The State - News from June 8, 1988

A man arrested last month for allegedly abducting a teen-age boy and keeping him captive for four years pleaded guilty in Victorville Municipal Court to a charge of child stealing, court officials said. Patrick Michael McCleery, 40, is to appear in San Bernardino County Superior Court today for a pre-sentencing hearing. McCleery could receive a four-year prison term on the felony charge, the district attorney’s office said. The 17-year-old boy, missing from his Lake County home since he was 13, was found by sheriff’s deputies in McCleery’s trailer home in Apple Valley on May 25. The youth, who was returned to his parents in a tearful reunion, was in good condition, investigators said. The parents told investigators McCleery was an acquaintance of the family in 1984 and lived in a trailer near Clear Lake, where the boy’s father manages a marina.