Two men accused of kidnapping a 16-year-old honor student in a getaway from their Florida prison were ordered held without bail in Salt Lake City Thursday.
U.S. Magistrate Ronald N. Boyce said the men - Patrick Hughes Paige, 21, and Anthony James Cokley, 23 - were to appear before him again on Friday. They were to be accompanied by court-appointed lawyers, and plead guilty in Utah or return to Florida to fight the kidnapping charge.FBI Special Agent Cal Clegg said the men were arrested Wednesday afternoon when alert Utah Highway Patrol troopers stopped the car they were driving on I-15 near Santaquin, Utah County. Troopers said the car's license plates looked suspicious.
The men's arrest ended a nationwide manhunt that began Jan. 3, when Paige and Cokley escaped from the Marion Correction Institution at Lowell, Fla.
Wearing orange Salt Lake County Jail jumpers, wrapped in chains and manacled, Paige and Cokley sat impassively as Boyce read the complaint. The document was signed by FBI special agent Terry M. Wetmore in Jacksonville, Fla.
The complaint says that on Jan. 3, the men escaped from the prison. The next day, it says, they seized Ted Richard Siegel at the gate to his mother's Marion County, Fla., ranch, called the Flamingo Farm. He was returning from a store with his mother's car.
About 10 p.m. that night, the boy made a collect call to his mother, who asked whether he was kidnapped by the convicts who had escaped. He replied in a guarded way, "They will let me go in a couple of days."
On Jan. 14, the complaint adds, the boy again called his mother, saying he had been released just north of Baltimore and that he had her car.
According to Wetmore's affidavit, Siegel told investigators that when he was seized, he was just opening a gate at the end of the ranch's driveway. He said Paige approached him and Cokley choked him to semi-consciousness.
The men forced him to drive them in his mother's car to Atlanta, where he made the first telephone call. Over the next 10 days, Paige and Cokley committed six burglaries and three strong-arm robberies, the boy said.
According to the affidavit, a robbery in Lavonia, Ga., was confirmed by the victim, who said he was choked.
Boyce told Paige and Cokley the maximum possible penalty could be life in prison. They confirmed they are the men named in the complaint and Boyce set the next hearing for 3 p.m. Friday.
Paige said he and Cokley were held in separate cells in the Salt Lake County Jail.