A Utah woman is accused of abducting her then-4-year-old daughter in January 2023 and evading police for 18 months with the help of her adult sons before finally being arrested.
Kimberly Dell Davidson Drollet, 53, and her now-estranged husband, Lawrence Drollet, were in the midst of divorce proceedings at the time she allegedly abducted her daughter.
According to the federal indictment, after 14 months of planning, on Jan. 10, 2023, Davidson Drolet sold his vehicle in Utah for $13,000 and deposited the check into his own bank account.
Three days later, she withdrew $16,000 and transferred the remaining balance to her sister, Christine Merrill, over the next month.
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Kimberly Dell Davidson Drollet is charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap. (Buchanan County Sheriff)
On Jan. 23, 2023, Davidson Drolet allegedly packed her personal belongings into a duffel bag, loaded them into her son Jackson Davidson’s, 30-year-old, truck and drove across the country to Missouri.
She left her personal cell phone at her Utah home and purchased a disposable cell phone, according to federal court documents.
Jackson’s lawyer, Craig Johnson, told Fox News Digital in a statement that his client is “constitutionally presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” and that he would not comment further because it is an open criminal case.
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Merrill later told police that he gave Davidson-Drollet’s 23-year-old son, Dallas Davidson, Davidson’s personal cell phone and then destroyed it.
Authorities said in court documents that Jackson Davidson admitted to discussing taking the child out of state and that Merrill was present at the time and helped Davidson Drollet leave.
More than a year after Kimberly Dell Davidson Drollet allegedly kidnapped her daughter in Utah, authorities found the now 5-year-old in a facility “run by religious cult leader Paul Dean, founder of an FLDS-type cult.” (NCMEC)
More than a year later, authorities found the girl, now 5 years old, in “a facility run by religious cult leader Paul Dean, founder of an FLDS-type cult,” according to the indictment against Davidson Drolet, “a fundamentalist sect of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
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According to local outlet the Springfield Daily Citizen, Dean is white, a self-described Christian and has reportedly founded two “Native American” churches in Missouri. He calls himself a “stand-up man.”
Dean, who has not been charged in the kidnapping case, is involved in Native American traditions such as sweat lodges and believes Bitcoin is a solution to government instability.
“I thought, here’s the solution. Here’s a way to store value that’s not controlled by the government,” Dean said. YouTube video from 2017.
Read the indictment:
Davidson Drolet allegedly concealed his location by using a disposable cell phone and mailing letters through the U.S. Postal Service through his sister to other children in his hometown.
According to the indictment, she wrote in the letter that she felt safe in Missouri because it was “not a party to the extradition agreement” and that she and Dean were planning to “flee to Thailand.”
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“Kimberly Davidson Drollet and other co-conspirators went to great lengths to use prepaid cell phones that were regularly swapped to prevent interception by law enforcement,” the complaint states.
Davidson Drolet, her sons Jackson and Dallas Davidson, and Merrill were charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap.
