The final suspect in the North Carolina-to-Atlanta kidnapping plot, in which prosecutors say abductors snatched the wrong person, is in federal custody.
Patricia Kramer, 29, had not initially been identified in connection with the April 5 kidnapping of Frank Aurthur Janssen. But she is one of nine co-defendants named Tuesday in a federal indictment.
Kramer turned herself in to federal authorities Wednesday, FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
She was scheduled to appear before a federal judge Wednesday, but the hearing was postponed until Thursday at 3 p.m., federal authorities said. The public defender who was to represent Kramer withdrew because she is already representing many of the kidnapping suspects, according to WSB-TV.
Arthur Janssen, the kidnap victim, is the father of Wake County, N.C., Assistant District Attorney Colleen Janssen. Prosecutors say the abductors nabbed him after going to wrong addresses twice as they were trying to get her.
Kramer financed two outings to abduct Colleen Janssen, prosecutors said, and provided the incorrect addresses that sent the gang first to Louisiana, then to Frank Janssen’s home.
In March, an Internet search led the alleged conspirators to an address for the North Carolina prosecutor … in Louisiana. So an armed team rented a car and started out. “Despite traveling from Georgia to Louisiana and taking various other steps to carry out the kidnapping plot, the participants aborted the plot prior to completing the abduction,” the indictment says.
And on April 5, prosecutors said four people drove a rented car from Atlanta to Wake Forest, N.C., with information they believed pointed them to the home of Colleen Janssen.
They went to her father’s house instead, and according to prosecutors, left a receipt there from a meal stop they had made on the way there.
Investigators tracked that receipt to a McDonald’s restaurant in Lexington, S.C., where surveillance video helped identify two of the suspects, authorities said.
An FBI team rescued Janssen at a southeast Atlanta apartment five days after his abduction, just as the crew made plans to kill him, authorities said.
Prosecutors said the plot’s ringleader, Kelvin Melton, sought revenge against Colleen Janssen, who had prosecuted him for murder for ordering a 2011 hit.
Besides Kramer and Melton, others charged with kidnapping conspiracy are Michael Montreal Gooden, Tianna Maynard, Jakym Camel Tibbs, Quantavious “Kirkwood Quan” Thompson, Clifton James Roberts, Jenna Palin Martin and Jevante Price.
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