Lawyer under treatment after admitting she made up kidnapping

TOLEDO, Ohio -- A lawyer and former city councilwoman was getting treatment after admitting she fabricated her tale of being kidnapped at gunpoint last week, her husband said Tuesday. Police said she probably will be charged with filing a false report.

Karyn McConnell Hancock, who was found Saturday in Georgia, never was abducted outside Toledo's juvenile court building last Wednesday or forced into a vehicle, police Capt. Ray Carroll said.

Instead, she drove by herself from Toledo to the Atlanta area, where she was found outside an amusement park, investigators said.

The 35-year-old Hancock had been having psychological issues for several years, her husband, Lawrence Hancock, said at a news conference. The couple have a 3-year-old son, and she is six months' pregnant with their second child.

'Experienced a meltdown'

"She experienced a meltdown and attempted to handle those matters without the assistance of professional help," he said. "Karyn elected to leave everything because she felt that she was unable to continue."

He said her doctor recommended she not take part in the news conference "as she continues to undergo professional treatment."

In the first few hours after her disappearance, her husband said, he thought she may have just needed to get away and figured she would come home soon. He did file a police report that night.

Then on Thursday afternoon, his wife called him, saying she had been abducted and thought she was going to die. "She told me don't let her son forget her and that she loved me," he said.

The family went on national television asking for help and community members gathered at churches to pray for her return.

She was found Saturday near Atlanta. Police said she recanted the abduction story Monday after meeting with investigators for about eight hours. All she said was that she was tired and wanted to get away, police Detective Vince Mauro said.

Hancock will likely be charged with making a false police report, Police Chief Mike Navarre said.

Hancock's father, C. Allen McConnell, is a Toledo Municipal Court judge, and her husband is bishop of Final Harvest Church.

The family had said they believed the purported kidnapping had something to do with a case McConnell handled before he was a judge. The family also said both the judge and his daughter, who served on the city council from 2003 to 2006, had received threatening calls.

McConnell said Tuesday that the calls were real and "still of great concern to the family."

"We still do not know the source of those calls," he said.

One of the attorney's former clients recently filed a lawsuit against her, accusing her of failing to give him $10,000 he was owed from an accident settlement that she had negotiated.

Hancock's husband said he wasn't sure if the lawsuit or the suspicious calls triggered her actions. "Her meltdown has been occurring over multiple years," he said. He apologized to the community, to police and to well-wishers who tried to help find her.

He did not know why she ended up in the Atlanta area, where the couple has friends.

"There was no destination," he said.