Ex-O.C. woman held in alleged abduction of son decades ago

A former southern Orange County woman who allegedly abducted her 6-year-old son more than a quarter of a century ago has been arrested in Utah, where she had started life anew under an assumed name, authorities said Tuesday.

Donna Marie Brewton, 62, who at the time of the abduction lived in what’s now Lake Forest, was found through a tip to be working at Westminster College, a small, private liberal-arts school in Salt Lake City, authorities said.

The son, Kirk Brewton, now in his early 30s, was not located, authorities said.

Donna Brewton had taken the name Kathleen Jane Amidon and lived in Magna, Utah, a small, unincorporated area about 20 miles from the college, said Lt. Paul Jaroscak, a Salt Lake County sheriff’s spokesman.

Kirk Brewton apparently was not home Monday night when Orange County district attorney’s investigators, accompanied by a local deputy, knocked on Brewton’s door and arrested her.

She was arrested on suspicion of felony child abduction and booked into a county jail under the name of Kathleen Amidon on a fugitive warrant for alleged child concealment.

She is being held in Utah pending extradition to California. She faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

At the college, fellow workers expressed shock when told of the arrest.

“What? She was arrested!” exclaimed Nancy Michalko, vice president for advancement and alumni relations for the 2,800-student college.

“She worked for me, and her son called to say she wouldn’t be in today because she was taking care of family business,” said Michalko.

Brewton had worked at the college as an executive assistant for six years.

Authorities did not immediately know why Brewton moved to Utah or how she managed to elude law enforcement for more than two decades.

The last time the boy’s father, Gary Frank Brewton, 67, of Riverside, saw his son was during the Christmas holidays in 1980, investigators said. He did not return telephone calls Tuesday.

According to the district attorney’s office, the woman sold her El Toro-area home, quit her job and vanished a month later.

At the time she fled with her son, she was divorced and her ex-husband had been granted alternate-weekend visits, said Susan Kang Schroeder, a district attorney spokeswoman.

Since then, authorities said, the only contact the father had from his son was a brief phone message the son left in 1994.

david.reyes@latimes.com