Mother's motive a mystery
Investigators unraveling false abduction case
PHILADELPHIA - Bonnie Sweeten appeared to neighbors, colleagues, and other school parents like a woman smoothly juggling the responsibilities of work and family.
But the 38-year-old might have cracked this week when, police say, she drained several bank accounts, took a co-worker's driver's license, faked a 911 call about being stuffed in a car trunk, and boarded a flight with her 9-year-old daughter to Disney World.
The call touched off a frantic search for the pair that ended 30 hours later when police handcuffed Sweeten as she and the child returned to their hotel at the amusement park on Wednesday night.
She has been charged with filing a false report and identity theft.
The missing girl, Julia Rakoczy, was reunited with her father at an Orlando police station yesterday afternoon.
"The daughter was very concerned for her mother," said Jim Solomons, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Office. "To see any one of your parents arrested and taken to jail and then you're put in protective custody . . . that's a terrible situation for anyone, much less a kid."
Detectives from Bucks County, Pa., were in Orlando to bring Sweeten back to Pennsylvania if she waived extradition.
Sweeten fled as she was being investigated for theft from a relative and perhaps others, authorities said. No charges had been filed in that probe.
She worked for 15 years for Debbie Carlitz, a lawyer in suburban Philadelphia whose law license has been inactive or suspended in recent years, according to state documents. Sweeten is listed as a director at a foundation Carlitz runs, The Carlitz Foundation, which according to its website raises money for autism research and for people in Burma.
Carlitz, reached by phone yesterday morning, said she was not sure whether any money was missing from her coffers.
The Bucks County Courier Times, citing police, said the embezzlement may total several hundred thousand dollars. Bucks County District Attorney Michelle Henry did not return messages yesterday for comment.
Sweeten lived with her husband, landscaper Richard L. Sweeten, in a $425,000 house in a new development in bucolic Bucks County. She also has a 15-year-old daughter by Rakoczy, who lives nearby, and an 8-month-old girl with Sweeten.
According to the police complaint, Sweeten withdrew more than $12,000 from several bank accounts in the past week.
