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http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/OttawaSun/News/2004/07/31/563812.html Sat, July 31, 2004
Beauty queen now fugitive
By Sun Media
TORONTO -- Beauty can't be caged, or it seems, kept under house arrest. A warrant was issued yesterday for Kalista Zackharias, a former Miss Vaughan, who was given a conditional sentence of 60 days in July after pleading guilty to a mischief charge for a fake kidnap plot.
Two weeks later, Zackharias was allowed to travel to Florida by her sentence supervisor. She failed to return and now is wanted for breaching the terms of her sentence.
Zackharias first made headlines in June 2003 after officials with the Miss
Canada International pageant stripped her of her crown when it was revealed she was a single mom.
Three months later, Zackharias called Peel police and told them two strangers beat her up and duct-taped her wrists and ankles. She suggested her ex-husband may have incited the attack, but later recanted, admitting she planned the hoax to give her a better chance of winning custody of her young son.
The story as told in an earlier edition of the Sun:http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/OttawaSun/News/2004/07/06/526307.htmlTue, July 6, 2004
By Sun Media
BRAMPTON -- A dethroned beauty queen who staged a fake kidnap plot to
incarcerate her ex-husband and win a custody battle was sentenced to a
nightly curfew yesterday. After leading Peel police on a $4,500 wild goose
chase and putting her abusive ex-husband in "jeopardy" of being falsely
charged last Sept. 1, model and would-be actress Kalista Zackharias was
sentenced to increased anger and grief therapy and 60 days of overnight home curfew.
Zackharias, 24, "attempted to take the law into her own hands ... at the
expense of another person's liberty," said Ontario Court Justice Kathryn
McLeod. Zackharias, who pleaded guilty to mischief, will also be on probation for one year.
She made headlines last June when she lost her Miss Vaughan crown and a crack at the Miss Canada International title because the national competition did not accept mothers. Within a few months of losing her crown, she had tied up and beaten herself and told police that two men with a gun had threatened her life.
Zackharias said she wrongly staged the abduction after four years of court battles and police complaints about her abusive ex, who was convicted of assault in 1999 after beating her when she was pregnant.
"I did commit a crime, but I'm not a criminal," she said.
