Parents Abduct Son from Custody and Flee

[October 12, 1998]

In Salt Lake City, Utah, Christopher Fink, 23, and his wife Kyndra Fink, 23, face charges for kidnapping of a child and aggravated assault.

It all began when the young parents expressed their conviction that their 21-month-old son David was "the Christ Child" and must remain pure on a diet of fruits, vegetables and herbs.

A concerned social worker along with other Fink family members, placed the malnourished, gaunt 16 pound boy David in protective state custody on September 14. Hours before the boy was to be placed in foster care, during a supervised visit with his natural parents, Christopher and Kyndra forcefully snatched David from the arms of the attending nurse at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, and fled.

A 16-day run from the FBI ensued, during which time Kyndra Fink gave birth to the couple's second child, Elijah Evergreen. Family relations obtained interviews with NBC daytime talk show "Leeza," "Dateline NBC" and "Hard Copy," pleading on national television for the pair to contact authorities and turn themselves in, all to no avail. Finally, in late September, based on a tip from hunters in a remote, mountainous area of southern Montana known as Dead Indian Gulch, police apprehended Christopher, who reluctantly led them to his starving family, huddled by a campfire.

Both children and mother are recovering from dehydration and exposure in a hospital in Billings, and officials report that while David is still severely malnourished, he is now eating on his own. His father, initially held in Yellowstone County Jail, will be transported to Utah for trial, as will Kyndra when she has recovered sufficiently to travel. The State of Utah has custody of David, and both he and baby brother Elijah will return as soon as their medical conditions allow.

Christopher's history reveals a pattern of attaching himself and his family to stringent religious groups, only to drop them in disappointment because of their "lax" moral views. He wrote that the Hale-Bopp comet represented the second coming and created a Web page announcing the "...plain truth in regard to all things." This included lambasting modern-day Christendom, followed by the comment, "I preach strong doctrines that condemn almost everyone I have met, so I have virtually no friends or acquaintances to share my hopes with." A vegetarian who rejects the practices of modern medicine, Christopher also stated that children raised on fruit are "...far healthier and several times stronger..." than others.