WASHINGTON — A 6-year-old Georgia boy is back home in Villa Rica after his fugitive father was discovered hiding out with the boy at a Mexican resort. Daniel O'Neal, who is now in Miami awaiting extradition to Cobb County, faces charges of sexually molesting a teen-age daughter from a previous marriage and flight to avoid prosecution.

Some involved in the search are faulting FBI for lackluster efforts to find and return the boy, who went missing 18 months ago.

Tracy Gibson of Griffin, Ga., the ex-wife of O'Neal, said it took a private investigator less than a month to locate her ex-husband and the boy, Colton O'Neal, who is his son from another relationship. The FBI had the case for eight months.

Gibson said she joined forces in the search with Olivia Dupree, Colton's mother. The mother and son were reunited in Miami Saturday, and TV crews were on hand at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport when they returned Sunday and celebrated with Gibson. Dupree and Gibson had set up a Web site to publicize the missing boy and had grown increasingly impatient with the lack of progress by the FBI. Dupree said an Atlanta FBI agent told her that "it was not a priority for him—that he had other things to deal with."

Gibson said she was given a similar response.

"They told me they have more important cases to handle," Gibson said. She said she eventually found Jake Schmidt, a Beverly Hills, Calif., detective to the stars, who took on the case for no charge.

In a phone interview, Schmidt said he takes a few cases of missing children each year for free. "These cases become an annoyance to federal authorities," he said.

Schmidt followed leads that took him to a Mexican cell phone number, which turned out to be O'Neal's. Going to Cancun, he found the father and son at the Mayan Resorts and asked the FBI to arrange extradition. Schmidt said he left Mexico after the Atlanta FBI agent overseeing the case advised that the legal action would take "up to a year."

In fact, FBI officials in Mexico moved within days. Gregory Jones, FBI agent in charge in Atlanta, said O'Neal was using a fake birth certificate and claiming to be Mexican. When O'Neal admitted his real identity, Mexican authorities promptly deported him.

Answering complaints from Dupree and Gibson, the Atlanta FBI chief did not dispute that such cases have a relatively low priority. "I don't necessarily like to prioritize the work that we do, but sometimes we have to," Jones said. "We have fewer resources in that area than we did" before the 9/11 terrorist attacks seven years ago.

He added that private eyes don't have the same constitutional restraints when seeking leads. "I'm very limited," he said.

Gibson, who contacted Georgia's elected representatives for help, credited a phone call made by an aide to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., for prodding the FBI to move in on O'Neal in Mexico.

Jones said the phone call's effect on the FBI was "none whatsoever" and said the move to detain O'Neal was already in the works when the call came from the Chambliss office.