Son caught in middle as pair goes on trial in his 1979 abduction

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - After looking over his shoulder for years, Barry Smiley tossed and turned for three sleepless nights, preparing to divulge the secret.

Finally, in spring 2000 he had decided he was going to tell his red-haired, wide-eyed son, Matt Propp, his family background.

Dismantling everything their son had taken for granted about his family, Mr. Smiley and his wife, Judi, told the boy that they had reared for 21 years that they were not his birthparents. They told him they had quietly fled their Queens, N.Y., home in 1980, taking Matt with them, and had changed their identities when they settled in Albuquerque.

This week, the Smiley's family deception enters a New York courtroom. On Monday, the Smileys will face charges of kidnapping Matt as a baby and taking him to New Mexico, where they assumed the names Bennett and Mary Propp. If convicted, they face up to 25 years in prison.

"We do not believe we kidnapped him," said Mrs. Smiley, 50, who along with her 56-year-old husband was charged last year. Both are free on $25,000 bond. "He was our child, in our custody."

No matter what happens in the trial, expected to last up to six weeks, all parties agree there may be no winners.

"The fact of the matter is the Smileys committed an egregious harm, inflicted pain and suffering for 22 years on the entire Russini family [Matt's birth family]," said Fred Magovern, the New York attorney representing Anthony Russini, Matt's birth father. "They also did a terrible thing to him. They deprived him of his cultural heritage, religious heritage and deprived him of his true family."

The story of family drama began in 1979, when the Smileys were going through private adoption proceedings in the days after Matt's birth in March 1979.

After the birthparents learned that the Smileys already had baby Matt in their Queens home, the birthparents changed their minds. They wanted the baby back.

A court struggle followed, and the Smileys lost. But before the final judgment was decreed, the Smileys moved to New Mexico with Matt without informing anyone.

The Smileys have said that the baby suffered from a heart condition and that the young, unwed birthparents were incapable of raising the child.

"We truly feared we'd be looking in the obituaries section if we let him go," Mrs. Smiley said.

Matt Propp, now 23, has found himself caught in the middle of a familial tug of war. He calls the Smileys his mom and dad and still lives with them in their modest Albuquerque home.

He has met 44-year-old Long Island plumber Anthony Russini, who really wants to be called Dad. Mr. Russini eventually married and later divorced Debbie Gardner, Mr. Propp's birth mother, and together they spent two decades searching for their son.

But when they met him last spring, it wasn't exactly a heartwarming reunion. Instead, Mr. Propp said it was awkward and like hanging around with the parents of a friend.

"That's the thing most frustrating to me," said Mr. Propp, who works as a paramedic and volunteer firefighter. "It's an unreal expectation that you can make up 22 years in a matter of months. There's a lot of things everybody needs to learn about everybody else."

Mr. Russini's attorney said the last 11/2 years have been bittersweet for the birthparents. They didn't find the baby they lost so many years ago they met a full-grown man making adult decisions.

"Despite the insidious nature of the crime, the Smileys have effectively succeeded in working an estrangement with Matt and his [birth] family," said Mr. Magovern, the birth father's attorney. "He doesn't seem to realize it. It will take time. He's still in a defensive mode, trying to protect this kidnappers."

Mr. Propp has met his birth mother who has remarried and lives in Florida. She has publicly praised the Smileys for the way they reared Mr. Propp and has also asked the court for leniency for the adoptive family.

But Mr. Propp's relationship with Mr. Russini has deteriorated. Mr. Propp was unable to attend a key family function last year. He continues to call Mr. Smiley his father; referring to Mr. Russini by his first name, Anthony.

"What no one understands is it takes more time to catch up," Mr. Propp said. "I can't be what people want me to be. I can't."

After growing up comfortably but under the cloak of a secret, Mr. Propp is now trying to find out who he is.

"My friends joke and call me Anthony or Joseph," Mr. Propp said, referring to his birth name. "But the reality is, I'm just Matt."

That's the Matt who was raised in an unassuming house in an unassuming neighborhood. There are childhood photos of Matt on the living room end table.

He grew up going to one of Albuquerque's top private schools through the fifth grade, later earning good grades and graduating from Albuquerque High School. He attended the University of New Mexico for a couple of years before becoming a paramedic.

He enjoys "just normal stuff" hanging out with friends and his girlfriend, and next week, he'll compete in a mud volleyball tournament.

"They always just seemed like a normal family," said Delano Whitney, 43, the Smileys' next-door neighbor for the last 20 years. "They're good people. We've known Matt since he was a baby, and they raised him great."

The Smileys, who moved to Albuquerque with a 15-month-old baby in 1980, won't discuss why they changed their name. But when they gave up their East Coast identities, they also gave up their personal history, including college degrees.

They have been self-employed for the last two decades, first making wooden toys and later becoming jewelers.

Mr. Propp would go with his father to the city's Old Town area and help hawk the family wares on the sidewalk.

"We always thought that we'd be caught at any moment," said Barry Smiley, who only five years ago told his own family that he had moved to Albuquerque.

The story of deception started to unravel when Mr. Propp, seeking to become a deputy sheriff, attempted to obtain his birth certificate. Soon authorities in New York took another look at their two-decade-old kidnapping investigation, and the Smileys were indicted and surrendered.

Although he stands behind the couple who reared him, Mr. Propp feels trapped in the middle. He said the district attorney's office has used him as a bargaining chip in plea bargain talks.

"It's been an emotional stampede," he said. "The hope has been that I can be the one to make everything work out."

And if he isn't, he said, he fears he'll be losing his family and forced to accept his birth family.

"I don't think it's fair for me to give them [the birthparents] resolution by taking everything I've got away from me," he said.

On one hand, he has a man who gave him a childhood; on the other, he has a man who gave him life.

"I just don't know what I'm supposed to do," he said. "I hope after this trial, everything kind of works itself out and everyone can come to some understanding."

This guy has GOT to be a Democrat. ONLY a Democrat thinks you can "legislate" caring.

The FACT, you stupid git, is that this kid HAS a set of parents. He doesn't really care about the circumstances of his birth, he only knows who "Mom and Dad" are.

Now, I don't condone what these people did, and in fact if they are convicted it will be justice. You can't take the law into your own hands the way they did, and an "acquittal" will only encourage others to try the same thing.

But that's a different issue. You aren't going to get a grown 20-something man to jettison his PARENTS, the ones who reared him, in favor of some ne'er-do-well sperm-donor. It just won't happen, no matter how much you're charging an hour.

I'm not sure how you get that the biological father is a ne'er-do-well sperm donor. He married the mother and they actively tried to locate their child. He may have begotten a child out of marriage, and he may not have been as high up the cultural/economic totem pole as the Smileys, but by that standard half the working-class men of America are ne'er do wells who can be stripped of their rights with impunity. When an infant is being adopted the law, in recognition of the strong emotions and deep issues involved, allows the birthparents a certain period of time in which they can change their mind. Assuming that the article is correct on this point, an impartial judge determined at the time that they had satisfied the requirements of this provision and were entitled to have their baby back. In defying this judgment the Smileys were doing no different than somebody who snatches a kid from a playground when the mom isn't looking. The fact that he has no memory of anybody else doesn't make these selfish criminals his parents. I feel very bad for the guy because in a certain sense he has no parents at all. Obviously it will take him a long time, probably forever, to come to terms with this, and what he says to the media probably doesn't reflect his deepest thoughts on the subject. But the sentencing of the kidnappers should take his feelings into account. I don't see how he is served by throwing them into jail. But the birthparents should get everything they own as restitution for their pain and suffering. This would also be poetic justice relative to their self-serving claim that they were motivated by their superior ability to meet the child's material needs.

From CourtTV.com: On March 8, 1979, Matthew was born out of wedlock in a Long Island hospital. Matthew's biological mother, Deborah Gardner, put her son (whom she originally named Anthony) up for adoption, and three days after the child was born, the Smileys adopted him through a private placement adoption agency.
But as the Smileys settled in with their child, a complicated custody battle brewed. When the baby boy was a few months old, his birth father, Anthony Russini, re-entered the picture, and learned about the adoption. He immediately began an effort to recover his son.
The battle raged in Family Court. Deborah Gardner's consent to the adoption was dubious, the birth parents argued, noting that she signed the consent form as she lay exhausted after delivering the child. And Anthony Russini had never okayed the adoption. A judge agreed, and ordered the child returned to the Russinis.
But the Smileys kept the child as the battle escalated to the appellate court. There, the legal tides turned once more against them on June 2, 1980, when a judge reiterated the order to hand over Matthew, now a thriving toddler, fifteen months after they first took custody.
But when it came time for the exchange to be made, the Smileys were nowhere to be found. They hadn't attended court proceedings in the custody battle for over a year. Issuing an ultimatum, the court ordered the Smileys to produce their infant son at 11:00 a.m. on June 5, 1980.
When the couple once more failed to show the birth parents drove to the Smileys' home accompanied by the NYPD, Family Court warrants in hand. But the Smileys — and Matthew — were already long gone.
Distraught, the biological parents, who later married, searched furiously for their child. They posted hundreds of posters offering a $10,000 reward. "Where is Baby Boy Russini?" asked the posters. On Aug. 26, 1982, the Smileys were officially charged with kidnapping in the second degree. The FBI joined the search as well, issuing federal warrants for the Smileys. But the child was not to be found. The Russinis settled down and had two more children. But Anthony (now living under the alias of Matthew Propp) was not forgotten.

You can find this article by googling "Smiley abduction", it is the first result. Everything in it goes against the aspersions you all are casting on Russini. I am presuming that the article is accurate and anyway I am the only poster so far who is bringing new internet research to the table instead of just vaguely claiming that the original article is wrong. The guy was not informed of the birth of his child; under our system of laws, the character defects which got him into that situation do not automatically trump his paternal rights. When he was informed of the situation he immediately took steps to reverse the adoption. He married the mother and they had two more children together. (They eventually divorced but so do half the married couples in America.) Also note the name the mother originally gave to the child, she named him Anthony after his father, indicating that she had some degree of regard for his role even if he was out of the picture at the moment. Neither is the claim that she was pressured into signing necessarily spurious; in those days, it was very common for unwed, underprivileged mothers to be pressured into giving up their babies.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by they had an agreement "in principle." As with any kind of contract, we have laws which govern the making of such agreements, and if the agreement is not contracted in conformity with those laws, it is not a valid agreement. If you would like to see the laws changed to provide that distraught single women have no chance to reconsider the most important decision of their lives, or that men's say in the fate of their children depends on the quality of their relationship with the mother, you are entitled to that opinion. But as you say the law is the law, and according to the law at the time, as determined not only by the family court but by the court of appeals, Russini and Gardner were in the right. There is nothing here to suggest that touchy-feely liberalism had anything to do with it. Rule of law is a conservative concept, and to substitute a vague "principle" for whether the parties involved followed the letter of the law is exactly the kind of thing which liberal activist judges do. Not all judges are like that. For all you know the judges in this case could have been dyed in the wool conservative Republicans. Of course anything's possible, but the burden would be on you to research the text of the decisions and show where not one but two courts followed their feelings in contradiction to established case law.

I'm not saying that the guy is St. Joseph reincarnate. But legally he is in the right, and as a conservative believer in the rule of law that is what I care about. If you believe that the moral facts are grossly out of whack with the legal facts, please outline how we could change the laws to make kidnapping legal when the father is less than perfect. Also please quote sources as to him looking for money, I don't see anything about that either here or in the CourtTV article. He seems to be looking for two things, one, a relationship with his son, and two, public formal acknowledgement that the Smileys committed a crime of which he is one of the victims. Which is true. His balancing of these two priorities may be graceless and inept but that hardly makes him a moral monster. And any claim that he is an opportunist, just now coming on the scene, is refuted by the information in the CourtTV article about the proactive steps he was taking around the time of the kidnapping and that he sustained his relationship with the mother at least long enough to have two more children.

Everything in it goes against the aspersions you all are casting on Russini.

Again, I don't see how the Smileys have a LEGAL defense (though morally I believe they were squarely in the right), but the story you posted does NOT cast Russini or Gardner in a good light by any means.

Russini's apparently going about casting his seed to the wind, as it were, heedless of the fact that that's how babies are made.

Gardner's stupid statement that she "signed the forms as she lay exhausted," blahblahblah, are just so much emotional garbage. Anyone acquainted with adoptions of this kind knows that just after birth is the MOST crucial point in time, the point at which the majority of women who change their minds about adopting the baby out usually do so, because suddenly the baby is a real, living fact, not just an acute embarrassment and inconvenience.

IMO, the court's rulings are just outrageous but the Smileys should have stayed within the system. It's terrible that they can be punished for saving this kid from a life of hell he surely would have had as "Anthony Garner (Russini, whatever)," but the law has to be honored.

One can only hope the Smileys get off light, given the extenuating circumstances.

But legally he is in the right, and as a conservative believer in the rule of law that is what I care about.

So stop yelling at me already. I agree with you. Yes, legally the Smileys don't have a leg to stand on that I can see.

However, "kidnapping" is too simple a term for what actually happened. From what you have posted here, the Smileys did all they could do in good faith to have the child, and it's just too bad that the courts are willing to support nuts and flakes purely on the basis of biology.

For Michael's sake it turned out well (discounting the distress he's surely going through now, but at least now he's an adult and can be reasonably expected to cope with it), but it was done illegally, and therefore a penalty must be assessed.

As I said, though, I hope the Smileys are convicted but given a very light sentence. Therefore both Justice and Mercy are served.

I'm not yelling at you, just trying to make my point with a certain degree of rigor. Anyway that post was directed at tallhappy (who was yelling, more or less) not you. I still don't see how being somewhat irresponsible in their early 20s permanently qualifies Gardner and Russini as "nuts and flakes." It's important not to confuse the legal issue of whether the adoption question was correctly decided with the issue of whether they did wrong in defying the adoption decision. We agree on the latter, but you seem to have misgivings on the former. You have yet to present evidence that this was an emotional, "liberal" decision on the part of the judges rather than a clear-cut case of who had the law on their side. Given that it went through two courts, that is what I'm going to believe until I see solid evidence otherwise. You seem to be presuming that there was an ironclad agreement and Gardner and Russini weaseled their way out of it somehow. In reality adoptions go through several stages and there are safeguards in the law to protect the rights of fathers and of vulnerable women. Pressure tactics do happen - why do you think the birthparents rights movement is so militant? You cannot dismiss this point as "emotional blahblahblah" unless you have the court documents at hand and can show me where emotions trumped law. And I just totally fail to see how having a child out of wedlock, which millions of people do every day, makes them so much worse than the couple who conspired to transport a child across state lines, commit identity fraud, and lie to him about his origins for 20 years. Kidnapping is a legal technical term and what they did fits the bill.

I'm not yelling at you, just trying to make my point with a certain degree of rigor.

Hey, I like that! I'm going to borrow it next time I get into a shouting match with someone.

I still don't see how being somewhat irresponsible in their early 20s permanently qualifies Gardner and Russini as "nuts and flakes."

I dunno, ask the government how they can go after John Walker Lindh. He fits your description.

It's important not to confuse the legal issue of whether the adoption question was correctly decided with the issue of whether they did wrong in defying the adoption decision.

COMPLETELY AGREE. Much as I might hate it on moral grounds, legally, as I said, I don't see how the Smileys' guilt can be any clearer. In fact, if they were acquitted based on the fact that "all's well that ends well," I'd be even more incensed.

But I have to shake my head at the *stoopid* legal system (this IS the state of NY, after all) that allows a broadcast-sperm donor like this Russini guy to put the brakes on an adoption.

I do NOT agree that "biology is all," and to me the antiquated legal thinking that allows incidents like this has NEVER caught up to the reality of a morally-bankrupt society like ours has become.

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