“Kidnap Hoax Mom” Requests Do-Over
June 2, 2009 –
Bonnie Sweeten, the Feasterville woman behind last week’s botched staged kidnapping of herself and her 9-year-old daughter, yesterday addressed the media—and took the opportunity to politely request a do-over. “If I could do it all over again, there is so much I would change,” she said in brief, emotional remarks from her Bucks County home, two days after posting 10 percent of her $1 million bail. “That’s why I hope that authorities, my family, and especially [daughter] Julia [Rakoczy], will grant me a mulligan. I promise, I’ll really nail it next time.”
 The 38-year-old mother of three enumerated some of the aspects of her story—which led authorities from Bucks County to Philadelphia International Airport to Walt Disney World—that she would fine-tune, if only given the chance. “For starters, there’s the [bogus] accident on Street Rd.,” she said, tilting her head thoughtfully. “If given a do-over, I would skip that part of the story altogether, and just say that I had been carjacked.” After a brief pause to scan her notes, she added, “And it’s now obvious to me that my ‘two black men’ were much too vague, and completely unoriginal. Next time, I’d say that a white man did it—a white man wearing a blue trucker’s cap and thick brown sideburns.”
FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver seemed intrigued by Sweeten’s improvements. “While I doubt that we’ll allow her to try the whole thing over again, it does seem that she’s gained some real perspective,” he said at a midday news conference. “We're almost tempted to drop the charges, and see if she can make it more than one day before it all falls apart.” The so-called “Kidnap Hoax Mom” seemed determined to make things go far more smoothly the second time. “I’ve talked to Julia, and she agrees that next time, she’ll make a call to 911 herself, then hang up after a few seconds.” She shook her head, clearly saddened. “What I’ve done is wrong, I can see that now. Completely wrong.”
Sweeten ended by adding that, if given the opportunity, she would “not take all that money from everybody, either.” |
