Fugitive mom captured in parental kidnap case; did vaccination issue prompt her exit?
A little over a year after a mom and her young daughter disappeared, the fugitive Florida woman has been captured and is being held in a federal parental kidnapping case.
Megan Elizabeth Everett, 23, and her 3-year-old daughter, Lilly Abigail Baumann, were found Monday in the Palatka area of Florida, where they had been living. Lilly’s father, Robert Baumann, 27, said authorities told him they were found due to a landlord’s tip, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
A program about the case aired over the weekend on CNN’s The Hunt with John Walsh.
Everett is being held without bail at the Putnam County jail on charges of kidnapping, interference with custody and concealing a minor contrary to a court order, reports the Florida Times-Union.
Lilly was initially placed in protective custody, but Baumann told the Sun Sentinel she had been turned over to him by Monday evening and the two were on their way home to Davie, Florida.
“I am so happy to finally have my daughter back safe,” he told the Sun Sentinel in an email. “We have a long drive home.”
Baumann and Everett, who were never married, had initially battled over custody of Lilly. However, the dispute appeared to have been resolved under a Broward Circuit Court-approved arrangement in which she would spent alternating weeks with each parent, the newspaper reports.
Among other contested issues, the parents disagreed about whether Lilly should be vaccinated and attend preschool, according to public records and family members.
Court records say Baumann had planned to take his daughter to be vaccinated last year and enroll her in preschool when she was next with him. But by the time it was his turn to have Lilly, Everett had disappeared.
She had been living with another man, and left a note for that man before she vanished, the Sun Sentinel reports.
“If I let them take her and vaccinate her and brainwash her, I wouldn’t be doing what’s right,” the note said. “I cannot let a judge tell me how my daughter should be raised. We will miss you. But I had to leave.”
