Mary Jane Stevens was the lawyer who acted for John Kiriakou during the custody standoff over his two sons.
Her role in his telling is that of the restraining influence he repeatedly overrode. On the first morning, told that the boys and their mother had disappeared, Kiriakou telephoned her; her immediate response was “oh my God, don’t fly off the handle and do something crazy.” He assured her he would rely on her legal advice.[1][2]
When five days of his own surveillance located them, he called her again. Her advice was straightforward: they would go to court on Monday and have it sorted out. Kiriakou, in his own description a hothead, did not want to wait, and recovered his son from a church service the following morning.[3][4]
Her reaction when he telephoned from the car to report what he had just done was “oh man, I told you.”[5]
What she got him
What followed is where she mattered. A felony charge of aggravated menacing was filed on an allegation Kiriakou says was invented, and an emergency hearing was set for the Monday — in another state, where he expected to be arrested the moment he crossed the line. Stevens spoke to the police chief and obtained his personal assurance that Kiriakou would not be arrested and would be allowed to attend.[6][7]
Kiriakou took the chief at his word, with a caveat of his own — that if he was lying, he would “trash him in the Greek community” and be relentless about it. He went to court, was not arrested, and the judge reaffirmed the custody order and moved a week from the mother’s time to his.[7][8] The felony charge was dropped before it reached court.[6]