Grandparents Plead Guilty to Abducting Boy
A Virginia Beach, Virginia, couple who abducted their grandson in 1993 to raise him on a Costa Rica coffee farm, then returned 11 years later so the boy could attend a Virginia college, pleaded guilty Tuesday to child abduction.

The couple – Orpheus L. “Woody” Woodbury, 71, and his wife, Sonja, 59 – declined to comment Tuesday.

Their attorney, Mark T. Del Duca, said they pleaded guilty to one felony count each in exchange for a guarantee that they would not serve more than six months in prison .

Del Duca said his goal is to keep the Woodburys from serving any more jail time. They were jailed for 10 days after their arrest in October , before being released on bond .

The couple is scheduled to be sentenced July 13. They remain free after posting a $200,000 bail bond.

The child’s father, Clayton Saunders, attended Tuesday’s hearing in Circuit Court but declined to comment. He has remarried, is the father of twins and no longer lives in Virginia Beach.

After the abduction, Saunders made numerous trips to Costa Rica to retrieve his son, and persuaded at least one television show, “20/20,” to tell his story to a national audience.

When the Woodburys returned to Virginia last year, they were handcuffed as soon as their plane touched down in Northern Virginia.

In an interview last year, they said they returned, in part, because their grandson wanted to return. He is now a freshman at a Virginia college, but the couple asked that the college not be named to protect his privacy.

The couple also said they returned because they want Woody Woodbury’s military pension. Woodbury was a Navy commander during the Vietnam War but lost his pension in the mid-1990s when the couple failed to comply with Virginia court orders.

The dispute stemmed from a custody feud between the couple and their former son-in-law.

In 1988, a judge in Virginia Beach Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court granted the Woodburys custody. They said their daughter – the child’s mother – did not pursue custody because she could not support the boy alone.

The Woodburys were granted custody again by a Virginia Beach Circuit Court judge during their daughter’s divorce in 1992. The father, in a 1996 interview, said he did not apply for custody because his job required him to be out of town for long stretches.

When the Woodburys left the country in January 1993, they were the legal custodians of their 6-year-old grandson.

They moved to Costa Rica, in part, to pursue retirement, but also, they said in a 1996 interview, because they were tired of dealing with the father in visitation battles. Ultimately, however, courts in both countries ordered the Woodburys to return their grandson to the father.

The Woodburys lived modestly, in relative peace. They made do without Woody Woodbury’s military pension. It was stopped in 1996 after legislation to block the pension was introduced by then- U.S. Rep. Owen Pickett of Virginia Beach.

To make up for the lost income, both Woodburys worked as teachers.

Their grandson attended the European School , a private Costa Rica institution.

The family lived in a rented house on a coffee farm – an idyllic setting, the Woodburys said, that provided their grandson with the stability he needed. He earned outstanding grades and the Woodburys encouraged him to attend college.

Sonja Woodbury wanted him to consider schools in Central America, but he had his heart set on the United States, she said. The teenager decided on a Virginia college when the Ivy League proved out of reach.

Neither grandparent regrets their decision.

“We acted out of emotions and love to protect the child from what he was enduring at the time,” Sonja Woodbury said last year. “We did what we thought was in the best interests of the child.”