Deserted Boy’s Father Waives Extradition : Crime: Suspect will return to California from Maryland, where he was arrested, to face charges. Parents allegedly abandoned the 3-year-old in San Bernardino.

A day after implicating himself during television interviews, the father of a 3-year-old Maryland boy abandoned in a local shopping mall voluntarily agreed to return to California from Maryland, where he is being held in a county jail.

Wolfgang Von Nester Sr., 23, waived extradition Wednesday at a court hearing in Washington County District Court in Hagerstown, Md., saying he wants to return to California to face charges for which he could receive up to six years in prison, authorities said.

Nester’s wife, Lisa, is due to appear in Washington County Circuit Court on Friday to face charges that she failed to appear at a 1993 child support hearing. Nester, 24, who has four other children with different fathers, will face an extradition hearing as soon as the older charges are disposed of, Maryland authorities said.

The Nesters, who are charged with child endangerment and child abandonment in San Bernardino County, were located Monday by a Washington County sheriff’s investigator as they hiked along the Appalachian Trail, about 3,000 miles from where they allegedly abandoned Wolfgang Nester Jr. more than four weeks earlier.

“They were starved and dirty,” said Investigator Rich Ziolkowski, who caught up with the couple near the Maryland-Pennsylvania line. “All they had with them for food was a bag of berries they had picked along the way. . . . I think they were relieved in a way that they were picked up.”

In a tearful jailhouse interview that was televised this week, Nester said he and his wife, who had come to California to start a new life, abandoned their child and hitchhiked back to Maryland because they were hungry and broke and thought that others would care for the child.

“I figured that without food and without money and without diapers . . . what else could I do?” he told interviewers.

San Bernardino County Deputy Dist. Atty. Denise Trager-Dvorak said Wednesday that rationalizations do not alter the fact that their behavior was illegal and irrational.

“They committed a crime, and he admitted to committing a crime on TV,” the prosecutor said. “Anyone who is a parent finds it hard to understand--it’s unbelievable.”

San Bernardino police will wait to see if Lisa Nester agrees to waive extradition as well before sending an officer to Maryland to retrieve her husband, spokesman Jim Hamlin said. Under Maryland law, California authorities have up to 30 days to pick up a prisoner after extradition is waived, Ziolkowski said.

After the youngster was identified by his great-grandparents, who saw his photo on TV, both sets of grandparents have told reporters that they are interested in raising the boy.

At a brief Juvenile Court hearing in San Bernardino on Wednesday, Wolfgang Sr.’s father and stepmother--Phillip and Susan Nester--appeared. They refused comment after the hearing, at which Commissioner Frank O. Tetly continued the case until July 10.

In the meantime, the child, who was found abandoned in the children’s apparel section of the Montgomery Ward store in the downtown Carousel Mall, remains in foster care in San Bernardino County. A court attorney said the boy has been visited by his great-grandparents and was due to see his grandparents.