‘Sold’ Mother Will Keep Abducted Son in Probe of Family

A woman who was accused of abducting her son from her late husband’s family will be allowed to remain in the care of an undisclosed East Los Angeles church while detectives sort through the facts of the bizarre case, Alhambra police said Wednesday.

Police Sgt. Jim Henchey added that the woman, Yolanda Aguilar, 20, will not be prosecuted for the apparent abduction Nov. 11 of 3-year-old Carlos Alvarez Aguilar, and will not be separated from the child.

Henchey said the department decided not to press the abduction case against the woman after detectives discovered inconsistencies and “elements most of us can’t relate to at all.”

For example, detectives learned that Aguilar, as a teen-ager, was sold into marriage through an arrangement reached by a clan of Mexican Gypsies. Detectives also discovered that Aguilar has been trying to find the child since the husband’s family took the baby in 1984.

“It’s been very confusing trying to sort all this out,” Henchey said.

The case came to police attention, Henchey said, when the boy’s uncle, Jorge Alvarez Vasquez, and grandfather, Ricardo Alvarez Fuentes, reported that a baby-sitter had kidnaped the boy and taken his birth certificate and other papers.

“After we found several inconsistencies in their stories . . . we found out that the whole group belongs to a Mexican Gypsy clan with its own particular traditions,” Henchey said.

Family Arrangement

It turned out that Aguilar, at age 15, was married by family agreement to Fuentes’ son, Carlos Alvarez Vasquez, in 1982. Henchey said Carlos Vasquez’ family had the rights to any offspring, and Aguilar’s family received $7,000.

But when Carlos Vasquez died, the family took the son from Aguilar and moved from Miami to Texas, Henchey said. Later, the family and the boy came to Alhambra and Aguilar was occasionally allowed to see her son, until she decided to take him.

Henchey said authorities do not even know the name of the church where Aguilar and the boy are.

“But we’ve seen them to satisfy ourselves that everything’s OK,” he said.

Police later arrested Jorge Vasquez and Ricardo Fuentes on suspicion of filing a false police report, a misdemeanor, and for attempting to falsely indict a person for a crime, a felony, Henchey said.

He said the men, who were freed on $1,000 bail each, have since disappeared. They are scheduled to appear Dec. 12 in Alhambra Municipal Court. If they fail to show up, arrest warrants may be issued, court officials said.

“As far as the law is concerned, the natural mother has as much of a right to her child as the father’s family,” Henchey said. “And since that family has slipped away, we see no reason to separate mother and child.”