Arraignment Postponed in 17-Year-Old Child Abduction Case

A woman accused in the abduction of her infant son from Camarillo 17 years ago appeared in a Ventura County courtroom Friday, but did not enter a plea to one charge of child abduction after being handed 300 pages of new documents in the case.

Linda Susan Decker, now living in Wisconsin as Michelle Jones, requested a one-month postponement of her arraignment so she could review the prosecution’s papers and walked out of court to a swarm of television cameras and reporters.

Standing hand-in-hand with second husband William, Jones, 37, refused to discuss her case or explain in detail why in the summer of 1981 she took her then 9-month-old son, Michael, from the family’s Camarillo home.

But speaking through her attorney, Jones expressed remorse for hiding the boy from his biological father, Robert Decker. And she suggested that she has a story to tell.

“She ran because she was 20 years old and she was scared to death,” said Ventura attorney Jay M. Johnson, who declined to elaborate on what his client feared or what prevented her from contacting Decker over the years.

“My client’s story, unfortunately, right now, is not available for public scrutiny,” Johnson told reporters. “I have to be very careful what gets back to Michael.

“We are not as concerned about the outcome of the criminal case,” he added, “as we are about Michael.”

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Johnson said the 17-year-old, who until recently was unaware of the true identity of his father, is “doing well” and has seen a counselor. So far, he has not had any contact with the 51-year-old Decker.

“We are not going to force him to do anything,” Johnson said. “His statement to his mother was, ‘I just can’t think about that until I know that Mom is going to be OK.’ ”

Decker, an English and drama teacher at Oxnard High School, was teaching a class and did not attend the short court hearing. But his longtime Camarillo attorney, Theresa McConville, was present.

She said the postponement did not come as a surprise and was typical for a criminal case. Although her client is eager to see the matter resolved so he can begin a relationship with his son, McConville said Decker has no intention of rushing the issue.

“We have waited 17 years,” she said. “The important thing is that Michael is ready.”

Jones was arrested July 10 in Brunswick, Ga., on an outstanding felony warrant for child abduction dating back nearly 17 years.

In 1981, she left the couple’s home for a trip to Northern California to visit her mother and never returned. At the time, she and Decker were separated and in a custody dispute.

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Over the next 16 years, Decker worked with investigators from the Ventura County district attorney’s child abduction and recovery unit.

Despite a number of leads--taking them to Alaska, Missouri, Illinois and Georgia--they were unsuccessful in locating her, until a few weeks ago.

That was when Jones, who was visiting relatives, was stopped by Brunswick police and the warrant for her arrest surfaced.

She was taken into custody and extradited to Ventura County. She was released from custody on $250,000 bail July 18.

Jones’ attorney said Friday she plans to return to her home on Twin Lakes, Wis., until the postponed arraignment Aug. 28. She is expected to enter a plea at that time.

After the court hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Denise Payne said she intends to amend the criminal complaint before that court date to make sure it corresponds with changes in the law since the abduction.

The complaint was written to cover an area between June 13, 1981, and April 20, 1982, and there have been technical changes in the law since then, she said.

Payne would not elaborate on how the complaint will be amended, saying only that it will happen before Jones’ arraignment.

She said the postponement was to give the defense attorney time to read through the documents she handed him Friday morning but would not say what was contained in those papers.

“He received quite a bit of discovery documents, and he needs time to review them,” Payne said. “Obviously, she fled about 17 years ago, and the law has changed since then. We need to see how those changes affect our complaint.”

After the hearing, McConville, who has been involved with the case since 1987, said she was curious to see if Jones looked the same after so many years.

“We’ve always wondered if we would recognize her,” she said, smiling slightly. “She just looked slightly older and slightly heavier.”

Asked for her reaction to Jones’ statement about being scared back in 1981, McConville said it is hard to know what she felt at the time or why.

“I think the operative word is she felt those things,” McConville said. “I’m not in her head, and I wasn’t in 1981.”