John Jefferson
Left: Kimberly Dell Davidson-Drolet (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children). Right: the suspect after her arrest (Buchanan County Sheriff’s Office).
A 53-year-old Utah woman allegedly kidnapped her 5-year-old daughter during divorce proceedings in violation of a custody agreement, lost parental rights, and took the victim, with the help of her adult son and a sister, to Missouri, to live at a “religious compound led by a religious cult leader,” a self-described “medicine man” also said be a relative of the accused, according to the federal government.
Kimberly Dell Davidson-Drolet was arrested in Buchanan County, Mo., in mid-July and accused, along with her son Jaxson Davidson, 30, Dallas Davidson, 23, and sister Kristine Merrill, 53, of conspiring to kidnap the child in January 2023 and concealing the victim’s whereabouts through June 27, 2024.
According to the indictment and criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime, Davidson-Drolet and her estranged husband Laurence at the start of 2023 were “engaged in divorce and child custody proceedings” in Utah state court and, on Jan. 18, 2023, the defendant put into motion the alleged plot to kidnap their child and bring her more than 1,000 miles away to a “compound run by religious cult leader” Paul Dean, the founder of what the government described as a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) “type cult.”
The complaint described Paul Dean as a relative of Davidson-Drolet’s but redacted the exact detail, only leaving a hint as to the connection (“Paul Dean is the brother [redacted] to Kimberly Davidson-Drolet”) and not accusing him individually of any wrongdoing.
The feds said that Davidson-Drolet on Jan. 10, 2023, several days before the alleged kidnapping, sold her car for $13,000, took out $16,000 from an America First Credit Union account, and in the weeks the followed drained the remainder of the account by sending it to her sister and alleged co-defendant Kristine Merrill via Zelle.
The mother allegedly packed her “belongings in boxes and duffle bags,” put the items in her son Jaxson Davidson’s truck, and the three left Utah on Jan. 23, 2023 for Missouri. The government claims that Jaxson, his brother Dallas, and Merrill each played a role in keeping their relative and the allegedly kidnapped girl hidden from law enforcement.
For instance, Jaxson Davidson is accused of telling law enforcement that he drove Davidson-Drolet and the child to Kansas, when he actually took them to Missouri. Merrill allegedly took Davidson-Drolet’s phone, “concealed” the device from authorities, and falsely said she destroyed it when “in truth and fact, MERRILL had given the cell phone” to Dallas Davidson.
Davidson-Drolet used a burner flip phone to talk with her sister, “mailed letters back home to her other children in Utah” through Merrill, gave the kids instructions on how to reach her, and said her “leaving Utah was not a panicked decision or impulse and that she had been planning her flight for fourteen months,” the indictment alleged. “DROLET further stated that she had changed her and Child A’s names and reiterated the plan had been in place for over a year,” which may or may not explain why Davidson-Drolet after her arrest signed a document as “executor” of herself (an executor is a person appointed to handle the estate of someone who is legally dead).
At the very end of the indictment, investigators claimed that Davidson-Drolet sent texts to Dallas suggesting she was considering fleeing to Thailand and that she had talked about this with “P.D.,” possibly Paul Dean.
“DROLET stated in text messages that she felt safe in Missouri because, ‘they don’t participate in extradition,’ and stated she, and P.D., had been discussing plans to flee to Thailand,” the feds said. “D[ALLAS] DAVIDSON and DROLET also discussed plans and options to further evade capture[.]”
Federal court documents show that after Davidson-Drolet’s arrest in mid-July, she insisted on representing herself in the case at her initial appearance, said she “does not consent to the proceedings and refuses to be sworn,” and that she was ultimately ordered detained for extradition to Utah after providing a signature on a bond document that was not valid (see: earlier note on the “executor” signature).
While Davidson-Drolet is scheduled to appear in Utah federal court on the afternoon of Aug. 13, her co-defendants’ court dates have not yet been set, the government said.
Who is Paul Dean?
The Springfield Daily Citizen first published an opinion column in April exploring how Dean, who goes by the name “Man Found Standing,” came to head the Spirit of Truth Native American Church and the New Haven Native American Church while identifying himself as a Christian and not being a Native American, founding a non-profit, buying property in a “tony” part of Springfield, Mo. (Greene County), and having expansive acreage in Ava, Douglas County.
“Dean has been involved in Native American traditions like sweat lodges, healing rituals and the use of peyote as a sacrament,” the column said, also sharing a link to a 2017 a Dream Nexus Podcast YouTube video where Dean spoke about how he came to see Bitcoin as an antidote to the federal government “robbing us, stealing our value from us […] through inflation.”
Bitcoin, he said, “isn’t controlled by governments.”
“It was really back in 2003 that I became heavily involved in the Native American Church and I got adopted through some expertise in essential oils and stuff. I became a medicine man to get that legal protection in healers. And when I moved from out west to Missouri, I was given the rights and authority to start out my own independent branch of the Native American Church out here,” he said in the YouTube video.
Left: Paul Dean (Dream Nexus Podcast/YouTube). Right: in Man Found Standing video (Man Found Standing/YouTube)
In an “introductory video” on his “Man Found Standing” YouTube page in 2017, Dean said he is a “Native American medicine man” and a “natural practitioner and the principal medicine chief of the New Haven Native American Church.”
“The church was established to be a place of protection for your own personal beliefs and for your beliefs on how you can control your own natural health and the health of your family,” he said. “I’m going to be speaking on my page here about alternative medicines and about natural practices that can assist you and your family’s health.”
Read the indictment and the redacted version of the complaint here and here.
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