Police arrest mother of young girl at center of complicated Utah kidnaping case

VERNAL, Utah (KSL.com) — The biological mother of a young girl who has no custodial rights to her daughter has been arrested and accused of being part of a kidnapping plot that has already resulted in the arrests of four people.

Lindsey Colleen Morrell, 31, was arrested Tuesday for investigation of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary, obstruction of justice, impersonating an officer, forgery and emergency reporting abuse. She was booked into the Utah County Jail where she is being held on behalf of Uintah County investigators.

On May 15, Beth Marilyn Schardine, 32, Ty Lucero Whetten, 36, and Kaitlyn Anne Bachman, 24, traveled from Utah County to Vernal with the intention of taking a 3-year-old girl from the child’s biological father and then taking that girl “to the child’s biological mother in another city,” according to charging documents.

After going to several locations in Vernal looking for the child, police say Whetten and Bachman entered the father’s house without permission.

“The victim’s wife called 911 to report that Ty and Kaitlyn were inside of her residence threatening to take the child. It was reported that Ty was in possession of a handgun. The victim was also inside the residence and confronted Ty and Kaitlyn with a handgun,” according to a police booking affidavit.

When Whetten and Bachman attempted to exit the residence, they were confronted by police officers who had arrived on scene.

“The two police officers … ordered Ty to drop the gun. Ty pointed his handgun toward the officers and retreated into the residence. As Ty and Kaitlyn retreated into the residence, the (father) fired a single shot from his handgun into the wall in the stairwell,” the affidavit states.

The father is a corrections officer at the Uintah County Jail. No injuries were reported. Both Whetten and Bachman were arrested, as was Schardine who was sitting in a vehicle nearby.

“Interviews with all three suspects also elicited information that the three of them had been planning to travel to Vernal and kidnap the child for a couple of weeks,” according to the affidavit. When asked by police if they would honor the court’s decision granting the father full custody, “they would not give a straight answer and indicated they had a propensity to want to remove the child from the father.”

As Whetten was being booked into jail, police found a “very distinctive notepad paper. The paper was multi-colored and had a large A on the top of it. Written on the notes were instructions of who Ty was going to claim to be (an officer with Child Protective Services), and instructions on how to successfully kidnap the child. The notes even detailed specific language to use while attempting to kidnap the child,” the affidavit alleges.

Police learned that the father was awarded full custody of his daughter on Aug. 7, 2023. But he was unable to locate her until Jan. 10 when officers went to the home of 52-year-old Amanda Kaye Bachman in Goshen, Utah County, where the child was being held.

After the May 15 incident in Vernal, police say Bachman “posted numerous videos” on social media discussing the incident. A video posted on June 7 “depicts Amanda being interviewed by an unknown person and is 36 minutes and 55 seconds long. The information in the video is significant because Amanda admits that she was part of the planning process to go to Vernal and kidnap the child,” according to the affidavit.

Bachman allegedly claimed the three arrested were only going to serve legal papers to request mediation. But police say “the claim of serving paperwork to the victim is significant for the fact that on the night of the incident in Vernal the only legal document found in the suspect’s possession was fraudulent. The court document had misspelled words, a judge’s signature that does not exist, showed the petitioner was the victim, and identified the officer as … the same name on the notes to Ty,” the affidavit states.

At the time all of this was happening, Bachman and Schardine were already facing charges of harassing the mayor of the town of Goshen, in part by falsely claiming on social media he is involved in child human trafficking. When Bachman showed up to court for a scheduled hearing in that case on Aug. 22, she was arrested in connection with the Vernal kidnapping attempt.

When she was taken into custody, police found in her purse a notepad that “was a perfect match to the notepad paper found on Ty the night he was arrested,” the affidavit states. Bachman’s cellphone was also searched and investigators reported finding evidence indicating that Morrell was also involved in the planning of the attempted kidnapping that occurred on May 15.

“The messages are significant because it shows that Lindsey did in fact know that her ex-husband had legal custody of their daughter. It also shows that Lindsey and Amanda had been planning and executing plans to locate the child months before the incident,” the affidavit says.

Morrell is accused of calling several law enforcement agencies in Uintah County reporting a missing child in an apparent attempt to find out where her daughter and ex-husband are living, according to the affidavit.

“Lindsey has multiple documented incidents where she has attempted to locate and obtain illegal possession of her daughter. Lindsey has also continued to make false claims of a missing child even after the attempted kidnapping of child victim. She has also been part of a group of criminals that have made statements about not honoring court orders,” the affidavit alleges.

Because her ex-husband works at the Uintah County Jail, Morrell is being held in the Utah County Jail.