Italian Who Abducted Daughter Gets Jail Time

A man who pleaded guilty to kidnapping his 4-year-old daughter in Los Angeles and spiriting her away to Rome was sentenced to nearly a year in federal prison Monday, but not before angering the judge by insisting his action was justifiable.

Carlo Ventre, 53, told the court he abducted his daughter, Santina, to “escape from a pattern of domestic violence.” He offered no details.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson threatened to scuttle Ventre’s plea agreement with prosecutors and send the case to trial.

“I can’t believe, based on what he said, that he believes he’s guilty,” Wilson told Ventre’s lawyer, Michael J. Treman.

After a recess, Ventre declared without qualification, “I believe I am guilty.” Only then did the judge accept the plea agreement, which calls for Ventre to spend 364 days behind bars.

Wilson described Ventre’s attempt to justify the kidnapping as “a variation on the old story about the boy who kills his parents and then throws himself at the mercy of the court because he’s now an orphan.”

Charged with international child kidnapping, Ventre could have been sentenced to three years in prison. Because of time already served, he stands to be freed from prison sometime in the spring.

The case has generated extensive publicity because the abducted girl’s mother, Toni Dykstra, 29, died under mysterious circumstances in Ventre’s apartment outside Rome after she went there to retrieve Santina in July 1998.

Italian authorities said Ventre told them he shoved her against a fireplace when she came at him with an ax. He has not been charged with her death.

Ventre and Dykstra were not married. After they separated, a Los Angeles domestic relations judge barred Ventre from taking Santina to Italy to live. The order allowed him to take the girl out of the country only if he gave Dykstra three days notice and only for vacations or emergencies.

As a convicted felon, he could be deported to his native Italy after his release. He asked Wilson at Monday’s sentencing to intervene on his behalf with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “My life is here, I love this country,” he told the judge. Wilson refused.

In addition to warning Ventre not to return to the United States if deported, Wilson ordered Ventre to stay away from Dykstra’s family and refrain from threatening them.

Dykstra’s relatives, represented by attorney Gloria Allred, appeared in court Monday and held a news conference afterward on the courthouse steps.

In a statement read for her by Allred, Dykstra’s twin sister, Teri Martinez, said Ventre had “inflicted immeasurable pain on our family.”

She recalled her sister’s despair after Ventre kidnapped their daughter in 1998 and “the price she paid for trying to return Santina back home.”

After Dykstra’s death, an Italian court awarded temporary custody of Santina to her maternal grandparents who brought the child back to their home in San Pedro.

Ventre was arrested by the FBI when he returned to Los Angeles in an attempt to regain legal custody.

Since then, a Los Angeles County court commissioner has awarded custody of Santina to Ventre’s brother, Gianfranco, who lives in Las Vegas. The girl’s grandparents have monthly visitation rights.

Allred said Monday that she intends to continue battling to have Santina reunited with the Dykstra family.

She called on the INS to deport Ventre after his release.

“If he is allowed to remain here,” she said, “it could send a message that a parent who kidnaps a child to another country can ultimately benefit from the crime.”

She also dismissed as “nonsense” Ventre’s claim of domestic violence.