A 39-year-old man from Kentucky pleaded guilty Friday and was immediately sentenced to 13 years and eight months in prison for abducting his 3-year-old son and the boy’s 16-year-old cousin in Tennessee and taking them to Orange County.
Jacob Francisallen Clare pleaded guilty to kidnapping from outside California and deprivation of child custody with a sentencing enhancement for kidnapping a child younger than 14, all felonies. As part of the plea deal, felony counts of statutory rape, oral copulation of a minor, sexual penetration of a minor and incest, were all dismissed.
Clare, who has credit for 1,806 days behind bars since his arrested, admitted abducting the 3-year-old, Noah, and the 16-year-old girl, who were the subject of an Amber Alert out of Tennessee before they were found.
The boy’s mother, in Gallatin, Tennessee, contacted police on Nov. 7, 2021, to report that her ex-boyfriend, Clare, did not return their son after a planned visitation.
The silver Subaru Legacy Clare was driving was captured on a license plate reader in Arizona, then the vehicle was found abandoned in a parking lot on private property in San Clemente before it was towed on Nov. 13, sheriff’s deputies said.
Tennessee authorities contacted Orange County sheriff’s deputies on Nov. 16, 2021, to help track down Clare and the children, deputies said. The children were reunited with their families.
According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, deputies received a tip from a “concerned resident” about a boy matching the description of Noah. Responding deputies found the boy and his cousin.
Dana Point resident Julia Bonin told reporters at a news conference in 2021 that she was taking her son to his sixth-grade classes Thursday morning when she saw three people matching the description of the suspect and the missing children.
Bonin said she follows the sheriff on social media and saw the alerts about the missing children.
“You just have to trust your instincts and gut,” she said. “I almost didn’t act on it.”
She said she spotted them about 8:40 a.m. and called 911 about 10 minutes later.
She had planned to volunteer at her son’s school but as she pulled up to the school to let her son out, she said, “I looked at my son and said, `I have to go back and make sure.”’
Bonin drove back to the location where she saw them walking, on Pacific Coast Highway near Doheny State Beach, got out of her car and took a photo of them, which she compared to the images from authorities on social media.
She said that when she dialed 911, she was “apologetic” because she thought she might be mistaken. But her suspicions were confirmed minutes later when authorities converged on the beach and took Clare into custody without incident. Sheriff Don Barnes described Clare as “cooperative.”
Bonin said the children appeared to be in “good spirits” and that she “sat on the beach, watched the waves; it was a beautiful moment.”
“They are both safe and healthy,” Barnes said, adding that the custodial parents were headed to California.
Barnes praised Bonin for acting on her hunch, and even more so for not confronting the suspect, but instead waiting for police to respond.
“It’s not every day we get on the news and say, `Guess what, we got them,”’ he said.