By Eric Francis
Standard Correspondent
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – A Sharon teenager stands accused of faking her own kidnapping earlier this week in order to convince her grandmother to come up with “ransom money” that the teen later told police she needed in order to pay a drug debt.
“I’ve been prosecuting for about 20 years now and I’ve never charged an extortion case before,” Windsor County State’s Attorney Robert Sand noted on Tuesday afternoon following the arraignments of Megan Swanson, 19, who was charged with felony extortion along with her boyfriend Kevin Emery Jr., 21, of Eaton’s Trailer Park in South Royalton, and their friend Joshua Rice, 20, of Sharon.
All three were arrested at gunpoint Monday evening by state police troopers who stopped the car the trio were riding in on Route 14 North moments after they allegedly scooped up the cash that had been dropped off by Megan Swanson’s frantic grandmother as she tried to arrange for Megan’s safe return.
“It’s not a secret that Vermont is experiencing a pretty high volume of drug-related crime, particularly as it relates to opiates (although this case) certainly has a unique set of facts,” State’s Attorney Sand said.
The latest bizarre incident came to the attention of police just after 6 p.m. Monday when dispatchers received a 911 call from Patricia Swanson, 73, of Sharon who said she received a text message from Megan Swanson that read simply “Help!!” before a man called her saying that he was holding her granddaughter captive.
The caller told the older Swanson that she had just 15 minutes to come up with $600 in cash or “He would take (Megan) and I would never see or hear from her again,” Patricia Swanson wrote in a statement filed with the court.
Swanson wrote that after she protested that she didn’t keep that much cash sitting around her house the male caller, whose voice she didn’t recognize, kept phoning again every few minutes, “calling me every filthy name” and saying she had to get at least $200 right away or he would “prostitute Megan or kill her and chop her up!”
During one of those calls, Patricia Swanson wrote, she could hear her granddaughter Megan on the line, “crying hysterically and saying, ‘They have me blindfolded and my arms tied behind me!’.”
Alternating between calls to the state police, who sprang into action to coordinate a response to the rapidly unfolding situation, and speaking to the “kidnapper” who persisted in a stream of threats directed towards Swanson and her granddaughter, Patricia Swanson said police had her get the money together and told her to drop it near the high school even as the barrage of obscenity-laced phone calls continued.
“I don’t know who was talking to me (but) he was mean and vicious,” Patricia Swanson recalled.
Several state police troopers took up surveillance positions before Patricia Swanson arrived and dropped the bag of money off as instructed near some trailers next to the high school underneath a streetlight that was out. Suddenly a man appeared in the parking lot and Sgt. John Helfant stepped out to confront him only to discover it was a resident walking his dog. At that time Helfant saw another man in a black canvass jacket come out of one of the trailers, grab the bag of money from the ground, and take off running.
Troopers Gary Salvatore and Andrew Collier drove up South Windsor Street in unmarked cruisers trying to catch sight of the suspect but were unsuccessful. Turning onto Chelsea Street near the Vermont Law School, they spotted a small white car pulling out of the parking lot across from the law school’s library, a lot that abuts the soccer fields behind the high school.
Checking the license plate, the troopers determined the car belonged to Kevin Emery Jr., Megan Swanson’s “on and off again boyfriend,” so as it turned north on Route 14 they decided to stop it and “extract one person at a time at gun point, starting with the driver.”
Emery was driving, Rice was in the front passenger seat, and the unharmed Megan Swanson was sitting in back next to the small green bag containing the money. Trooper Salvatore wrote that after the trio were handcuffed and taken to the Royalton Barracks, Rice refused to answer any questions while Emery claimed that, aside from receiving a phone call from Megan Swanson asking for a ride to the law school, he had no idea what was going on; however, Salvatore wrote that Megan Swanson told him, “she owes a lot of money to a drug dealer in town and if she did not get any money to him tonight he was going to kill her. Megan advised that she came up with the idea to have Joshua Rice call her grandmother and extort $600 from her.”
Swanson also told the investigators that it was Rice who had just run out to get the bag of money while she and Emery waited in the car and she said the three of them were headed to Randolph to drop off the cash when police stopped them.
On Tuesday afternoon all three defendants were released pending trial after they took turns pleading innocent to a sheaf of charges at the courthouse in White River Junction.
Emery and Rice were each charged with felony extortion.
Megan Swanson was charged with three felony counts: extortion, forgery, and possession of stolen property, that last charge ironically was one which she had previously been scheduled to come in and answer on Tuesday morning in the same courthouse. Trooper Christopher Blais had filed it against her following an investigation that began in August after her grandmother, Patricia Swanson, returned home from a weekend camping trip to find her residence had been broken into through a rear window and a number of distinctive pieces of gold jewelry were missing.
Blais said he checked several area pawn shops and found some of the stolen items had been sold to Twin State Coins and Treasures in West Lebanon. The owner told the trooper that a “guy and a girl” had been stopping by to sell him jewelry since the beginning of the year and through a photo lineup and company records the sellers were identified as Megan Swanson and Kevin Emery Jr., Trooper Blais wrote.
This article first appeared in the January 5th, 2012 edition of the Vermont Standard.
Loading ...
