After he vanished with his 6-year-old daughter from Auburn, Mark Supanich was charged with custodial interference and appeared on "America's Most Wanted." They were found more than two years after their disappearance in Montana, living under aliases. Supanich was acquitted in December, but is not allowed to see his daughter. (Scott Eklund / P-I)
'Most Wanted' father fights for custody
He's free, but fight to see his child goes on
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Last updated February 14, 2008 1:29 p.m. PT
By VANESSA HO
P-I REPORTER
Before he aired his ex-girlfriend's painful diary entries in court, before a judge ordered him to stay away from her, before he appeared on "America's Most Wanted," he had a baby girl with blue eyes and red hair.
But as she grew, Mark Supanich got to see her less and less, which made him spend more and more time waging a bruising custody battle. He accused the girl's mother of child abuse, she responded that he was the abusive one, and each denied the other's allegations.
In 2004, a judge granted custody to the mother in Auburn and curtailed Supanich's visits, a scene played out time and again in courts replete with warring parents.
Nine days after the ruling, Supanich vanished with their 6-year-old daughter. As a manhunt tightened around him, he hopscotched states, worked under the table and kept his daughter out of public schools. He dyed her hair brown and grew a gray, bushy beard.
When federal officers caught up with them more than two years later, they had settled into a lush, rural town in Montana, on the outskirts of Helena.
"We knew them as Tom and Amy Johnson," neighbor Bob Longmire said, describing how Supanich had helped him install siding on his house. "She'd help me feed the chickens and pick up eggs."
Nationwide, thousands of children embroiled in custody fights are abducted by one estranged parent or the other. Like many people charged with the crime, Supanich readily admitted taking his daughter, saying it was for her own protection.
But then a surprising thing happened. The abductor was acquitted.
The King County jury's sympathy for Supanich and his frustration with his custody case has served to illuminate the multitude of grievances that often arise in child-custody disputes. Such fights affect many families; in 2006, more than 13,000 divorce-with-children cases were filed in the state.
The grievances include prejudice against dads, poorly trained parenting evaluators and ignorance of domestic violence, to name a few.
People perpetually angry at Child Protective Services have nursed their grumbles with Supanich's vigilantism, which, he said, came after years of dead-end calls to police and CPS.
"The state would do nothing to protect his daughter, so he took the law into his own hands," said Dave Wood, a board member of Washington Families United. Citing the Supanich case, the group recently went to Olympia to lobby for CPS reforms.
A tall, weathered construction worker with an unrelenting drive in the case, Supanich is now living a paradox. He is a free man, except for what he wants most -- to see his daughter. She's 10 now, and he hasn't seen her since his 2006 arrest.
His flight more than three years ago prompted the family-court judge to bar contact between him and his daughter, an order still in effect despite Supanich's acquittal. He hopes to persuade the judge at a hearing next month to let him see his girl again.
"I would tell her that none of this was her fault and ask her if she still knows how to do running hugs," said Supanich, who is 49 and lives in Tacoma. But with no funds for an attorney, he has an uphill fight.
The girl's mother, 46-year-old Sandy Pedigo, declined to comment. Her attorney, Kevin Rundle, said he didn't want to talk before the hearing.
The parents met in Auburn in 1996, when she worked at a small grocery store and he at a nearby barbecue restaurant. She became pregnant the following year, which is when he first pushed her violently after a night of drinking, she said in a 2000 petition for a protection order.
Supanich countered that he has only defended himself from Pedigo's "drunken outbursts," according to court records.
After Supanich was ordered to enter batterer's treatment, he continued to allege that Pedigo physically bruised and neglected to feed their child. He worried that the girl was being harmed by a male friend of Pedigo's, who had a history of DUIs and domestic-violence allegations.
Pedigo denied the abuse, saying the girl's doctor found her to be healthy and the bruises to be from normal childhood play. She voiced her own worries that Supanich was physically inappropriate with their daughter.
Neither parent's accusations were sustained by CPS, led to prosecution or were confirmed by the child's therapist. The two guardians ad litem in the case -- evaluators appointed to represent the child's best interest -- came to different conclusions, one favoring Pedigo for custody; the other favoring Supanich.
By March 2004, it was up to Pierce County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Nelson to sort it out. She awarded custody to Pedigo and alternate weekends for Supanich.
The following Friday, Supanich picked up the girl from school. On Sunday, Pedigo waited at a McDonald's parking lot in Auburn for them to return.
"I knew right away," Pedigo later told "America's Most Wanted."
Despite a national search with the girl's face on missing-children Web sites, tractor-trailers, Crime Stoppers and CNN's "Nancy Grace" show, years passed with little sign of Supanich.
As he zigzagged through Yakima, Idaho, Arizona, Michigan and Montana, he picked up roofing and siding jobs. He said he home-schooled his daughter and took her fishing and camping.
"The first week I took her, I told her she wasn't going back. She was jumping with joy," he said. He said he dyed her hair not as a disguise, but because she wanted green hair for her 9th birthday and he settled for brown.
Longmire, the Montana neighbor, said the girl had told a neighbor her mother had died, and that she had seemed happy with her father.
"I've never seen a little girl who loved her dad so much, and a dad who would do so much for his daughter," he said.
But U.S. marshals were closing in. Tracing a car Supanich had used, they arrived in Helena on Sept. 26, 2006. While they canvassed neighbors and talked to Longmire, the girl suddenly appeared before the deputies.
"(She) immediately became distraught," Deputy Marshal Chuck Pesta wrote in his report, describing how the girl had cried, screamed and denied her identity. "In disjointed language, she made random statements like, 'Please don't send me back, my mother beats me, my mother uses drugs, I love my father, please don't take me away from my father.' "
An investigating detective in King County believed Supanich had brainwashed the girl, and social workers slowly transitioned her back to Pedigo. The girl did not testify in her father's trial.
Jurors in the case heard much of the same evidence presented in the custody case, but with a different goal. Instead of deciding in the best interest of the child, jurors had to determine -- by a preponderance of the evidence -- if Supanich had "reasonable" belief that his daughter was in "imminent physical harm" in Pedigo's care.
They also had to determine if Supanich -- charged with first-degree custodial interference, a felony punishable by up to a year of confinement -- had sought help from police, courts or child-protective agencies before taking the girl.
They found Supanich credible, and Pedigo flat and detached, according to several jurors interviewed after the December trial. They thought the girl's bruises, seen in photos, seemed excessive. They found a recording that Supanich made of the girl saying "shame on Mommy" particularly convincing.
"That rang really true to me, being a mother of three. Kids just don't make up things," juror Danielle Duvall said.
"Whether (the abuse) is exactly to the extent that Mark believed, I'm not quite there. But here's a guy that really believed his kid was not receiving great care."
Another juror said he believed Supanich had lost custody because his ex-girlfriend had a better lawyer.
"From everything I've seen -- all the pictures of the bruises -- I can't understand how a family court, with that stuff presented into evidence, (would give) Sandy full custody, and not think the system didn't fail in this case," said the 25-year-old juror, who didn't want to be named.
Experts said juries can be more empathetic than a judge familiar with family law and the parties' histories. Victims advocates -- noting they were not talking about Supanich's case -- said batterers in general can appear charming and persuasive, while victims can seem disorganized and paranoid.
Duvall said the case had saddened her about the girl. "Nobody, not one person around this kid, knows what's going on with her," she said. "Everybody is working their angle."
Jurors had to guess on so much, she said, and while she was comfortable with their decision, still she sometimes wonders: Was it the right one?
P-I reporter Vanessa Ho can be reached at 206-448-8003 or vanessaho@seattlepi.com
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February 11th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
We need more people like Mark to stand up against abuse of children. The family courts judges are too greedy with the Title IV-D money and don’t care that children are abused and exploited because it help them get federal money for their state and county. We need to end this abusive Title IV-D programs. People like Mark are heroes stepping out and protecting their children from an abusive system that’s is exploiting children for money.
Marcy Ganz
http://crispe.org
May 6th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I also have to say I support him for what he has done, he put his life at risk to protect his children something more of us need to do. It is not kidnapping when a parent protects their child, especially when the state refuses to do the protecting.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
If a mom did that…you’d be foaming at the mouth because she wasn’t locked up, saying what a horrible justice system this is. This wasn’t a case against the mom, doesn’t even mention her. Where any allegations proven against her? Imagine how she feels having this creep loose that kidnapped the child. This website makes me sick. You all make me sick. Maybe he was right…maybe he wasn’t. But you surely wouldn’t support a mom for doing the same thing.
Grow up. Someday I hope you all see through your over inflated egos.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:09 am
Lisa This site is for the rights of all parents and children. This case has cost the tax payers an estimated cost of twenty million dollars so far. That money should have been used to help both genders and the children. If you checked the statistics you would find plenty of info that the court system is biased towards men. I belong to a group that help men and women that have been wronged by the system. Most have no Idea nor have the money to fight for their children. The prosecutors in my case went as to far to protect the mother for the crimes she has committed. My daughter loves me very much yet is not even allowed to speak with me on the phone. We all just want the system to be fair and impartial like the jury was. They had a month to see and hear from many people including three police officers two women GALs, My Child’s doctor that reported child abuse to CPS. We would welcome posts to this blog where women have been wronged also. We know it happens to them also but the fact is across this country 85% of the time the children are placed with the mother. 86% of the child fatalities are from a parent or the mothers boyfriend. In case you didn’t know there have been five times as many children killed in this country from child abuse than soldiers since the war started after 9/11. I would encourage you to use your energy by doing research and then maybe you too would be willing to do what you had to to save a child’s life, maybe your own chid if you have any. Shared parenting would alleviate most of the fighting over the children not escalate it and its best for the children if they are not being abused. Mark Americas most wanted dad.