Incline woman says she took daughter to escape abusive ex

RENO - A Nevada woman arrested this week for taking her daughter 26 years ago from New Jersey had fled to escape her abusive ex-husband, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

Nancy Dunsavage Fiedler, 57, of Incline Village, remained held in the Washoe County Jail in Reno on a fugitive warrant from Somerset, N.J. She was arrested Tuesday night at her home near Lake Tahoe, where she lives with her daughter, now 32.

New Jersey prosecutors say Fiedler did not have custody of Eva Marie Fiedler, then 6, when the two vanished during a break in a 1984 custody hearing in New Jersey. Her ex-husband, who is the girl's father, had full custody.

Nancy Fiedler said in an affidavit filed in Nevada court that her ex-husband repeatedly threatened that if she ever left him, "he would 'hunt us down' and 'end it all for both of us.'"

"Day in and day out, fear and violence were part of my life. I fled because I had no money (for a lawyer)... and I wanted to remove my daughter from his life of threats and fear. I did not want this to be her future, too," she wrote.

Fiedler had been going by the name Debbie Reed. She said she obtained fake identification and changed her daughter's name to Melissa Reed.

She said Eva Fiedler never knew about the ordeal until the mother explained parts of it two weeks ago because Eva didn't have the necessary photo ID to secure a marriage license for an upcoming wedding.

The daughter confirmed in an accompanying affidavit that her mother told her in late September that she had changed both their names to keep them safe from an abusive father in New Jersey more than two decades ago.

But Nancy Fiedler apparently didn't tell her daughter - until sheriff's deputies showed up at her home Tuesday - that she still was wanted in New Jersey for parental abduction.

Fiedler claimed in her affidavit she had custody of her daughter at the time of the abduction.

John Rogers, the Fiedlers' lawyer, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment Thursday.

A. Peter DeMarco Jr., the acting prosecutor in Somerset County, N.J., said he intended to initiate extradition proceedings to return Nancy Fiedler to New Jersey to be charged with interference with custody.