Self-proclaimed ‘witch’ charged with kidnapping son of missing mom

An Alabama man in the United States of America who claims to be a witch, a god and the last person to see missing mother Leila Cavett alive now has been charged in federal court with kidnapping.

Shannon Ryan, 38, of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, had his first appearance in Fort Lauderdale federal court Monday.

Ryan had already been in Broward County Main Jail on two counts of lying to a federal officer. From the look of the criminal complaint, kidnapping might not be the last charge he faces.

THE CRIMINAL COMPLAINT AGAINST RYAN

According to the criminal complaint, police spoke to Ryan as he walked up to Cavett’s GMC pickup truck in the parking lot of a Hollywood Walmart on July 28. He told police the last he saw of Cavett, she and her 2-year-old son, Kamdyn, left the adjacent RaceTrac gas station in a car with several Black men he didn’t know on July 26.

The FBI said Thursday the last record they have of Jasper, Alabama, resident Cavett alive is the security camera video from July 25 at the RaceTrac station. Kamdyn was found the next day walking around Miramar’s Willowbrook Apartments complex, launching the investigation into his mother’s disappearance.

But the complaint says when the FBI reviewed surveillance video, they saw no car of Black males such as Ryan described. It says they did see something else when checking video from around the apartment complex: Ryan’s gold 2004 Lexus, just minutes before Kamdyn was found.

“Ryan’s Lexus is very distinguishable because it is missing the front bumper,” the complaint says.

Also, the RaceTrac surveillance video shows Ryan’s car leaving at 8:15 a.m. July 26 and returning at 8:38 a.m., the time frame in which Kamdyn was found at the Willowbrook Apartments, 1860 SW 68th Ave. Cellphone tracking also showed Ryan’s phone to be in the area of the Willowbrook at that time.

RaceTrac employees remembered seeing toys and women’s clothes in the dumpster around July 26. One employee “recognized a distinct pair of floral pants worn by [Cavett] in a picture shown to them.”

• Excerpted from a Miami Herald report.