BALTIMORE — A Maryland woman charged with kidnapping one-day-old Phillip Worthington
from his mother's arms in a Bucks County hospital slashed at her wrists yesterday, hours before a hearing in federal court.
Ramona Joan Thompson, 44, of Ellicott City, injured herself with a razor in the Women's Detention Center of the Baltimore City Jail shortly before 6 a.m., prosecutors said.
Her injury "wasn't serious enough to require sutures," said Max H. Lauten, assistant U.S. attorney for Baltimore, and the 2 p.m. hearing continued as scheduled. Thompson, looking pale and dazed, was ordered held for trial and was transferred to a mental institution for pretrial evaluation.
Authorities said yesterday that she would be tried in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.
During the hearing, Lauten contended that Thompson's attorney, Daniel F. Goldstein, was overstating the severity of Thompson's mental problems.
"We feel there is a lot of posing going on," Lauten said.
Thompson, wearing a blue ski sweater with white and red designs, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Daniel E. Klein Jr. for a combined detention and preliminary hearing to determine whether she could be released on bail and whether the charges against her warranted prosecution.
Lauten disclosed during the hour-long hearing that Thompson was a convicted felon who spent several months during 1970 in a federal prison at Alderson, W.Va., for embezzlement.
He said she had been arrested five times on charges of writing bad checks and taking money under false pretenses. The federal sentence resulted from her only conviction.
Thompson was arrested in a northern Baltimore suburb on Nov. 13, with the baby who was identified the next day as the missing son of Barbara and Neil Worthington of Silverdale Borough, Bucks County.
The infant was abducted Nov. 7 from Grand View Hospital in Sellersville by a woman posing as a nurse. A nationwide hunt ensued.
George Stanley Soustek, 42, described in court documents as Thompson's live-in boyfriend and an alleged acomplice, was released Friday on $100,000 bail after being charged with one count of kidnapping.
FBI agents, acting on a tip by an informant whose name has been withheld, arrested Thompson and Soustek outside a wine store near Baltimore, where agents had trailed them. Thompson was feeding the baby a bottle in a car when agents made the arrest.
Kidnapping is a federal crime that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
