Missing Teen Returns To Tell Tale Of Globe-Trotting Fantasy

WASILLA, Alaska - A Colony High School senior, missing for nearly three weeks on a fantasy trip to Hollywood, returned home to his family Tuesday - angry and a little ashamed, but unhurt.

Kris Roberts, an 18-year-old honor student, was detained by the U.S. Customs Service at the San Francisco airport Monday when he and his traveling companion, his high school tennis coach, Bobby Wesson, re-entered the United States on a flight from London. At the request of their families and police, the two had been red-flagged in Customs Service computers as missing persons.

Family members said they vanished three weeks ago while on a trip to Los Angeles. They were to begin preproduction work on a film being made from a screenplay they wrote and sold to movie star Kevin Costner.

Despite a written contract found among their belongings, a spokesman for Costner says his company has never heard of the screenplay or the two writers.

Customs turned Roberts and Wesson over to San Francisco Police, who urged them to call home but released them when Roberts, who is legally an adult, said he was not being held against his will.

The Wesson and Roberts families had not heard from their sons since Feb. 20. The travelers told police they had no idea they were considered missing.

Several hours after their release, Roberts called his parents from a pay phone and said Wesson had driven off without explanation, leaving him at Fisherman's Wharf, a popular San Francisco tourist spot. Bill and Kathy Roberts, who had feared their son might be dead, quickly arranged for him to fly home.

A hundred questions about the trip, which began Jan. 13 with permission from both families and the school, remain unanswered.

Back in Wasilla, Kris Roberts didn't want to talk much about his strange odyssey. He said he was under the impression his family knew where he was, although he stopped calling to avoid discussion of a blossoming romance he assumed they would disapprove of.

"If I thought they were freaking out, I would have called," he said, sitting on a living-room sofa flanked by his relieved parents.

The whereabouts of Wesson, 32, remain unknown. He called his family in Houston, Alaska, Tuesday "to make sure Kris got home all right," said his father, Bob Wesson Sr. Wesson Jr., known as Bobby, wouldn't say where he was and refused his father's request that he come home. "He's very upset," Wesson Sr. said.

How did Wesson and Roberts go missing to begin with? They wrote a screenplay for a film, which Wesson said he sold to Costner. The Robertses and Wessons believed him and did no independent checking.

Meanwhile, as Wesson and Roberts told the story before leaving, movie star Jodie Foster was interested in producing a romantic comedy starring Roberts and Claire Danes, now a hot Hollywood ingenue. Agents for Foster and Danes have told the Robertses the actresses have never heard of the project or Roberts.

In the course of discussing "the project" in letters and on the phone, always through Wesson, Roberts said, he and Danes fell in love and decided to get married. They never actually met in person, he said, but "it was kind of a fate thing - destiny."

When he told a friend he went to see "Romeo and Juliet" with Danes in Los Angeles, he meant Wesson had arranged for her to be in the theater at the same time he was, in the back, where she could see him. He now assumes she was not really there.

He knew his parents would not approve of his marriage plans, so Wesson allegedly arranged for Foster and Danes' parents to come to Alaska and break the ice with the Robertses. When Roberts called home Monday, he asked his mother if Foster and Danes' parents were still there, said Kathy Roberts. He was puzzled to find out they were not and never had been.

Roberts said he had begun to suspect the movie productions were not going to happen, but persevered, hoping to meet up with Danes and return with her to Alaska. "We would be together and talk to them (his parents) in person, and her parents would be here too.

"It was a kind of a thing that everything was meant to be," Roberts said, "that everything would turn out perfect. . . . I would talk to her on the phone pretty much every day, through Bobby." He got letters from her, delivered by Wesson.

The trip took the travelers from Alaska to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Hawaii and London. Danes was supposed to be in Hawaii, in Los Angeles, in New York - but something unexpected always happened to thwart the meeting. Soon it had been two weeks since Roberts had called home.

If this was all a fantasy created by Wesson, as the Robertses believe, what was his motive?

According to the Robertses, Kris contributed no money to the venture, he was never threatened and no advances were made.

As for Roberts' motive: "It wasn't the fame or the movies," he said. "It was love. It was Claire."

After the encounter with the San Francisco Police Monday, Roberts said he gave Wesson an ultimatum: produce Danes or else. So Wesson supposedly arranged a meeting on Fisherman's Wharf. "I was sitting on the bench. I was waiting there for Claire," Roberts said.

Suddenly Wesson dashed for the car and took off, he said. "I ran after him. I jumped over a fence but I couldn't catch him."

Unable to avoid his suspicions any longer, alone with only $30, Roberts called home.

Bob Wesson Sr. is happy Roberts is home safe, but his son is still missing, and he's having trouble with Roberts' story.

"I can't see my son creating this whole elaborate thing," he said. "I just can't believe that boy (Kris) would be so gullible as to believe the whole thing. . . . Who did he think was paying for all this?"

It appears most of the trip was put on Wesson-family credit cards, tens of thousands of dollars' worth.

Why is everyone assuming it was all a hoax, Wesson Sr. asked.

"What if some of it's true?"

Right now, all Wesson Sr. wants is for his son to be safe and come home. "Whatever problems there are, we'll deal with them then."