KEY POINTS:
A daughter and her father embroiled in a high-profile abduction of a 6-year-old boy made surprise guilty pleas in the High Court at Hamilton yesterday.
Kay Halton Skelton, 38, and her father, Dick Halton Headley, 70, averted their trial and the probability of the boy - Skelton's son - having to testify against them when they admitted abducting him in 2006.
Both were remanded on bail for sentencing in December.
Their surprise admission is the latest episode in a long-running and bitter custody dispute that resulted in Headley snatching the boy at the Hamilton Library in August 2006.
He took his grandson into hiding in Northland.
Two months later, Skelton was jailed for 13 weeks for contempt of court after she refused to reveal where her son was.
But after five months in hiding, Headley returned his grandson to the police. The boy is now 8 years old.
On Tuesday, in-chambers submissions delayed the start of the trial. Yesterday, Skelton and Headley were in court for less than 10 minutes.
Justice John Priestley said the pair's admission was "appropriate" given that the Crown's case against them was "overwhelming".
He said that while their guilty pleas "could have come much earlier", both had acknowledged their culpability and in doing so had taken away the need for the boy to give evidence against them.
"For an 8-year-old child that would have been a very heavy cross to bear," said Justice Priestley.
He said the court took a serious view of people who acted in defiance of Family Court orders and this was a matter he would "weigh heavily" when the pair appeared for sentencing on December 18.
The boy's father, Chris Jones, was happy that what had been an "emotionally draining, very costly and drawn-out process" was near an end.
Outside court, Skelton's lawyer, Barry Hart, said he would ask the judge for a non-custodial sentence.
Last week, a third person, Nikala Janice Taylor, 37, pleaded guilty in the High Court at Hamilton to abduction and will also be sentenced in December.
