Arrest tangles custody case

Jorge Maldonado flew to the United States from the Dominican Republic this week expecting to attend a custody hearing over his 3-year-old son.

Maldonado's wife, Viridiana, has been missing for more than a year. He has been battling her family for custody of the child.

When Maldonado, 22, stepped off the a plane in Atlanta on Wednesday, federal agents took him into custody. His attorney in the custody case, Tommy Bolus, explained the situation to a judge during Friday's hearing.

"He's in federal custody, he can't assert his rights today," Bolus told Judge Tommy Edwards of the 10th Judicial Circuit. "Obviously, right now, he's held up."

Bolus said that Maldonado's brother, Gregorio Maldonado, had been detained earlier in the Charleston area by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Jorge Maldonado was picked up in connection with the same investigation, he said.

The attorney said he does not represent the brothers in that situation.

The DEA in Columbia referred questions about the case to federal prosecutors. The U.S. Attorney's Office was unable to confirm or deny an investigation or pending charges against either man.

At the end of the custody hearing, the judge consented to an agreement hammered out by Bolus and Shaundra Young, the South Carolina Legal Services attorney representing the other side.

Maldonado's sister, Minorca Roberts of Goose Creek, will have custody of the child. Viridiana Maldonado's mother, Lilia Michel Guerrero, will get standard visitation, which allows her to see him on weekends and holidays.

Maldonado moved to his family's' native Dominican Republic from Goose Creek in August. But a Berkeley County Family Court Judge ordered him to return to the U.S. with the child for a custody hearing on Friday. He flew stateside with his parents and the child, Jorge Maldonado Jr., on Wednesday.

Viridiana Maldonado's family fears that she has been killed.

The last time they saw her was late on the night of Oct. 11, 2007. She got off work and stopped by the North Charleston apartment she shared with her sister, mother and two children. In addition to Jorge, she had a son from a previous relationship.

Later that night, and into the next morning, her younger sister received a series of cryptic text messages. The first one said she was going downtown, another that she would be out with a friend named Miguel of whom her family had never heard. The last message said she wasn't feeling well and planned to return to Mexico, her native country.

Her family doesn't think she sent the messages.

Earlier that year, she had been living with her husband and the children in Washington state, where he was stationed with the Army at Fort Lewis. But she left after fleeing and spending three months in a women's shelter. She returned to South Carolina, where the two had lived before moving across the country, the month before her disappearance.

A few weeks later, her husband returned to take his son away from his wife's family. They went to Washington but later moved back to South Carolina after he was discharged from the Army.

He originally told investigators he was in Washington when his wife disappeared. But police in Illinois questioned him early on Oct. 11, 2007, in a motel parking lot. Cell phone records showed his phone being used along a route from Illinois to South Carolina later that day, investigators' affidavits state. Police have said he abruptly ended an interview in December when they brought up that evidence.

Reach Noah Haglund at 937-5550 or nhaglund@postandcourier.com.