To the Extreme

Kidnapping and threatening to kill your own child is awful under any circumstances but the motive here is distressing.

A fanatic vegan who kidnapped his 14-month-old son in Brooklyn is hiding in the woods - and vowing to kill the boy if cops come after him, his mother-in-law said yesterday.

Screaming that the toddler was not eating healthy food, Raphael Spindell, 34, snatched little Andre from his maternal grandmother in Coney Island Saturday and has been missing with the boy and the child's mother since.

Spindell, who calls himself Archangel and lists his occupation as "radical environmentalist" in an Internet profile, called the grandmother, Zoya Watterson, 54, later Saturday.

"He said they were in the forest and he told me that if police tried to arrest him, he'd kill himself and the baby," Watterson said in her native Russian, breaking down in tears. In a subsequent call, Spindell claimed the baby and his mother no longer were with him, said Watterson.

Spindell lists "primitivism," "green anarchy" and animal rights among his hobbies.

UPDATE 9/8/04
In case you didn't see it, somebody claiming to be the father in the story above entered a long comment/defense of his actions. I don't know if it's really him, nor do I have any idea of the validity of charges he makes. There's more on this guy here.

I just heard on the radio on the way home from work that he turned the kid over to Child Services. I'll provide a link when I can locate one. Happy ending, I guess.

UPDATE II
NY1 story stating the child is safe.
Follow the trackback for some more info or click here for ScaryNY.

(From a quick scan of ScaryNY, it's a pretty cool site that tracks crimes in NYC.)

Comments

[Raphael Spindell]

I am the father, Raphael Spindell who is being hunted like a human dog. I am here to say, that all of these allegations are false, and when our defense is had and we (me and my wife) are heard in court finally, we will be found completely exhonerated. I can tell you 1) obviously, with internet access I am not "hiding in the woods", and that 2), I NEVER made any claim to bring any harm to my child, who'm I love, and whom I actually delivered by myself in a homebirth.

My mother-in-law is a very disturbed woman, who, having lost two sons of her own in childbirth in Russia, before coming to America with her daughter, who was later to become my wife, has developed a severely pathalogical need for a male child. When my son was born, she started becoming very attached to him, and has been distressing me and my wife with her desires to take over his care from us. She filed false allegations with the Administration for childrens Services, told the police where we were and made claims that we were going to harm / hurt the child, so that she could gain sole custody. The woman is a sick, twisted liar who will be sued for slander. The woman is covering up her own inadequate parenting which caused the death of her own children and her abuse of her daughter (my wife) which caused her to become a runaway at 15 years old. And what is not being said is that she beat my wife while she was not only pregnant with my son, several times, but also beat her while my wife was breastfeeding my son. She also slammed a door into my sons head the day that I took my son into my own custody. I took my son out of her house so that he would be safe, me and my wife have since returned him to the care of the social services pending that he be placed with a close, and trusted, and sane, family friend. We also took him out of the house because Zoya Watterson is again living with her on-again-off-again husband who is a heroin addict who has been in and out of heroin rehab many times this past year, and who has a terminal case of hepatitis C which he contracted when using dirty needles. The law is on our side as it is approved for a parent who feels their child is in immediate harm, and can prove it, to take that child out of the custody situation and remand him to another foster care agency. That is what we did. Please, do not trust everything you hear in the slanted and biased media. The half truths and lies that are published are incredulous, and I never would have known just how far this could go until I found myself on the receiving end of the published slander.

As far as my sons diet, my son is healthy, whole and strong, he runs walks jumps climb, has bright eyes and full set of teeth, and is congnitavely advanced. He will remain that way on a well planned and intelligently forumalated vegan diet, not a "fanatic" vegan diet which the papers are insisting he is being fed. He is not being fed the "juice and seeds" that the papers claim. He has a complete and balanced vegan diet full of fruts, nuts, vegetables, grains, juices, and other nutritional additives (nutritional yeast for b-12, iron supplements, etc). He was diagnosted, incorrectly with iron-dificiency anemia, while he had a low grade fever, search for "fever iron infection" on the internet, and you will what every pediatrition should now, that during or immediately after a fever or infection, iron stores in the body will be lower than normal. He was also incorrectly diagnosed with FTT or failure to thrive, search for the FTT report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is a long read, but you will see immediately that FTT is an often mis-diagnosed condition, that it cannot be diagnosed on a single visit (which is what they did), but has to be determined over several clinical visits over the course of a year while taking accurate growth measurements, which obviously in this case was not done.

Furthermore, the making me out to be a "fanatical vegan eco-terrorist" is press sensationalism to justify selling copies of their papers. The most radical environmental thing I have done is to switch my laundry detergent to a biodegradable brand.

What we need is for people to start getting the truth out about this case, and we need legal and professional assistance and support to get our child back who is the innocent who is suffereing in this story, ripped from his mothers arms and her breast, suffering seperation and detachment anxiety, the last I saw my son he was showing signs of severe psychosis and depression. If anyone out there can help my cause, please get in touch with us somehow.

thank you,
From a loving father
wrongly accused,
Raphael Spindell
NYC

[Alf]

I hope this will get to Raphael Spindell. Please ensure that it does. I am not sure what the situation is regarding your child and so on but I sincerely hope that it is improved. I just want to reassure you that you are not alone in being targetted for promoting veganism and that you should not give up. People are ignorant and fearful, doing themselves harm they are unwilling to acknowledge and too consumer-poisoned to 'deny themselves' anything. This story is particularly indicative of people's fear of veganism; not simply due to the bad press about the diet but also due to the bias of law, no doubt, because you do not eat flesh and drink calf food. I hope you can tell me how things are now; I hope that they are better.
Alf

[Alf]

I hope this will get to Raphael Spindell. Please ensure that it does. I am not sure what the situation is regarding your child and so on but I sincerely hope that it is improved. I just want to reassure you that you are not alone in being targetted for promoting veganism and that you should not give up. People are ignorant and fearful, doing themselves harm they are unwilling to acknowledge and too consumer-poisoned to 'deny themselves' anything. This story is particularly indicative of people's fear of veganism; not simply due to the bad press about the diet but also due to the bias of law, no doubt, because you do not eat flesh and drink calf food. I hope you can tell me how things are now; I hope that they are better.
Alf

[Cassandra]

Does anyone have an update on this article, or no how to contact Mr. Spindell... If you're out there and free somewhere Ralph, please contact me. Cassandra soulautistic@yahoo.com