Utah mom kept missing daughter, 5, hidden in cult ‘compound’ for months with help from adult sons: prosecutors

A Utah woman is accused of kidnapping her then-4-year-old daughter in January 2023 and evading law enforcement for 18 months, with help from her adult sons, before she was finally caught.

At the time when Kimberly Dell Davidson-Drolet, 53, allegedly kidnapped her daughter, she and her now-estranged husband, Laurence Drolet, were in the process of getting a divorce.

After 14 months of planning, on Jan. 10, 2023, Davidson-Drolet sold her vehicle in Utah for $13,000 and deposited the check into her bank account, according to a federal indictment.

Three days later, she withdrew $16,000 and transferred the remaining balance to her sister, Kristine Merrill, over the next month.

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On Jan. 23, 2023, Davidson-Drolet allegedly packed their personal belongings in duffle bags, piled them into her 30-year-old son Jaxson Davidson’s truck and drove cross-country to Missouri.

She left her personal cellphone at home in Utah and purchased a burner phone, federal court documents state.

Jaxon’s attorney, Craig Johnson, told Fox News Digital in a statement that the defendant is “presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, according to his constitutional rights,” and he will not be commenting further because it is an open criminal case.

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Merrill later told police that she destroyed Davidson-Drolet’s personal phone when she had allegedly given it to Davidson-Drolet’s 23-year-old son, Dallas Davidson.

Jaxson Davidson allegedly admitted to discussing taking the child out of state, and Merrill was present at the time and assisted with Davidson-Drolet’s departure, authorities wrote in court filings.

More than a year later, authorities would discover the now-5-year-old girl at “a compound run by a religious cult leader Paul Dean who is the founder of an FLDS religious type cult,” according to a complaint filed against Davidson-Drolet reads, referring to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

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Dean is reportedly a White, self-described Christian man who founded two “Native American” churches in Missouri, according to local news outlet Springfield Daily Citizen. He calls himself “Man Found Standing.”

Dean, who is not charged in the kidnapping case, is involved in Native American traditions like sweat lodges and believes bitcoin is the solution of government instability.

“I thought: Here’s a solution. Here’s a way you can go and store value … that isn’t controlled by governments,” Dean can be heard saying in a 2017 YouTube video.

READ THE INDICTMENT:

Davidson-Drolet allegedly concealed her whereabouts by using burner phones and mailing letters back home to her other children through her sister bia the U.S. Postal Service.

In her letters, she apparently said she felt safe in Missouri because “they don’t participate in extradition” and she and Dean were planning to “flee to Thailand,” the indictment reads.

“Kimberly Davidson-Drolet and other coconspirators went through great lengths to utilize pre-paid cellular phones that were rotated regularly to prevent law enforcement interception,” the complaint reads.

Davidson-Drolet, her sons, Jaxson and Dallas Davidson, and Merrill have all been charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.