Woman convicted of kidnapping 4-year-old son

By Mary Manning (contact)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 | 10:53 a.m.

The non-custodial mother of a 4-year-old boy kidnapped in Oklahoma and found in Las Vegas has been convicted of second-degree kidnapping.

Paula Michelle Mitchell pleaded guilty Monday in Clark County District Court after a two-year-long abduction of her son from the father of the child who had lawful custody, said Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto today.

Mitchell was charged by the attorney general's office with kidnapping after she disobeyed a court order to surrender the child to the custody of the court, which had awarded custody to the father.

The boy, who was 4 years old at the time, his mother and an 18-month-old half-brother were found in Las Vegas Oct. 24, 2008 and the children were taken into protective custody.

Mitchell had been hiding from the 4-year-old's father by moving from state to state to avoid custody petitions and to keep the father from finding her or the children, Masto said. Mitchell had filed several petitions in Las Vegas Family Court to change the names of the children and to terminate the parental rights of the father, claiming he had neglected and abandoned the children.

Nevada law criminalizes parental kidnappings when a parent abducts a child in violation of a court order entered to protect the safety, health and welfare of the child, Masto said. Evidence in the case indicated that Mitchell had been moving from state to state after abducting her son as she tried to hide the boy from his father and to thwart family courts from taking jurisdiction of the missing child.

The father had spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to find his son.

Earlier private investigators found the missing child in Oklahoma after a year-long search and his father served the mother with court papers, which resulted in a day-long hearing before a judge. The evidence presented at that hearing indicated that Mitchell had lived in at least eight states in two years, including Nevada, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri.

At the end of the hearing Mitchell was ordered to surrender the child, but before the hearing began, she had placed him in an unknown location in Texas, out of the Oklahoma judge's jurisdiction, Masto said. When the judge ordered her to surrender the boy within seven days, Mitchell fled Oklahoma, ending up in Las Vegas.

The Oklahoma judge then issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Mitchell for violating his order and the mother and children were then discovered in Las Vegas.

While in Las Vegas, Mitchell filed a family court case, trying to terminate the father's parental rights by claiming she did not know where he was, but after she obtained the order, the court learned she had known where the father was and had lied to the court.

Investigators from the attorney general's office found Mitchell when she appeared at the family court building in Las Vegas for a subsequent hearing and she was charged with first-degree kidnapping. She agreed to plea guilty to second-degree kidnapping in exchange for a possible reduction in her sentence.

At Monday's sentencing hearing, Mitchell was sentenced to a prison term of 28 months to 120 months in the Nevada state prison. That sentence was suspended and Mitchell was placed on probation for three years. She has to comply with a lengthy list of conditions, including community service, and have no contact with the boy.

First-degree kidnapping in Nevada, on the other hand, is punishable by a life sentence in prison with the possibility of parole, Masto said.