Miami woman jailed after being mistaken for French fugitive

MIAMI -- Thinking they had caught a French fugitive who had kidnapped her children from their father, authorities held a mother of two in jail for six nights until DNA tests proved them wrong.

Nona Cason, 39, had pleaded her innocence, offering job records, birth certificates and passports to show she was not fugitive Nadine Tretiakoff.

But Tretiakoff's ex-husband, Pierre Fourcade, swore in court that she was Tretiakoff, and said outside court that Cason's children were his.

"I had never seen this man in my whole life," Cason told The Miami Herald.

Federal prosecutors dropped charges against Cason after DNA tests showed that her children, ages 9 and 11, were not related to Fourcade.

While she was behind bars, her children were in state custody.

Cason was driving her children to a medical appointment May 16 when officers arrested her while she was sitting in traffic.

It was unclear what led investigators to suspect Cason. U.S. authorities had been working on information from France, said Matthew Dates, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.

"Apparently, I look like this other woman," Cason said.

Fourcade arrived in Miami the day after the arrest, and swore in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom May 19 that Cason was the mother of his children.

"The information he was receiving was that these were the individuals," said Fourcade's lawyer, Tim Arcaro, who noted that his client had not seen his family in six years.

Cason's attorney, Marc Shelowitz, said his client "has everything you could possibly have to prove she was not this person."

Carson was reunited with her children June 5. Fourcade returned to France. Tretiakoff's whereabouts remain unknown.