MOUNT VERNON, Wash. — A mother and her daughter accused of kidnapping a Mount Vernon boy and taking him to Vietnam both pleaded guilty to one count of custodial interference.
Amanda Dinges and her mother Amber entered their guilty pleas March 23 after previously pleading not guilty in January. Amanda Dinges will serve 12 months in Skagit County Jail; Amber Dinges will serve six months.
The two were accused of leaving the country with Amanda's 5-year-old foster child. Authorities say the pair fled to Vietnam with the child shortly after Thanksgiving.
About a week earlier, the duo met with the child's biological mother to arrange overnight visits. Shortly after that both they and the boy disappeared.
Investigators were able to track the boy to a city near Hanoi, Vietnam where he was brought back to America and reunited with his biological mother.
Amanda and Amber Dinges were arrested at Sea-Tac Airport about two weeks later. It remains unclear why they took the boy to Vietnam and what the alleged abductors' plans may have been with him.
Skagit County Prosecutor Rich Weyrich personally took on the case.
"If you've had a 5-year-old, if you lost him, you wouldn't know what to do," the veteran prosecutor previously said. "We'd like to give a lot of credit to the Mount Vernon police and the federal authorities who helped us recover the child and bring him back."