By Henri E. Cauvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 1, 2006

A mother charged with parental kidnapping was released from a halfway house yesterday -- and will continue living with the girl she is accused of abducting.

Mary Jane Byrd was arrested and put in a halfway house in April after federal marshals found her and her daughter, Marilyn, in Wilmington, Del. The two disappeared from the Washington area 13 years ago during a custody dispute with the girl's father, Carl Dodd; Marilyn was found on her 17th birthday.

D.C. Superior Court Magistrate Judge Ronald A. Goodbread said yesterday that a positive report from the halfway house led him to conclude that Byrd could remain free while the case moves forward. Byrd, 35, must check in by phone with court authorities once a week.

Dodd, who was awarded sole custody of Marilyn years ago, saw his daughter for the first time in 13 years April 17. But instead of bringing Marilyn back to the Washington area, Dodd decided to let her remain in Wilmington, where she had been residing in a rowhouse with her mother and maternal grandmother.

With the judge's ruling yesterday, Mary Jane Byrd is headed back to Delaware, where she will resume living with Marilyn, lawyer Dehlia Aghadiuno, of the D.C. Public Defender Service, said yesterday in court.

Because he has sole custody, Dodd could simply take his daughter out of the Delaware home. But Dodd, a Metrorail worker from Fort Washington, said he has no intention of doing that.

"As long as there is cooperation with me seeing my daughter and talking to my daughter, there should be no problem at all," Dodd said in a telephone interview.

It creates something of a quandary for prosecutors as they move toward a trial on the felony charge: The defendant will be living with the person she is alleged to have abducted, a witness in the case.

"It's not ideal," Traci L. Hughes, a spokeswoman for the D.C. attorney general's office, said when asked whether the case could be compromised by the living arrangement.

The prosecutor, Assistant D.C. Attorney General Anthony Gagliardi, had objected to the release, arguing that Byrd has shown a willingness to flee the jurisdiction and to ignore court orders.

But Goodbread said that Byrd's record in the halfway house was remarkable and that the limited space for women in such facilities needs to be preserved for people more in need of close supervision.

In a letter to the judge, Byrd's caseworker wrote that Byrd "has been very compliant and exhibited no disciplinary or behavioral problems." Byrd "can best be characterized as generally very cooperative, a respectful individual with a pleasant disposition," the letter said.

Leaving court with her lawyer and her mother, Byrd did not answer questions from reporters.

Marilyn Dodd, the girl's paternal grandmother, said she has concerns about what will happen. "She's going to run again, I'm sure," said Dodd, who attended the hearing on her son's behalf. "I don't like the idea of her getting out."

But Carl Dodd said that Byrd knows better than to try to run off with their daughter again. "I think she's learned a lesson off this one," he said.

Staff writer Sue Anne Pressley Montes contributed to this report.