FBI joins search for Cary woman charged with abducting children

The FBI is getting involved in the search for a Cary woman accused of child abduction for taking her young daughter and son to visit family in Mexico and never returning.

Federal authorities filed a criminal complaint this week charging Sonia del Carmen Leon de Carol with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. The move, which includes issuance of an arrest warrant, will put more federal resources on the case.

"We will assist in locating, arresting and getting a person in custody," FBI Special Agent Casey Solana said Friday.

Leon de Carol, 43, flew to Mexico City in early June with her 5-year-old daughter, Andrea, and 4-year-old son, James, for what she told a McHenry County divorce judge would be a three-week visit with relatives.

But after arriving in Mexico City, authorities say, Leon de Carol canceled her plane tickets home and has since made herself unreachable except for an occasional e-mail to her former husband, James Carol.

A phone number she provided Carol so that he could speak with his children was out of service, his attorney, Robert Medansky said. And a rental lease she provided to show she had lined up a place to live when she returned proved to be bogus.

Carol said he has not spoken with the children since they left the country in early June. The couple had been living under a joint parenting agreement that gave Leon de Carol residential custody, but allowed him frequent visitation.

Besides putting additional resources to work, the federal complaint may spur Mexican authorities to act on the case, something Carol's lawyer said they have been reluctant to do.

"Getting a warrant of this type may help the process," Solana said.

If located and returned to the U.S. Leon de Carol would not be prosecuted in federal court, but instead turned over to McHenry County, where she faces a felony child abduction charge.