2 charged with abducting daughter of California billionaire Stewart Butterfield

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – Prosecutors charged two people with abducting a California billionaire’s child and hiding the teenager in San Francisco for six days.

On Tuesday, the Marin County District Attorney’s Office filed felony charges against Christopher “Kio” Dizefalo, 26, of San Francisco, and Sarah Atkins for allegedly abducting a 16-year-old minor in Marin County on April 21.

The teen’s parents are Stewart Butterfield, a billionaire businessman and former CEO of Slack, and his ex-wife, Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr.

Fake reported her daughter missing to the Marin County Sheriff’s Office on the morning of April 21. The mother told investigators that her daughter vanished from their Bolinas home , left a note behind, and likely ran away. FBI agents joined the around-the-clock search.

San Francisco Police Department officers found the teen unharmed at 11:30 p.m. on April 27 inside a white van in the city’s drug-plagued Tenderloin neighborhood.

Dizefalo was also inside the white van at the time, MCSO said. Investigators described Dizefalo as the teen’s “adult friend,” and he was questioned at the SFPD’s Tenderloin police station.

The teen “was uninjured and detectives confirmed she had run away from their home voluntarily. After being interviewed by MCSO Detectives, Dizefalo was arrested for multiple criminal violations and was booked in the Marin County Jail,” MCSO wrote.

The teen’s six-day disappearance made international headlines, and the sheriff’s office thanked the public for sending in tips that “ultimately led to (the victim’s) safe return.”

Prosecutors said Atkins and Dizefalo tried to “conceal” the teen from Butterfield and Fake.

A criminal complaint filed by the district attorney states that the co-defendants “did willfully
and unlawfully, not having a right to custody, maliciously take, entice away, keep, withhold, and conceal a child … with the intent to detain and conceal that child from a lawful custodian, to wit: Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield.”

Atkins and Dizefalo are also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor for allegedly encouraging the teen not to return home.

Dizefalo remained behind bars on Tuesday night in lieu of $50,000 bail. Atkins is not in custody, according to Marin County inmate records. The duo was slated to make their first court appearance on Wednesday morning for arraignment.

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