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.
No, it confirms he is a total scum bag.
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.