ASSOCIATED PRESS
Debra Ferguson, of Laguna Hills, Calif., second from left, left the U.S. District courthouse in Honolulu Thursday after bail was denied for her daughter, Kelley Marie Ferguson, 20.
Parents skeptical
in terror threat caseThey say that they would
not bail out their daughter,
even if she were eligible
LOS ANGELES >> The parents of a 20-year-old woman accused of making terroristic threats on a Hawaii-bound cruise ship say they would not bail out their "brat" daughter because they do not trust her.
"She's going to run ... and we're going to be left with a $25,000 debt," the woman's mother, Debra Ferguson, 49, told the Los Angeles Times. "She promises not to do it again, but yeah, right."
Her daughter, Kelley Marie Ferguson, of Laguna Hills, Calif., is accused of planting threatening notes aboard the Legend of the Seas in an effort to get the cruise ship to return to California so she could be reunited with her boyfriend, Joshua Brashear, in Orange County. She was ordered held without bail Thursday after a prosecutor argued she is a flight risk.
Her father concurs.
"Given the circumstances of what she did in order to get back to him, do you think her frame of mind was to stick around here?" Tim Ferguson told Reuters news service.
"We would love to have Kelley home, but we could not, even to ourselves, guarantee that she would stick around ... and then they would catch her and give her the maximum penalty," her father said.
Ferguson is charged with two counts of threatening acts of terrorism and could face as much as 10 years in prison on each charge.
Had U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang granted bail Thursday, Debra Ferguson said she would not have posted it because she could not "risk the rest of my family's life because of a brat."
"She is going to have to stay in jail and learn her lesson," she said. "This was a big, big problem, and if she has to sit in jail, oh well. She's going to have to deal with it."
Kelley Ferguson was vacationing with her family when she allegedly left two threatening notes in a bathroom aboard the cruise ship. One note proclaimed, "I have been sent on a mission to kill all Americanos aboard Legend if we port on American soil."
Authorities said she admitted writing the notes in hopes they would force the cruise ship to end its journey and allow her to return home.
Instead, they prompted an intense FBI search for biological, chemical, radiological and explosive weapons aboard the Royal Caribbean ship, as well as interrogation of crew members and passengers. The questioning led authorities to Ferguson.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said Thursday the incident cost the Coast Guard alone $336,000. If Ferguson is convicted, authorities could seek restitution, although it appears she does not have the means to pay.
The charges Ferguson faces do not allow for a sentence of probation, but Sorenson indicated it is possible she could be prosecuted under a different statute.
Prosecutors said they plan to send the charges to a grand jury next week. An indictment is expected soon after, and an arraignment at which Ferguson would answer to the charges could happen before the end of next week.
Tim Ferguson said he had hoped the cruise, which he had planned for two years and took out a credit card loan to pay for, would help him re-establish his connection with Kelley.
Now he hopes the separation will give Kelley some perspective on what he called a "destructive" relationship that has dominated her life since she met Brashear when she was 16.
Brashear did not respond to calls seeking comment.
"He is a controller," Ferguson said. "What (Kelley) liked doing is helping people. When one is a giver and the other is a complete taker, what do you do with that?"
Neither Tim Ferguson nor his wife has had any contact with their daughter since her arrest. Debra Ferguson is staying with friends on Oahu and plans to attend as many of her daughter's court appearances as possible.
"The only time she has seen Kelley was in the courtroom," he said. "Our lawyers said, 'You can write her a note.'"
The Associated Press and Reuters news service contributed to this report.
