Charges dropped for daughter, mother accused of taking boy, 5

Charges against a mother and daughter accused of kidnapping a 5-year-old boy this summer in Minneola have been dropped because of a lack of evidence, a prosecutor said this week.

Jennifer Cook, 35, and her mother, Kathleen Cook, 56, were arrested in July and accused of forcibly abducting Jennifer Cook’s son outside his father’s Minneola home.

Brandon Mark Difilippo, the boy’s father, told deputies that the pair shoved the “kicking and crying” boy into their car as he was riding his bicycle and “sped off,” according to an arrest report.

But Monday, the State Attorney’s Office dropped the case because Difilippo’s version of the story was the only “admissable, circumstantial evidence” to prove Jennifer Cook and Kathleen Cook abducted the child, supervising Assistant State Attorney Walter Forgie said in an email.

Kathleen Cook said the charges have been exhausting for her and her daughter, who live in Illinois and are “still fighting the custody battle and a divorce.”

“[My daughter] is a teacher, and kidnapping and concealing a child is not good for her file,” especially when not true, Cook said.

Forgie said the evidence actually “points to a lack of intent to conceal the location of the child.”

For example, the two women willingly sent the boy to stay for a couple weeks with Difillipo, who was “refusing to send the child back to Illinois,” he said. No cus- tody agreement between Cook and Difilippo was in place at the time.

The mother-daughter pair did not leave Lake County with the child and had been in contact with Difilippo the morning of the incident, Forgie said.

The elder Cook said she was stressed and worried by the ordeal. She and Jennifer Cook were in Lake County this week for visitation.

“Oh, I’m relieved,” she said.