The FBI has located Billy Ginger Hanson, the 9-year-old boy who was kidnapped in Seattle last month by his biological father, Jeffrey Ford Hanson.
The FBI had issued a bulletin here in Hawaii and through the Pacific after the child, who was scheduled to return home to his mother in Hazleton, Pennsylvania on Sept. 4, never boarded the flight.
FBI agents said, Hanson, 46, a known drug abuser, had likely kidnapped the child, setting sail from Seattle that day aboard a white 1976 Cooper sailboat named “Draco.”
The FBI and the Seattle Police Department Major Crimes Task Force worked with local, state, federal, and international partners to locate Billy.
The two were found on Niue, a tiny island country in the South Pacific, 1,500 miles northeast of New Zealand.
Authorities will reunite Billy with his mother.
Hanson was charged with international parental kidnapping and a federal arrest warrant was issued for him on Sept. 12, 2014, in the U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington in Seattle, Washington. He is now in custody in Niue.
The FBI and the Seattle Police Department Major Crimes Task Force said in a statement that the U.S. Attorney’s Office on the extradition process, and once that is complete, federal agents will escort Hanson back to the U.S.
The joint investigation combined the resources of the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Seattle Police Department’s Major Crimes Task Force, the Port of Seattle Police Department, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
FBI Spokesman Tom Simon said: “The Honolulu FBI would like to thank the international law enforcement community and the media for spreading the word so effectively throughout the Pacific. I think we all needed some good news for a change.”