Woman Apologizes for Abducting Child

Saying she felt the “deepest sorrow and remorse” for the pain suffered by her son and ex-husband, a Wisconsin woman accused of abducting the youngster and hiding him from his father for 17 years issued the first public statement since her arrest earlier this month.

In a news release issued Tuesday, Ventura attorney Jay M. Johnson said Linda Susan Decker was a “terrified and abandoned” 19-year-old when she took her son, Morgan, from the family’s Camarillo home in the summer of 1981.

The abduction set off a 17-year search by the boy’s father, Oxnard High School teacher Robert Decker.

Linda Decker, now Michelle Jones, was arrested earlier this month after authorities received an anonymous tip that she was visiting relatives in a resort area south of Savannah, Ga.

Jones, 37, was extradited Friday from Georgia to Ventura County and booked into county jail, authorities said. She was released Saturday morning on $250,000 bail and has returned to Wisconsin to be with her family. She is scheduled for arraignment on July 31.

Johnson said Tuesday that his client was not prepared to discuss the reasons for her actions, saying “the wounds need healing, not reopening.”

“We are dealing with three people who are entirely different than they were so long ago,” Johnson said in the news release.

“The child involved is now a teenager whose privacy must be honored,” the statement said. “Mr. Robert Decker deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. Mrs. Jones has nothing but the deepest sorrow and remorse for the pain suffered by her son and Mr. Decker.”

Linda Decker was charged in 1982 with one count of child abduction. If convicted, she faces a maximum of three years in state prison, authorities said.

Her arrest ended the longest-running abduction case in Ventura County history and set up a potential reunion between Robert Decker, 51, and the son he hasn’t seen in 17 years.