ST. LOUIS — A boy allegedly abducted in a custody dispute nearly two years ago has turned up alive, hiding with his mother in a small, specially built secret room at his grandmother's Illinois home, investigators said.
Richard "Ricky" Chekevdia, who'll turns 7 on Sept. 14, was in good spirits and physically fit after being found Friday by investigators with a court order to search the two-story rural home in southern Illinois' Franklin County, about 120 miles southeast of St. Louis.
The boy's mother, 30-year-old Shannon Wilfong, is charged with felony child abduction. The grandmother, 51-year-old Diane Dobbs, is charged with aiding and abetting. Wilfong remained jailed Saturday on $42,500 bond in Benton, Ill., where Dobbs was being held on $1,000 bond. The women did not have attorneys listed Saturday in online court records.
The boy was staying Saturday with one of his father's relatives while state child-welfare workers investigated claims that the father abused the child before his disappearance — allegations rejected by the dad, who's thrilled the agonizing search has ended.
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"Two years? You have no idea," Mike Chekevdia, a 48-year-old former police officer who is a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois National Guard, told The Associated Press by telephone Saturday from his house in Royalton, Ill., three miles from the home where his son turned up.
Chekevdia won temporary custody of his son shortly before the boy and his mother — Chekevdia's former girlfriend — disappeared in November 2007. Chekevdia said he long suspected his son was being stowed by Dobbs, although there were no signs of the boy at her home when it was searched with her consent after his disappearance. Wilfong was charged in December 2007 with abducting the boy, but he couldn't be found.
For much of the time since, Chekevdia said, the windows of Dobbs' home were blocked off by drawn shades or other items, presumably to prevent anyone from peeking inside.
"I had a firm belief he was in there, and yesterday it was confirmed," Chekevdia said.
Investigators, during a news conference Friday, did not detail what led sheriff's deputies and federal marshals with a search warrant to Dobbs' house Friday. They found the boy and his mother in a hideaway roughly 5 feet by 12 feet and about the height of a washing machine.
"We let him out of the (patrol) car, and he ran around like he'd never seen outdoors. It was actually very sad," Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Stan Diggs said. "He was very happy to be outside. He said he never goes outside."
