's mask, universal studios."

Back in Bucks County, Larry Sweeten and Bonnie's ex-husband, Anthony Rakoczy, teamed up to search for them along Street Road. Police searched the Sweetens' five-bedroom home.

Sweeten and Julia were on a 4:15 p.m. flight to Florida.

On the plane, Sweeten sat in the middle seat, sandwiched between Julia and U.S. Senate aide Matt Rankin, whom she chatted up.

Sweeten introduced herself as a lawyer from Philadelphia. She used to be a paralegal, then she went to law school. She was a widow, she said. Her husband died after an illness. She talked about an elderly grandfather and his struggles with dementia and how difficult that is to deal with, Rankin told the Daily News.

Rankin, 27, jotted a courtesy note - on U.S. Senate stationery - for Sweeten to present to the hotel concierge in Disney World. Rankin used to work at the hotel and knew the staff.

"Please extend every courtesy to this very nice woman. It's her daughter's birthday and they're staying at the Grand Floridian," Rankin wrote. In fact, Julia's 10th birthday was two months away.

Sweeten asked Rankin if she could call him. Perhaps they could get together for drinks or dinner.

"That's really sweet of you, but I'm seeing someone," Rankin said he told her.

Upon landing, Sweeten and Julia caught Disney's Magical Express bus to the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, a castle-like hotel with red-gabled roofs and gingerbread trim. They ate dinner and went to bed.

The next day, mother and daughter headed to Magic Kingdom, where Julia went on Splash Mountain, the park's famous log flume. Later, they sunned by the hotel pool.

Back in Pennsylvania, authorities determined that Sweeten's kidnapping was a hoax. Police were already investigating allegations that she had stolen $280,000 from Victor Biondino, the 92-year-old grandfather of her ex-husband, by forging a check from his money-market retirement fund.

For months, Biondino's family was after Sweeten to repay the money. Finally, she wrote them a check for $285,000. She skipped town the day the check bounced.

On May 27 at 7:40 p.m., Sweeten's fragile fantasy world shattered.

Sweeten and Julia were sitting on the step outside their hotel room as two detectives with the Orange County Sheriff's Office approached. Julia was crying.

"I think you want to talk to us," Sweeten said.

Cash, pills, papers & suicide notes

They went inside the room and sat on the bed. The TV was on, tuned to a newscast about Sweeten's disappearance. Photographs of Sweeten and Julia flashed on the screen.

Detectives asked Sweeten questions. At first, according to investigative documents, she was "cooperative and coherent," but "as time passed, she became increasingly incoherent, vomiting and lethargic. When asked where she was, she replied, 'Hershey, Pa.' "

Detectives found 91 pills - "possible narcotics" - scattered among the compartments of Sweeten's brown zipper purse, which also contained $4,092 in cash.

Cops also found five credit cards in Carlitz's name, blank checks in the names of Stuart and Debbie Carlitz, a Social Security application for Carlitz, photocopies of prescriptions for the painkiller Vicoprofen, empty pill bottles and Jenkinson's W-2 statements for 2007 and 2008 - one of which appeared altered.

Inside Julia Rakoczy's handbag, police found $550 in cash and "two handwritten notes of suicidal nature" that Sweeten had scribbled on the pages of a lined address book. She wrote the first one to her 16-year-old daughter, Paige:

Please understand. My heart bleeds to leave you girls - you will not know until you have a child of your own. You have always been my true love of my life, you + your 2 sisters - nothing tops that love. I will miss your proms, graduations, wedding, + your family, giving birth. I only pray you know I had to go to prevent you from having to see me in a bad place. Promise me you will be kind to your sisters . . . You will be the Mom they will not have.

To Faith, her infant daughter, whom Sweeten conceived after multiple miscarriages and two years of fertility treatments, Sweeten wrote, You're a baby I wanted more than my own life. I will love you + watch over, I pray, from a good place!

Detectives collected the items as evidence and placed Sweeten in a sheriff's car. As they drove to the sheriff's office, Sweeten urinated in the car's back seat.

It was nearly 1 a.m. when two detectives from the Upper Southampton Police Department arrived in Orlando. An investigator with the Florida Department of Children and Families took Julia into protective custody.

When the Bucks County detectives walked into the conference room, Sweeten was lying on her back on the floor. They told her she was under arrest for identity theft and making false reports to police. She said she understood and wanted to return to Pennsylvania.

By 7 p.m., Sweeten, flanked by detectives, was on a plane bound for Philadelphia. She used a detective's cell phone to call her husband.

"I need you to be at the Richboro [District] court to bail me out," she told Larry. A magistrate judge set bail at 10 percent of $1 million. Sweeten's parents posted $25,000; Larry Sweeten's parents and family put up the remaining $75,000.

Last month, Sweeten, 38, pleaded guilty to identity theft and false reports. A judge sentenced her to a minimum nine months in the county jail.

A police investigation into Biondino's missing $280,000 has expanded to include allegations that Sweeten embezzled thousands of dollars from Carlitz's clients and took out a $100,000 mortgage in Carlitz's name without Carlitz's knowledge.

The FBI is trying to pinpoint exactly where the missing money went. Busico, Sweeten's attorney, did not return two phone calls from the Daily News.

In an interview with police, Larry Sweeten described his wife of five years as "your average working mother" who chauffeured the kids to softball practice and chaperoned their school trips. He trusted her with the kids and their finances.

Friends and family have mostly stuck by her, although Larry Sweeten, 34, has filed for divorce and put their stucco home up for sale at $449,900.

Both Larry Sweeten and Rakoczy - Julia's father and Biondino's grandson - wrote letters of support to the judge who sentenced her last month.

"She is loved by both family and friends, always willing to go the extra mile to help anyone in need," wrote Rakoczy, 41. "I respect her as a mother and as a friend."

Some of Sweeten's friends blame themselves.

"I can't tell you the sadness we all feel about Bonnie's breakdown," wrote family friend Stephanie Gleave, Katie Gleave's mother-in-law. "Our failure to recognize the signs are a burden we all have to carry. We let her down."