Mount Vernon foster parent, her mom plead guilty in international kidnapping case

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. — A mother and her daughter accused of kidnapping a Mount Vernon boy and taking him to Vietnam, both pleaded guilty to detention interference.

Amanda Dinges and her mother, Amber, pleaded guilty on March 23 after previously pleading not guilty in January. Amanda Dinges will serve 12 months in the Skagit County Jail; Amber Dinges will serve a six-month sentence.

Both are accused of leaving the country with Amanda’s 5-year-old adopted child. Authorities said the couple fled to Vietnam with the child shortly after Thanksgiving.

About a week earlier, the duo met with the child’s biological mother to arrange overnight visits. Soon both they and the boy disappeared.

Investigators were able to track the boy to a city near Hanoi, Vietnam, where he was brought back to the US and reunited with his biological mother.

Amanda and Amber Dinges were arrested at Sea-Tac Airport about two weeks later. It remains unclear why they brought the boy to Vietnam and what the kidnappers’ plans might be with the boy.

Skagit County Prosecutor Rich Weyrich personally took the case.

“If you have a 5-year-old child, if you lose it, you don’t know what to do,” the veteran prosecutor previously said. “We want to give a lot of credit to Mount Vernon police and the federal government, who helped us find the child and bring him back.”

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