Gary Reburn, a suspect in a botched child snatch murder plot, was “framed” by his partner and duped into believing he had fathered the children they sought to kidnap, US court documents have claimed.
Valerie Hayes and Gary Reburn were extradited from Scottish prisons last year after being accused of attempting to kidnap five children and kill their four parents in Virginia.
They were found living in Glasgow in 2018 along with Jennifer Amnott, a third suspect who has now changed her plea to testify against the pair.
Defence case laid out
The trio had remained behind bars in Scotland for seven years, costing the public purse at least £1million as they battled to stay in the country.
Now Reburn’s lawyers have laid out his defence case, saying he has only come to realise eight years later that Hayes “deliberately deceived and framed him” over the plot as she posed as a secret agent tasked with rescuing children.
In a motion to be tried separately from Hayes, Reburn’s lawyers state: “He agreed to aid Hayes in travelling to Scotland and to support her false claim that she had been in Europe (at the time of the alleged offence) and he did so believing that they had children in common and that she was a government operative whose whereabouts often needed to remain secret to protect herself, her children, and their mutual children.”
Prosecution evidence
Prosecutors have detailed the evidence they plan to present at the trial, saying Hayes faked her death and posed as a body double called ‘Madeline’ as she dragged childless Amnott and her husband, Frank, into the plot in the promise she would make them parents.
The US Attorney’s Office claim Hayes, living in Maryland with then boyfriend Reburn, fed the Amnotts lies that she was in intelligence and claimed her kids had been kidnapped and were held by two families in the Old Order Mennonites community in Dayton.
Prosecutors say Hayes, Reburn and Frank Amnott attempted to carry out the plot, but a parent fled from the first property and dialled 911. When cops arrived they found Frank Amnott holding another parent hostage.
Reburn's claim of deception
Prosecutors say Hayes and Reburn fled to Maryland before heading to Scotland with Jennifer Amnott. Frank Amnott pled guilty to his part in the plot in 2019.
Hayes and Reburn now face trial on a 16-count indictment. In fresh court documents, Reburn’s lawyers say Hayes’s conduct over time led him to “genuinely believe relatively absurd proposition”, relying on the defence that Hayes “sought to frame Reburn in this case and engaged in a premeditated plan to use Reburn to evade personal responsibility for her actions in Dayton, Virginia”.
Court papers state: “Over many years...Hayes convinced Mr Reburn that they had children together. Many witnesses support this account. Mr Reburn genuinely believed it to be true, and he believed that the children had been kidnapped by various nefarious actors connected to Ms Perfect Hayes’s purported intentional espionage and child-rescue efforts.”
He claims that Hayes told him to tell “anyone necessary” that she had been in Europe over the period of the attempted abductions and that he had been staying in Virginia with the “lookalike” of Hayes, called “Madeline”.
He says Hayes asked him to claim that their mutual children, who he now accepts do not exist, were actually the children of ‘Madeline’. The court was told he “agreed to help with this deception” motivated by his concern for the children.
They said only eight years later after viewing evidence in the case had he realised that he had been the victim of a “long con, that he did not have children with Hayes, and that she had never been a secret Government operative”. Hayes and Reburn are expected to go on trial next year.
