Columnist Sandy Thompson: Girls at risk as dad takes it on the lam

Sandy Thompson

Saturday, Oct. 21, 2000 | 2:56 a.m.

Sandy Thompson is vice president/associate editor of the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-4025 or e-mail at thompson@lasvegassun.com

OH WHAT a tangled web can be weaved in Family Court.

While some litigants justly criticize unfair rulings by judges, others have no one else to blame but themselves for their troubles.

Take the case of Mark Mills, who castigated the Family Court system for keeping children in an abusive home. Yet in the end, it wasn't the system that failed Mills. It was Mills who used the system.

The legal system's only fault may be that it was too lenient and trusting of a man relatives say is nothing more than a con artist who duped a lot of people.

Mills' two-year, venom-filled child custody battle became public in July when his 8-year-old daughter was taken from him and reunited with her mother, from whom Mills took the girl at age 9 months.

Mills cried foul. He said he had papers showing that the mother, Melina Chavez -- with whom he had an affair in Mexico -- gave him permission to take the baby. Mills said she wanted him to raise the child in the United States. At the time, Mills was married and had two other daughters. His then wife, Iona, agreed to the arrangement, he said.

In the ensuing years, Mills, Iona and the three girls lived in several states. Mills ran afoul of the law and spent time in prison on Internet fraud and phony check charges.

Shortly after they moved to the Las Vegas area in 1995, Iona and Mark divorced, and the girls became pawns in a custody battle filled with charges of abuse, lies and "death threats."

Mills then remarried and had a fourth daughter. His wife supported his efforts to get custody of the other girls.

In June 1999 he did get custody and thought the battle was over. Not so.

For all those years he was raising Melina's daughter, the Mexican native was pleading with Mexican and American authorities to find Mills, saying he kidnapped her child.

Finally, in July, Melina's pleas were answered and a local law firm, working with the Missing Children's Clearinghouse and the attorney general's office, reunited Melina with her daughter. Both are now living in Mexico.

A happy ending? Not quite.

Fearing he would face kidnapping charges, Mills left town with his wife and their daughter, and Iona and their two daughters. They flitted around Nevada and California. Relatives worried about the children.

No kidnapping charges were filed, and the case was closed. In a futile move, Mills directed his attorney to file a motion to regain custody of Melina's child. But it quickly became apparent that Mills' version of the story wasn't true. The papers he said gave him permission to take the baby were not notarized, and Melina's purported note could not be validated. In addition, Family Court was not even aware that Melina was searching for the girl.

Adding to his woes, Mills faces charges of burglary, forgery and obtaining property under false pretenses in connection with allegedly phony transactions on the eBay Internet auction site. He has used several aliases, and allegedly paid for merchandise with non-existing accounts. He also allegedly cashed counterfeit checks.

At the time of his arrest, Metro Police recovered $25,000 worth of merchandise in his home. An officer said Mills was "cooperative" so he wasn't jailed. He was to appear in Henderson court on the charges in August or September but he didn't show up.

Caught up in a bizarre series of events, and with her husband a fugitive, Mills' wife recently took their child and returned to her parents' home. Relatives say he threatened them.

Ironically, Mills and Iona -- against whom he made the most serious and vile charges during their Family Court battle -- are reconciling and are said to be moving around the West with their two daughters. There is concern they may have fled to Mexico. Relatives fear for Iona and the girls and are seeking any information on their whereabouts.

People familiar with Mills' Family Court and criminal cases say he duped them.

"In the blinding light of hindsight, I'm disappointed and discouraged about the whole thing," one source says. "But the system will catch up with him."

In the meantime, life on the run is no life for two young girls innocently caught up in a web of deceit.