Part 4 of 5 · Making the most of their victims’ misfortune
Every office
The deputy who took him, was cleared to testify for him, and came back for me.
A custody order has no police behind it. The uniform act every state adopted to enforce custody orders across state lines gives a parent a list of things to ask for — registration, a hearing the next judicial day, a warrant, a prosecutor’s help locating the child — and every one of them runs through an official who may say no. There is no federal agency that returns a child taken across state lines in a domestic case; the FBI acts only after a county prosecutor charges a felony and asks. So I asked every office in two states, in writing, and kept their answers.
| Date | Office | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| September 8, 2026 | Mendocino County District Attorney | The DA’s investigator called Vincent Hyler’s lawyer before he spoke to me, then told me: “All you’re doing is every day writing stuff to file in court.” “Maybe you had to think about hiring a lawyer.” No action under the Family Code section that directs the DA to “take all actions necessary to locate and return the child.” |
| September 8, 2026 | California DOJ, Missing Persons | The matter “does not pertain to missing or unidentified persons.” |
| September 11, 2026 | Lee County (FL) Sheriff’s Office | At 1:07 a.m., the deputy who took J.J.: he “won’t be entered into the system”; “a police report is for a crime.” The lieutenant’s letter the same day: “unable to enter your son as a missing person”; “civil in nature.” |
| September 15, 2026 | State Attorney, 20th Circuit (FL) | Prosecutes only cases “brought to us by our local police agencies.” |
| September 28, 2026 | Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office | Declined a welfare check after speaking with the DA’s investigator; “taking the DA’s position.” The child has never been entered in the state or national missing-person systems; the Sheriff is the entering agency. Vincent Hyler’s brother-in-law works for this office. |
| November 2, 2026 | California Court of Appeal, First District | One line, denying habeas corpus for J.J. No opposition had been filed. |
| November 6, 2026 | Florida Sixth District Court of Appeal | Denied. |
Then they arrested me
On September 28 I sent the Mendocino District Attorney a sworn complaint about the taking and sent the ATF a referral about the shotgun. On September 29 the same Lee County deputy who had carried my son out of my house — the one who had told me at 1 a.m. two weeks earlier that “a police report is for a crime” — came back to my home and arrested me (Lee County No. 26-CF-017549). I was held in a patrol car, booked, and jailed; bail was set at $75,000; my phone was taken and has not been returned; my dog was taken to animal services. The State of Florida never filed an information. It dismissed the case on October 26 with nobody asking. That is the family’s “she’s the criminal” story, from start to finish: one arrest, the day after I reported them, by their own witness, dropped by the State.
No independent person has laid eyes on J.J. and reported to me since August 19, 2026.
Where the record stands now: sworn referrals are on file with the California Attorney General, the Governor of Florida, FDLE, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (No. 852678-SDR), the FBI, the ATF, Mendocino County Probation, the California Commission on Judicial Performance, the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, the State Bar of California and The Florida Bar.
“Put yourself in my shoes. You don’t have a sheriff you can go to. You don’t have a DA. You don’t have a judge. You don’t have anybody, anywhere.” — Carli Heller
The documents for this part
- Her September 8, 2026 transcript of the call with the Mendocino DA’s investigator
- The Lee County Sheriff’s September 11, 2026 letter; the State Attorney’s September 15 email; the California DOJ’s September 8 email
- Her notes of the Mendocino Sheriff’s September 28, 2026 call
- The September 29 arrest and the October 26 dismissal (Lee County No. 26-CF-017549)
- The Notice of Remote Appearance (August 26) and the August 28 order permitting the deputy to appear as Vincent Hyler’s witness
- The First District’s November 2 and the Sixth DCA’s November 6 denials
Next — Part 5: The order that rewrote the minutes
One date sworn on a Wednesday, a different one signed into an order on Thursday. Read Part 5.
Every statement about a court proceeding on this page is drawn from a filed court record, cited by case number; where a letter or call is quoted, the quotation is verbatim. J.J. is referred to by his initials. No photograph of him appears on this site.