NEWS

Missing Clarksville boy found in Mexico, stepfather arrested

Stephanie Ingersoll

USA TODAY NETWORK – TENNESSEE

Christopher and his mother, Jenny Ponce, are reunited Friday.

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. More than five months after a 9-year-old boy was abducted in Clarksville after a custody hearing, he was found safe in Mexico and will be reunited with his mother Friday, police say.

His stepfather, William Stanley King, 56, of Clarksville was on a flight from Mexico to Atlanta Friday morning after being caught on the outskirts of Mexico City on Thursday. He will be held in Atlanta until Tennessee authorities pick him up Monday, said Clarksville Police Department spokeswoman Natalie Hall.

The boy was also on the flight and will be reunited with his mother, Jenny Ponce, who now lives in Bluffton, South Carolina.

Christopher King Ponce, 9, had been listed as a missing and endangered child since Feb. 27 when King lost temporary custody to the child's mother and vanished with the boy.

King had won temporary custody by making allegations that the boy's mother was trying to prostitute the boy through a Craigslist ad, but a police investigation found that King posted the ad in an attempt to frame her, according to police.

Jenny Ponce won custody back but King raced to Byrns Darden Elementary School and picked up Christopher while his mother was waiting on papers to be processed at the Montgomery County Courts Center, according to Clarksville police.

A nationwide search for the boy followed and then an international search.

During the course of the investigation, TBI Special Agents developed information that Ponce and King were staying in the outskirts of Mexico City. Cooperative efforts between TBI agents, U.S. Marshals and Mexican authorities resulted in King being captured early Thursday at a FedEx store in that area. He initially refused to tell police where Christopher was, but Mexican authorities were able to gain information about the location of the child and found him safe and in good health, according to a TBI press release.

Jenny Ponce, who was estranged from her husband, told The Leaf-Chronicle earlier this year that King had never hurt the boy in the past but that she worried he would hurt him now to get back at her for leaving him.

Earlier, King had shown up at Jenny Ponce's home in Bluffton and threatened to take the boy away from her, according to Bluffton Police Sgt. Kelly Heany. King then won temporary custody in Montgomery County based on false allegations, said Jenny Ponce's attorney Pamela Blackshire.

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The South Carolina attorney general's office conducted an investigation and found that the Craigslist ad had been posted from King's computer in Clarksville, not Jenny Ponce's.That information came in just 20 minutes before the Feb. 27 custody hearing, and a judge returned custody to the boy's mother.

Blackshire said Christopher King Ponce is not King's biological child but that the boy and his mother lived with King when he was an infant, then moved to Honduras. They moved back to Clarksville for a short time in 2013 and then moved to Bluffton.

King, who also goes by the name William Allen Borck, contacted The Leaf-Chronicle by email on July 23 in what he said was an effort to "clear up some facts" on the case.

In the email, he criticized the police and said the Craigslist ad might have looked like it was coming from his IP address because Jenny Ponce had devices linked to his mainframe so she could use Netflix and other Internet services.

He wrote that his wife and Christopher lived in Honduras for seven years because she went to see family there and the United States canceled the extension on her visa, not because he had abused her, as she claimed. He said he worked tirelessly to get their paperwork in order so they could return to the U.S. and Clarksville.

She moved back, but just two days after she got a green card, King says she picked up their son from school and moved away and he could not find her for 10 months. King's email to the Leaf-Chronicle also alleged the boy had been abused in South Carolina.

He also said that police and The Leaf-Chronicle call him the boy's "stepfather," but there is no evidence he is not the boy's father except for what the mother and her lawyers claim. Police reports also refer to him as a step-parent.

He said he let Christopher talk to his mother using Skype, and because she knew where he was and could call him at any time, the boy was never really missing.

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"I am not a criminal," he wrote in the email. "I am a father protecting my son."

He said he did not carry a gun, although the flier released by the TBI said "King has a history of going armed and should be approached with caution."

He said he would return to the United States on his own when he had legal custody of Christopher and that the Clarksville Police Department, certain media and other organizations would "pay dearly" for persecuting an innocent child and his father.

He also made disparaging remarks about his wife.

King has outstanding warrants in Montgomery County for especially aggravated kidnapping, false report and custodial interference.

Reach reporter Stephanie Ingersoll at 931-245-0267 and on Twitter@StephLeaf.