honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted at 9:52 a.m., Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Man accused of hiding child denied bond

Advertiser Staff and News Services

A man accused of leaving Florida with his daughter and hiding out in Hawai'i for five years was denied bond after he pleaded innocent in a court hearing yesterday in Florida.

Jon Michael Bryan was ordered to remain in jail in West Palm Beach pending a plea agreement or a trial despite testimony that his ex-wife had previously tried to take the child to live in Germany.

Bryan is charged with concealing a child against a court order, a third-degree felony with a maximum sentence of five years. But federal charges of kidnapping and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution have been dropped.

Under sentencing guidelines for the remaining charge, Bryan would get up to one year in jail, but the judge can raise or lower the sentence.

Circuit Judge John Hoy quoted from Bryan and Elke Hoercher’s 1996 divorce agreement, which noted the mother’s attempt to keep their daughter in Germany and ordered both parents not to hide the child’s whereabouts from each other.

"Given the fact that he took her to Hawai'i and made exceptional efforts to conceal who she was and who he was, and that he has no compunction about violating a court order, he’ll be held without bond," Hoy said of Bryan, 45.

Defense attorney David Roth failed to convince the judge that Bryan, who had waived extradition, would appear for trial.

"Jon understood the reasons for the judge’s decision," Roth said later.

Bryan was arrested Oct. 29 in Kaua'i and charged with taking his 11-year-old Angeline Bryan-Hoercher to live in Hawai'i. According to the FBI, Bryan picked up his daughter from her mother for a scheduled visit on June 28, 1998. But when Bryan was due to return the girl a month later, the FBI said, the two were nowhere in sight.

Authorities had received a tip last month that Bryan and his daughter were living on Kaua'i. Kaua'i police confirmed they were living in Kapa'a under the names Jonny Lee and Lana Lee. Police and state Child Welfare Services workers pulled the child out of school on Oct. 29 and let her talk to her mother on the phone. Minutes later, Bryan was arrested at the school when he arrived to pick her up.

The girl returned to Palm Beach County with her mother Thursday.

A psychologist on Kaua'i had determined last week that Angeline could remain in the custody of her mother, whom she hadn’t seen since the kidnapping in 1998.

Bryan was brought to West Palm Beach over the weekend by Roth and a private investigator.

Hoy scheduled a hearing for Dec. 17 to set the case for trial if Roth and the state attorney’s office can’t work out terms for a plea.

This report was written by the Associated Press with contributions by Advertiser staff writer Jan TenBruggencate.