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Woman charged for faking own abduction
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-15 14:13 A US college student accused of faking
her own kidnapping last month was charged Wednesday for lying to police in what
they called a desperate attempt to get her boyfriend's attention.
Audrey Seiler, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Wisconsin,
was charged with two misdemeanor counts of obstruction. Each charge carries
up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine.
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| Audrey Ruth Seiler, 20, shown
in this undated family photo. Seiler, the University of
Wisconsin-Madison student accused of staging her own disappearance last month, was
charged April 14, 2004 with two misdemeanor counts of obstruction. Each
charge carries a jail sentence up to nine months and a maximum fine of
$10,0000. [AP] | Seiler disappeared from her
off-campus apartment March 27 without her coat or purse. She was discovered
curled in a fetal position in a marsh four days later and told police that a
man had abducted her at knifepoint.
But police concluded Seiler made up the story after obtaining a store
videotape that showed her buying the knife, duct tape, rope and cold medicine
she claimed her abductor used to restrain her. Seiler confessed after she was
confronted with the tape, according to authorities.
"I set up everything. I'm just so messed up. I'm sorry," they quoted her as
saying. But she later recanted the statement, insisting she had been abducted.
Hundreds of people from Madison and Seiler's hometown searched for her after
she disappeared, and her claim about an armed man touched off a major manhunt
that authorities said cost the police about $96,000.
Her first court appearance was scheduled for Thursday, but her attorney was
expected to appear in her place.
Lawyer Randy Hopper would not say Wednesday whether she would contest the
charges. He called Seiler a "model student, a model citizen."
The criminal complaint depicts Seiler as a young woman upset by a fading
relationship with her boyfriend, Ryan Fisher.
Friends said the two had been fighting, and Seiler's roommate, Heather Thue,
told officers that Fisher did not pay as much attention to Seiler as she wanted.
Seiler's mother told police her daughter had not been herself lately and was
"extremely needy" of Fisher.
Three days before she disappeared, her laptop was used to log onto Fisher's
e-mail account and read exchanges "with romantic overtones" between him and
another woman, according to the complaint.
A message left at Seiler's home in Rockford, Minn., was not immediately
returned. There was no answer at the campus telephone number for Fisher,
Seiler's boyfriend.
Hopper said Seiler was home with her parents and receiving "medical care and
the care and support that she needs from her family."
Seiler had also reported an unexplained attack in February, saying she was
struck from behind and left unconscious. But the complaint does not say whether
police believe that attack was also fabricated.
According to police, one woman spotted Seiler on a bike path near the marsh
on March 29, 30 and 31. On March 31, the woman said, she saw Seiler lying in the
fetal position. When she asked how Seiler was, Seiler sat up and said she was OK
and liked to come to the marsh after class to relax.
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