Missing Nebraska Parents Facing Charges in Family Disappearance

April 7, 2009— -- It was a long, strange journey for a missing Nebraska couple who surrendered with their children Monday after leading police on a massive search in two states.

Police say Matt and Rowena Schade are being held in Nebraska on probation-related offenses as police in South Dakota try to determine whether they were involved in a string of burglaries that occurred near where the family stayed for about two weeks.

"We are waiting for reports from [Nebraska police] before we make charges," Pennington County [S.D.] Sheriff's Office Maj. Brian Mueller told ABCNews.com today. "They're definitely people of interest in these burglaries."

The Schades are also likely to face charges in connection with the theft of an area Fire Department vehicle police believe they used to leave South Dakota, Mueller said.

Police in Knox County, Neb., from where the family disappeared March 20 and where they surrendered Monday, said in a statement released today that Rowena Schade and her children left willingly with Matthew Schade.

"The family told officers that they left because they were scared by social services," the statement read.

The family, using $1,000 worth of survival-style camping gear, disappeared into the wildnerness of South Dakota's Black Hills National Park, where Matt Schade had taken survival camping trips with his church and where the couple had honeymooned about three years ago.

"They were in good shape and there is no evidence that the children had been harmed in any way," the statement read. "The children were happy and talked about their camping trip and were more worried about having to leave their baked potatoes in camp than anything else."

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services will interview the children, an 8-year-old boy and a girl of 11 or 12, before deciding where to place them, according to the police statement.

Police in Knox County said the parents kept up the children's home-schooling lessons while they lived in the woods, surviving two major snow storms that dumped up to a foot of snow each time.

Mueller said the family is believed to have made their way back to Nebraska in a stolen fire truck used to fight brush fires. The truck, later found in Antelope County, Neb., about 35 miles away from Knox County, was stolen from the Silver City Volunteer Fire Department, which had a storage building near where the Schades were believed to have camped out.

Rowena Schade is being held on a $10,000 bond. The bond for Matt Schade has not yet been set. The couple were both on probation for a 2006 burglary.

In the statement, the Knox County Sheriff's Office said there are no plans to charge the Schades for the cost of the search, which is ample, figuring in the cost of overtime and the $500-an-hour helicopter searches.

Hastily Planned Trip Left Many Questions

The Schade family was last seen March 20, the day police say they responded to a domestic violence call at their Creighton, Neb., home.

Acting on a tip from someone in the family, police in Pennington County, S.D., began searching the Black Hills National Forest, where Matt Schade, 26, had attended a church-sponsored survival camp six years in a row. Creighton is about 350 miles from the forest.

Sheriff's deputies found Schade's black Ford Taurus last week near the forest.

Authorities in Nebraska said they received a call Thursday afternoon from the husband's father, Chet Schade, who told them he had made phone contact with all four members of the family. Matthew Schade told his father the family was prepared to wait out the next storm and asked to be left alone, the father told Nebraska authorities.

But that wasn't enough at first to satisfy the police in Nebraska and South Dakota, where officials said they want to see the wife and kids before deciding whether to call off the search.

Family relatives were distraught during the family's disappearance.

"I just want them to come home," said Sandy Epstein last week, Rowena Schade's mother, who lives near the Schades. "I hope they're OK."

Epstein said that it was unusual for her daughter not to check in regularly. Her cell phone goes directly to voice mail, she added.

Also suspicious, she said, was the batch of cookies that were left on a cookie sheet in the Schade's house. "They just dumped everything and left," she said.

Knox County Sheriff Jim Janecek Thursday said that there was no cause for arrest when his deputies responded to the domestic violence call March 20. He said his office was investigating abuse allegations, but declined to identify the source of those claims.

At the time, Epstein said she didn't know if her son-in-law would hurt her daughter, 29, and grandchildren. "I don't want to speculate on that," she said. "All I want is my kids home."

Concern for the Schade Children

Epstein said she last saw her daughter, the middle of three children, at a family birthday party in Creighton March 20. They were not, she said, planning a trip.

But the Pennington County Sheriff's office said the family had recently purchased more than $1,000 worth of survival-style camping gear that was missing from the house.

And, according to the Knox County Sheriff's office in Nebraska, it appeared the family left in a hurry. The couple, according to the office, had reportedly talked about relocating.

Mueller said police had no idea how much food or water the Schades were carrying.

The children are Rowena Schade's from a previous relationship, Epstein said, although Matt Schade adopted them after the couple married about three years ago.

Epstein said that Matt Schade had pulled the kids out of school a couple of months ago to home school them, saying he wasn't happy about what they were being taught. Epstein described her son-in-law and her daughter as being devout Christians, but wasn't sure exactly what upset Matt Schade about the kids' previous school.

Her daughter, Epstein said, worked for a local insurance marketing company and enjoyed outdoor activities, such as gardening and fishing.

"She's usually a very positive, very happy-go-lucky girl," Epstein said. "The waiting is the hardest part."