WORLD-HERALD EXCLUSIVE
A Pennsylvania woman wanted on an FBI warrant for allegedly fleeing parental kidnapping charges lived for as long as two years with her daughter, under assumed names, with the Intercessors of the Lamb religious group in Omaha.
And after a friend of the Intercessors spotted a wanted poster at a Walmart store, the then-director of the group, Mother Nadine Brown, allegedly directed someone to drive the woman, Carolyn Casey-Keyvani, and her child to California, an Omaha archdiocese official and a former Intercessor said.
The incident was one of the alarming issues that came to light when a canon lawyer visited the Intercessors of the Lamb this summer, said the Rev. Joseph Taphorn, moderator of the curia for the Archdiocese of Omaha.
That visitation, by the Rev. James Conn of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, led to Brown's resignation at Omaha Archbishop George J. Lucas' request. Two weeks later, Lucas shut down the Intercessors as a Catholic organization, saying that the Intercessors of the Lamb Inc. board had impeded his efforts to reform the group.
An attorney for the board members has said they disagree with the archdiocese and many of its findings.
Brown could not be reached for comment Tuesday. The board's attorney, David Levy, said he does not represent Brown and that the board had no comment on the allegations about the fugitive.
An Omaha FBI spokeswoman, Sandy Breault, said the agency is not investigating Brown's or other Intercessors' roles in the matter.
Casey-Keyvani, believed to be 51, is in federal custody in Riverside, Calif., awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania on a felony charge of interfering with custody of a child. She was arrested recently in Riverside with help from information received from the Archdiocese of Omaha.
Last week, the archdiocese bused 48 members of the organization — a mixed group of laymen, laywomen and clerics who live as religious hermits — to a Catholic retreat center in Schuyler, Neb., to care for them while they determined a new future for themselves.
The Intercessors had a goal of becoming a Catholic religious order and were developing a campus on about 75 acres at and around 11811 Calhoun Road. They had rankled neighbors by buying up houses and refusing to talk to neighbors.
Casey-Keyvani apparently stayed at one of the houses for a time.
She allegedly absconded from suburban Philadelphia with her daughter, Caroline Casey-Keyvani, after her ex-husband was granted custody of the child in November 2006. A criminal charge was filed against her in Pennsylvania in July 2007, said Jackson M. Stewart Jr., chief deputy district attorney for Delaware County. In January 2008, a federal arrest warrant was issued for her for alleged flight to avoid prosecution.
By then, Casey-Keyvani and her daughter, then 6 or 7 years old, were living in one of the Intercessors' houses in Omaha's Ponca Hills neighborhood.
“We were told that we were helping to protect them from the evil ex-husband who was going to send (the child) to Iran and she would become a sex slave,” said a former Intercessor, Linda Neuhoff, who went by Sister Elizabeth Marie. She said the hermits believed the story or at least accepted that they were protecting the two.
Stewart said by telephone Tuesday that a Pennsylvania court had awarded custody to the father, and that the father and home environment had been checked out as a part of the court proceedings.
In Omaha, the child was enrolled in a school under an alias, Taphorn said.
In the fall of 2009, a friend of the Intercessors recognized Carolyn Casey-Keyvani's picture in an FBI wanted poster hanging in a Walmart store, Neuhoff said. The friend alerted the hermits.
Neuhoff said she took the matter to Brown.
“She asked me if my dad would fly her (Casey-Keyvani) on his private jet to Puerto Rico,” Neuhoff said. “I said no.”
Neuhoff said she told Brown in a letter that she should call Archbishop Lucas but did not receive a reply.
Shortly thereafter, Brown directed another person to drive the mother and child to California, Taphorn said he and Conn eventually were told. He said the archdiocese learned of the matter during Conn's visits to the Intercessors this summer.
Taphorn said he looked into it, determined that the reports were credible and learned that the fugitive might still be harbored somewhere. He said he called the FBI on Oct. 7. He said he was told that Brown had arranged transportation from Omaha to California for the mother and child.
Taphorn then received a tip about the mother and child's whereabouts from a companion of the Intercessors in California. He passed that tip on to the FBI, and agents soon arrested the mother and took the child into protective custody.
“We have an obligation to do the right thing, and our policy is always to cooperate with law enforcement,” Taphorn said. “We believed we had significant information, and as it played out, we did.”
The FBI's Breault said that information that was developed in Omaha “led to the safe recovery of the child.”
Contact the writer:
444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com
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