For three years after her breakup with Jonathan Harper, Cary Lonon told me she achieved the impossible.
The two of them worked out a custody arrangement- one week on one week off- without lawyers, courts, and it worked.
THERE WAS NO COURT ORDER
From 2019-2022, Cary told me, her breakup was amicable, and they raised their two children in relative peace.
Police never got called, Child Protective Services never got called. Jonathan and Cary were models for parents raising children after a breakup.
Then, in 2021, she moved across the Missouri/Illinois border to O’Fallon, Illinois in St. Clair County.
Everything remained smooth until Cary told me that she decided to enroll the kids in a school in Illinois in early 2023.
Jonathan was living in St. Louis County, which is about a thirty-minute drive. They had been going to school in Missouri.
She told me that he put off the decision when she asked him about it, so she enrolled them when there was no more time to decide.
In response, he withheld the kids, Cary told me and enrolled them in a different day care.
Cary, who was not informed she told me, found the daycare, came and picked up the kids, even using police as a shield.
This was all necessary and legal because as of early 2023, there was still no court order.
Cary filed for custody in Illinois, while Jonathan filed for a protective order in St. Louis County.
That she had lived in Illinois for over a year is important towards establishing jurisdiction. Since they shared custody, their children had lived at least six months in Illinois. That’s the minimum standard for establishing residency and jurisdiction.
Since Cary filed first, that should have been the end of it. It was not.
Judge Robert Heggie presided over the protective order. Though Cary and Jonathan managed to parent together for about three years with no court order, he accused her, she told me, of having guns, drugs, and neglecting their children.
Judge Heggie would also preside over the child custody case.
Heggie previously gave Charles Thompson sole custody even though he had two documented suicide attempts and was suspected of child molestation.
Heggie also kept custody with James Jeudy, even though his daughter accused him of molestation in court {that accusation occurred in front of another judge: Nicole Zelleweger}
Heggie turned the protective order hearing into a child custody hearing.
Cary told me that when she arrived the appointed guardian ad litem (GAL) was there: Charles Flynn.
I emailed Flynn but he didn’t respond. Flynn works for the law firm of Grant, Miller and Smith LLC, which includes Hank Miller.
Miller is well known for his poor body language in the notorious Zoom conference of nearly forty corrupt St. Louis County which I exposed with the help of my {former friend} Megan Fox.
I did not spot Flynn participating in this Zoom conference.
Cary told me that Heggie coerced her into accepting visitation with her children as part of the protective order.
The child custody case in Illinois continued while Jonathan filed for custody in Missouri. Below is part of an argument made by Cary’s attorney in Illinois about jurisdiction in February 2023.
Cary described a chaotic scene with two courts refusing to give up custody. She said that Judge Heggie even held a phone conference with the judge in Illinois, Normally, judges want to get rid of cases, because their dockets are full, but Judge Heggie was determined to keep the case even though he had dubious legal standing. In his order, he acknowledged that Cary lived in Illinois.
Despite that, Judge Heggie, who did not respond to an email, claimed residency was not established.
“The court finds that the children at no time resided in Illinois with mother,” Heggie said.
Cary said Jonathan’s lawyers eventually got a stay from an Illinois court paving the way for St. Louis County to take control.
She was doomed, even more doomed with a questionable positive drug test.
Cary said she took several drug tests- I found three- which were negative and then at the insistence of opposing counsel, she took a different kind of test which tested positive for meth.
Cary told me she has never taken meth.
Cary said that a parenting plan which was negotiated over approximately seven hours was altered.
She told me the altered parenting plan barred her fiancé from seeing her kids. She said her fiancé has no criminal record, no record with CPS, and she would never have agreed to it.
It limited the contact with her parents as well. She wouldn’t have agreed to that either.
Finally, in 2024, Cary learned that Jonathan had been arrested and had another warrant for arrest. She filed for a modification.
Judge Heggie dismissed that as well.
Cary said she now sees her kids for an hour a week, and the court order bars her from telling them why.
I reached out to Jonathan’s lawyer, Amy Hogenson, but she didn’t respond.
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