Mom, Nancy Fiedler, Arrested In 25-Year-Old Kidnapping

Adult Daughter's Name Change Tipped Off Authorities
SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press Writer
POSTED: 4:10 pm PDT October 6, 2010
UPDATED: 5:13 pm PDT October 6, 2010
RENO, Nev. -- A 32-year-old Nevada woman who was unaware that her mother abducted her as a child from New Jersey inadvertently alerted authorities when the daughter tried to change her name to get married, police said Wednesday.
Nancy Dunsavage Fiedler, 57, of Incline Village, was arrested Tuesday at her home near Lake Tahoe after she admitted to being the woman named on a fugitive warrant issued in New Jersey 25 years ago, the Washoe County sheriff's office said.
Fiedler, who was using the alias Debbie Reed in Nevada, did not have custody of 6-year-old Eva Marie Fiedler when the two disappeared during a break in a custody hearing in August 1984 in Somerville, N.J., New Jersey prosecutors said.
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On Aug. 23, 1984, Nancy Dunsavage Fiedler walked her 6-year-old daughter Eva Marie out of the Somerset County Courthouse during a legal fight to gain custody of the child from her husband.
Neither had been heard from since.
But on Tuesday afternoon, more than a quarter of a century later, a 31-year-old woman named Eva Marie Fiedler walked into a Nevada courthouse and applied to change her name to "Melissa Reed" in order to obtain a marriage license.
That seemingly innocuous act triggered a chain-reaction among authorities that reverberated from Nevada to New Jersey and led to the arrest of Fiedler’s mother on fugitive charges.
Nancy Dunsavage Fiedler, 57, was arrested at her home in Incline Village, Nev. by the Washoe County Sheriff Department Tuesday evening after authorities used the information provided by her daughter to locate her, the Somerset County Prosecutor said today.
Attempts to locate Fiedler’s father were unsuccessful tonight. Dunsavage Fiedler was being held at Washoe County jail without bail pending extradition to New Jersey.
Acting Somerset County Prosecutor A. Peter DeMarco said detectives had unsuccessfully followed tips and leads for years, but there were no breaks in the case until the state of Nevada discovered Fiedler had been listed as missing since 1984 by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Somerset County detectives were contacted, and through cooperation with the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, detectives contacted Nancy Dunsavage Fiedler that evening at her residence near Lake Tahoe, Nev. Authorities said she initially identified herself as "Debbie Reed," but matched a description of Dunsavage Fiedler in a NCIC warrant, and was taken into custody. Authorities said she admitted to being Nancy Dunsavage Fiedler after a brief interview with Washoe County authorities.
Once their identities were confirmed, the arrest took only a few hours, according to Capt. David Nikoley of the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office. The discovery was made in the mid-afternoon Tuesday, and three sheriff’s officers arrested Fiedler around 9 o’clock that night, he said.
Nancy Fiedler, who lived in Incline Village for more than 20 years, initially denied she was the suspect. An admission came within "far less than an hour," Nikoley said.
"This happened very quickly," he said.
DeMarco said Dunsavage Fiedler has been a fugitive of the law since June 28, 1985, when she failed to show up to for an arraignment on charges of Interference with Custody. Authorities said she was able to keep herself undetected since fleeing the state by obtaining several identities for her and her daughter.
Though it was unclear as of press time if Eva Marie Fiedler’s family remained in the state, it does not appear they ever stopped looking for her. Posts were found on online forums as recently as January from people identifying themselves as relatives of Fiedler asking for help and information.
"Please Eva Marie we all want you to come back and we all promise you will be safe with us we all love you," one post, from a person identifying herself as Fiedler’s cousin, read. "If you or your mom are just afraid to come back we promise you will be safe."
Today, officials said the events of the last 24 hours would probably change Eva Marie Fiedler’s life forever.
"As you would think with someone who had their world turned upside down," Nikoley said of, "It’s going to take time for things to sink in."

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Roman said Eva Fielder's father is living in New Hampshire. He said they have contacted him but are withholding his name and address.

"We're trying to straighten it all out and get some facts together," Roman said. "Everything happened really quickly from last night to today."

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Eva Fiedler's uncle, Jeff Fiedler, told The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., that his niece has had an opportunity to speak with her father, who he said had exhausted all resources searching for her.

"She told her father, 'I don't remember you,'" Jeff Fiedler said. "It's bittersweet, but it's nice that he spoke to her. He searched for them for years."

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Nevada family's secret life unravels
Published - Oct 09 2010 06:28AM EST
By SCOTT SONNER - Associated Press Writer

RENO, Nev. — Melissa Reed was a proud fiancee applying for what she thought was a routine marriage license two weeks ago when she learned a stunning secret: She had been abducted as a child and living under an assumed name.

The woman was actually a former New Jersey girl named Eva Marie Fiedler who was 6 years old when she disappeared with her mother during a bitter child custody battle. The mother, Nancy Dunsavage, says she fled with her daughter and changed their names to save them from an abusive father.

The mother lived with the secret for all these years, but confessed to the double life when her 32-year-old daughter couldn't get a marriage license because she lacked proper identification. She couldn't bear to keep the secret any longer, knowing that she had deprived her daughter of a chance to get married.

"The wedding is set, the guests are committed and she cannot get a marriage license because she has no photo ID," said Dunsavage, also known as Debbie Reed. "This has brought me to the realization that we cannot continue living like this."

The discovery touched off a bizarre chain of events that has landed her 57-year-old mother in jail in Reno on a 1985 fugitive warrant out of New Jersey. Prosecutors in New Jersey want to bring her there to face charges in what they consider a parental abduction.

Details of the secret life the daughter apparently never knew she had began to emerge this week in newly unsealed court documents.

Fiedler said Melissa Reed is the only name she has ever known _ "the only name by which I have been known to friends, associates, my fiance and the world for the last 26 years."

"About ten days ago, my mother `Debbie Reed' told me that my name and her name were assumed names. She told me our past," Fiedler said in the affidavit filed Tuesday and unsealed on Thursday in Washoe County District Court.

"I learned the reason that for all these years I have not had a proper ID or valid Social Security number for `Melissa Reed' and why I could not get a driver's license, bank account, passport or travel by plane, all because of my assumed name," she said.

It was not immediately clear how the daughter got through life without valid documents. Attempts to reach the mother and daughter were unsuccessful, and defense lawyer John Rogers said they "have requested privacy during this challenging time."

In a brief statement Friday to her hometown newspaper, the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza, Fiedler said she wanted to thank the community "for their outpouring of love, concern and care for me and my mother during the events of the past few days."

"I ask that those who do not know my mother reserve judgment. Some of the information that has appeared in the press is not accurate. You have not heard her story," she said.

Dunsavage, whose name was Nancy Fielder before she divorced in 1983, said in an accompanying affidavit filed Tuesday that her ex-husband repeatedly threatened that if she ever left him, "he would `hunt us down' and `end it all for both of us.'"

"Day in and day out, fear and violence were part of my life. I fled because I had no money (for a lawyer)... and I wanted to remove my daughter from this life of threats and fear. I did not want this to be her future, too," she said.

All along, Dunsavage has been wanted in New Jersey on a warrant stemming from charges that she packed up her daughter and fled during a break in a custody hearing at the Somerset County courthouse in August 1984.

Dunsavage said in her affidavit she had custody of her daughter at the time, but authorities in New Jersey claim otherwise.

Washoe County sheriff's deputies arrested Dunsavage on the fugitive warrant at her home in Incline Village. They say she admitted she was the woman they were looking for.

Her secret likely would never have been discovered if not for her concern about Fiedler's inability to obtain a marriage license with the Oct. 10 wedding approaching.

After talking with a lawyer, she decided to tell her daughter at least part of the story and seek a court order to formally change their legal names to Reed.

"Facing my daughter's upcoming wedding has finally given me the courage to tell my daughter our story, but I have put my daughter's wedding in jeopardy and want very much to allow her happiness of a wedding with the only name she has known, until recently, Melissa Reed."
Court officials became suspicious about the requested name changes partly because they were filed under the names of petitioners Jane and Joan Doe, and neither had any identification to prove their real identities.

Judge Janet Berry asked her bailiff to check into the mother's background and the request for the name change since has been put on hold and the wedding postponed.

"The situation was a little out of the ordinary," Karla Solferino said. "We ran the names a then we came back with a hit on the warrant. Luckily, we were able to solve this case."

Jack Bennett, spokesman for the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office, declined comment Friday beyond saying that investigators will travel to Nevada "sometime next week to pick her up" to face charges on the East Coast.

Fiedler said it hasn't changed her view of her mother.

"I have virtually no memory of my father," she said in court papers. "My mother has cared for me throughout my life and has provided a good home for me. I know her and trust her and now I have learned of my past."

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A police handout of Nancy Fiedler from 1985

When suspicious authorities began asking questions, her mother - Nancy Dunsavage Fiedler, alias Debbie Reed - came clean.
Now Eva has had her first conversation with her father in 26 years - while her mother has been arrested.
Fiedler had been granted custody of her daughter after her divorce from Eva's father, named in reports as New Hampshire resident Greg Fiedler, in 1983.
But in 1984 he took his ex-wife to court, accusing her of denying him visitation rights to their daughter.
He was granted ten days custody of Eva - and Fiedler, who accused her ex of being abusive, panicked.
In Nevada court papers she said she feared for her life, accusing her ex-husband of saying he would 'hunt us down' and 'end it all for both of us'.
'Day in and day out, fear and violence were part of my life,' she wrote.
'I fled because i had no money (for a lawyer)... and I wanted to remove my daughter from his life of threats and fear.
'I did not want this to be her future too.'
The mother and daughter have lived under a variety of aliases ever since - mostly in Nevada.
Eva never held a driver's licence or Social Security number, living virtually as a ghost.
When she tried to apply for a marriage licence, however, she was unable to get one without photo ID.
At that point, both she and her mother tried to legally change their names to the aliases they had used so long - Melissa and Debbie Reed.
It is not clear why Melissa, or Eva, believed that a name change was necessary.

But authorities began asking questions - and within hours police had confronted Fiedler in their home.
She confessed. 'The wedding is set, the guests are committed and she cannot get a marriage licence because she has no photo ID,' she wrote in court papers.
'This has brought me to the [realisation] that we cannot continue living like this.'
Now she is facing extradition back to New Jersey to face the kidnapping charge.
Meanwhile Eva and her father, now 62, have had their first conversation in 26 years - and it did not, apparently, go well.
'It was the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had,' Mr Fiedler told local website NJ.com.
'I had nothing to relate to,' he added. 'Twenty-six years have gone by.'
They appear to have had an especially tense moment when he asked her to tell him why she had filed to change her name.
He claimed he said: 'Eva Marie, this is your father speaking. I know who you are. There has to be a reason you are trying to change your name. '
But she would not elaborate, he said.
'She was taken aback by everything,' he said. 'I was a little disappointed. She's still trying to protect her mother.'
Police do not believe that Eva Fiedler knew anything about the case, said Sgt. Frank Roman, commander of major crimes for the Somerset County Prosecutor's office in New Jersey.
'It is still a very active investigation, but we believe she was not aware of this, no,' Roman told The Associated Press.
Roman said that Eva Fiedler should be treated as a victim in the case, but 'it's not like she was ever in any danger or anything like that.'

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