Son’s Emotional State, Visit Cuts Caused Flight, Man Says

The father of a 3-year-old Tustin boy, who was whisked away to Sweden while authorities believed the two were lost at sea, said Monday that he fled with his son because he was distraught over the tot’s emotional state and his own dwindling visitation rights during a bitter custody fight.

“Things got worse and worse. I exhausted every source,” Scott Steele said in an hourlong telephone interview from the police station in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, where he has been held since his arrest Friday. Friends told him he would have a better chance to gain custody in Sweden, so he fled there while letting people believe that he and his son drowned in a boating accident, he admitted.

“I don’t feel I’ve commited a crime. I’ve just taken matters into my own hands for the child’s well-being,” said Steele, who also is wanted in the United States on criminal charges alleging grand theft, forgery and bad checks. Warrants for his arrest on those charges in Riverside and Orange counties carry a total bail of $2.25 million, an investigator said.

On Wednesday, a Swedish court will decide whether 3-year-old Schyler Steele will be allowed to return to the United States with his mother, Marci, who arrived Sunday with papers showing that she has legal custody.

Scott Steele, 31, said he was writing a statement for the court, hoping to persuade Swedish officials that Schyler is better off with him and should remain in the country. Steele said he hopes the court will, in effect, reopen the custody issue.

In Sweden, “they will protect my son,” he said. “They don’t care about what the United States cares about. They care about what’s important to the child. . . . (In Sweden) I could have my case heard without corruption. . . . I’m hoping it will be like having an appeal.”

But Marci Steele said Monday that she understands the hearing is “just to show I have sole custody and the right to take (the boy) home with me.”

She disputed her estranged husband’s claims that Schyler is suffering. She has taken their son to counselors for evaluation and they have told her that he is “well-balanced and very stable,” she said. “Scott’s the one that needs help. He needs the counseling.”

Wednesday’s hearing involves only the civil custody matter and does not deal with the felony charges against Steele. A court decided on Sunday that there was sufficient cause to hold Steele until authorities decide whether to extradite him, Steele’s attorney in Uppsala said.

A Riverside County investigator flew to Sweden Monday to argue for Steele’s extradition on the grand theft, fraud, forgery and bad-check charges. Ironically, a child-abduction charge had to be dropped because Sweden does not have a reciprocal law and will extradite only on charges for which it has similar laws, according to Rob Perkins, Riverside County’s supervising investigator.

‘Separation Anxiety’

In the telephone interview, Scott Steele said that he had been told by several doctors that Schyler was suffering from “severe separation anxiety” during his parents’ acrimonious divorce. Schyler regularly became hysterical whenever father and son parted “and if this didn’t stop soon,” the tot would have serious emotional problems, Steele said the doctors warned.

Steele originally had custody of Schyler 4 days a week, but a court in Riverside County ultimately cut his visitation rights to two weekends a month, he said.

Steele said the boy cried every time they returned from his ranch in Temecula to the home in Tustin where his estranged wife lives with her parents. “He was clinging on me, (saying) ‘Please take me to the ranch. Don’t take me to Grandma’s.’ ”

His visitation rights were cut, Steele contends, because he was never given a fair shake in the courts. The court-appointed mediators listened to Marci Steele’s side of the story and not to his and held private meetings with his estranged wife but refused to sit down with him and his lawyer, Scott Steele alleged. All the while, Marci Steele left Schyler’s upbringing to others, he said.

Claim Fights Provoked

In addition, his estranged wife has provoked bitter fights in front of the youngster when Scott Steele would arrive to pick up or drop off their son, and has harassed him by having the police arrest him, again in front of Schyler, on trumped-up charges, he contended. One arrest involved a loaded gun found in his trunk, which he said he used to kill rattlesnakes on his ranch, and the other involved a charge of making harassing telephone calls. Scott Steele’s attorney, Kenneth D. Miller of Santa Ana, said the phone-calls charge was dismissed and the gun charge was reduced to a misdemeanor.

As time went on, Scott Steele claimed, Schyler became more and more upset when their weekend visits ended.

“I just couldn’t stand it. It was too much to handle,” he said. “I’m as close to Schyler as any person can be . . . so this is what I did.”

Through friends, Steele said, he learned that Sweden took a different attitude toward parental custody. Learning that there is no extradition there, Steele said he started to plan to take Schyler to that country.

On March 11, his live-in girlfriend, Susanne Pettersson--Marci and Scott Steele’s former nanny--frantically called authorities to report that the father and son had not returned from an outing in an inflatable boat during a vacation on Santa Catalina Island. The Coast Guard immediately ordered a massive search, combing the area by air and boat before learning that the disappearance was a hoax.

Admits Hoax

Scott Steele admitted Monday that he and Schyler took a ferry to San Pedro, then flew to Europe from Los Angeles.

“I had no idea it would cause the problems with the Coast Guard that it did,” he said. Pettersson flew to Sweden and joined him about a week later, he said. She is expected to have their child this month, he added.

As to the criminal charges against him, Steele called the grand theft, fraud and forgery charges involving tax money from the “gray market” importation of cars “a paper case.” He plans to repay the car owners the money--which totals $44,000, according to a Department of Motor Vehicles investigator--as soon as he receives the proceeds from the sale of his ranch and a restaurant in Temecula, he said.

For the past 7 weeks, he and Schyler have been traveling the countryside in a camper he bought, he said.

“He’s been an angel. He’s been wonderful,” Steele said.

But Marci Steele offered a different picture.

Schyler cried whenever he left his father, she said, because Scott would “sit outside (in the car) and he would tell Schyler that there were monsters at Grandma and Grandpa’s. That’s why he got so emotional.”

Scott Steele’s visitation rights were cut back because he never picked up or dropped off Schyler according to the court-approved schedule, she said.

Early or Late, She Claims

“He’d bring him back early or bring him back late. I have records. There were times when he wouldn’t show up until the next day. There were always excuses, time and time again. We can’t plan that way. I have to make sure someone is there (to care for the boy),” Marci Steele said.

“Then he would lose his temper in the judge’s chambers. He brought it on himself,” Marci Steele said.

Riverside County Superior Court Commissioner Carver Honn denied Scott Steele’s charge that he was treated unfairly.

“Three of the court’s most experienced mediators put their heads together to confer on this particular case,” he said. “I have no basis to believe that in this particular case there was anything unusual or extraordinary. . . . We have to maintain our equal treatment and unbiased approach to all these cases.”

Scott Steele’s attorney in the divorce case declined to comment Monday, citing confidentiality restrictions.

Operation Investigated

In addition to the other criminal charges, Newport Beach police are investigating Steele in connection with a telemarketing boiler-room operation that collected $140,000 and allegedly did not pay off investors, a police spokesman said.

Kenneth Miller, Steele’s attorney on the criminal charges, said that his client’s offer to make restitution in the “gray market” case does not mean he is guilty.

“When money was taken from clients, there was never an intent to defraud,” Miller said. (Steele, in his interview, indicated that the money was taken by someone involved in the Newport Beach case.) “My impression was, once the money was lost, he felt it was his responsibility to pay it back, but there was never an intent to defraud,” Miller stressed.