ALLENTOWN, Pa. _ The wife of Kevin Esterly, who was charged with taking an Allentown, Pa., teen to Mexico without her parents' permission, took her family's heartbreak to the national airwaves, telling "Good Morning America" that their four children keep asking for their father.
"I was worried, you know, my children would cry every night, asking 'When is Daddy coming home?'" Stacey Esterly told "Good Morning America," in a segment that aired Monday morning.
She also said she is seeking a divorce.
Kevin Esterly, 45, is being held in Lehigh County Jail on $500,000 bail following his extradition from Florida over the weekend. Esterly is charged with interfering with the custody of a child, a felony that would require him to register as a sex offender for 15 years.
The Lowhill Township man fled with 16-year-old Amy Yu to Mexico on March 5, weeks after authorities learned in was signing the teen out of her Northampton County charter school without her mother's permission.
Stacey Esterly said the last time she saw her husband, she kissed him goodbye.
"He said, 'Have a great day at work, I'll see you when you get home,'" she recalled.
Yu's mother reported her missing after she didn't return home from school March 5, police said. Esterly was reported missing by his family two days later, sparking a search for the two, whose "secretive relationship" had been exposed weeks earlier, according to police.
Yu's mother went to pick the teen up after school in February and learned Esterly, posing has her stepfather, had already done so, according to police. Investigators learned Esterly had signed Yu out of school using that ruse 10 times during the current school year.
Court records show that since December, Kevin Esterly has been renting an apartment in Allentown about four blocks from Yu's home.
Yu was in many ways a part of the Esterly family for much of the last eight years, Stacey Esterly said. They met in church and took her on her first ski trip and her first trip to the beach.
"We took Amy on a lot of family vacations, a lot of family outings," Stacey Esterly said. "We took her in and treated her as part of our family."
In court records, police called the relationship between Kevin Esterly and Yu "secretive," but did not elaborate.
Police said Kevin Esterly and Yu flew to Mexico with cash taken from his wife and Yu's mother. They were captured March 17 near Cancun by Mexican federal police and U.S. Marshals.
According to her attorney, Stacey Esterly fears he could pay bail and try to contact her and their four daughters.
Legal experts said that depending on what happened in Mexico and what investigators learn about Kevin Esterly's relationship with Yu, he might face much more serious charges, possibly federal ones.
