After Melissa Gilbert’s husband Timothy Busfield learned Friday night that there was a warrant out for his arrest in New Mexico, on allegations that he groomed and molested two young boys on a TV set, the veteran actor said he jumped in a car the next morning and began driving to Albuquerque, 2,000 miles away.

It’s not clear whether Busfield, or his attorney, contacted Albuquerque police to let them know he was in transit and planned to turn himself in. But by Monday, police said that they didn’t know the whereabouts of the 68-year-old “West Wing” actor and the U.S. Marshals Service joined in a nationwide search. The next morning, a fugitive task force of 10 armed officers descended on the mountain retreat in upstate New York that Busfield and Gilbert share to break down their front door, find him and take him into custody, the Daily Mail reported.

Images of the raid were documented by the Daily Mail, which noted that the raid occurred just after Busfield released a video from New Mexico, saying he was there and prepared to surrender. He was soon booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center outside Albuquerque, with his first court appearance scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors in Bernalillo County said in a Facebook post that they would ask a judge to order that Busfield remain in custody “while the case proceeds through the judicial process.”

Santa Fe criminal defense attorney John W. Day said it wasn't clear whether New Mexico authorities knew Busfield was coming, if they cared or whether it would have stopped the U.S. Marshals Service from getting involved. The attorney told the Bay Area News Group that, if Busfield were his client, he probably would have advised him to drive to New Mexico — not fly. That’s because his arrest warrant would probably be picked up during a TSA screening at any commercial airport. And, if he had surrendered to police near his home in New York, he might have ended up spending “a significant amount of time” in custody there, awaiting extradition to New Mexico.

“You know, a lot of times you can work something out with prosecutors or law enforcement for a client to turn themselves in,” Day said. “Sometimes law enforcement doesn’t want to cooperate. ... I don’t think we know a lot of details but I would have been advising him to do exactly what he did, which is get in a car, don’t get pulled over for speeding and get to New Mexico as quickly as possible.”

As for whether Busfield seeming to disappear for a few days after learning he was wanted by police, Day said he didn’t know if that would hurt his chances to make bail. As the district attorney, Sam Bregman, said, New Mexico prosecutors routinely seek pretrial detention when in cases involving “these charges.” Day said judges have to consider whether someone is a flight risk or a danger to the community, but Busfield driving all the way New Mexico to surrender could show no intention to evade police.

While Day said it’s “unlikely” that a judge would say he has to stay in custody, given that Busfield has no criminal history, a new report by People, based on a pretrial motion filed by prosecutors, shows that another victim has come forward. She’s a 16-year-old girl, whose father told police on Tuesday that Busfield allegedly abused his daughter “several years ago” in Sacramento, California, where he and brother ran B Street Theatre company, which they originally founded as a children’s theater company. No other details were immediately available.

Day said Busfield has hired “some really good lawyers” in New Mexico to defend him. In his video, the “Thirtysomething” star said was he was innocent of the charges, which stem from his interactions with 11-year-old twin brothers who appeared on “The Cleaning Lady,” a Fox TV crime drama that he directed and executive produced from 2022 to 2025. One of the boys said that the abuse started when he was 7.

“They’re all lies, and I did not do anything to those little boys, and I’m going to fight it. I’m going to fight it with a great team, and I’m going to be exonerated,” Busfield said in the video, first posted by TMZ.

It’s not clear if Gilbert accompanied him to New Mexico. But the “Little House on the Prairie” star also issued a statement Tuesday through her representative, saying that she “stands with and supports her husband” but would say nothing more publicly “while the legal process unfolds.”

New details about the case also have begun to emerge, which show how Busfield’s attorneys may plan to defend him, Day said.

Busfield’s civil attorney, Larry Stein, told TMZ that there was “a revenge factor at work” in the abuse allegations. According to the criminal complaint, Stein said, an actress on the set claimed that the mother of the boys told her she vowed to get revenge on Busfield after her sons were cut from the final season of the show. A lawyer hired by Warner Brothers Television, the studio that produced the show, also told TMZ that her independent, internal investigation found “no corroborating evidence that Mr. Busfield engaged in inappropriate conduct or that he was ever alone with the twins on set.”

The arrest warrant filed by police may tell a different story, according to the Daily Mail, Us Weekly and KTLA. An investigation into Busfield was opened in November 2024 when staff at the University of New Mexico Hospital called police and reported that two boys potentially were being groomed on the set of “The Cleaning Lady.”

At the time the boys did not disclose any sexual contact, though they said that Busfield asked them to call him “Uncle Tim” and said he would “tickle them on their stomach and legs,” even though they didn’t like being tickled, according to KTLA and the Daily Mail. Police determined that the evidence did not yet meet the threshold for charges.

Nearly a year later, in October 2025, one of the parents reported to Child Protective Services that her sons disclosed sexual abuse by Busfield from November 2022 to spring 2024, KTLA reported. One of the boys said that Busfield touched both his “genitalia” and “bottom” on several occasions while on the set of the show, the affidavit states.

One of the boys also said the touching of his “private areas” first occurred when he was 7, according to Us Weekly. The boy furthermore said he was “very afraid of Tim and was relieved when he was off set.” He said he “was afraid to tell anyone because Tim was the director, and he feared Tim would get mad at him.”

During a Nov. 3 phone interview with an Albuquerque police detective, with Gilbert listening in, Busfield said he had “playful” contact with the children on his set, but denied any wrongdoing, according to the Daily Mail and Us Weekly.

Busfield also said there were no specific rules on the set for how adults should physically interact with the child actors, except that the children were never alone on the set without a teacher, welfare worker or or a parent being present, according to Us Weekly. Busfield also claimed he didn’t remember “overtly tickling the boys ever,” but noted that tickling a child “wouldn’t be uncommon” for him.

Busfield said he had “grown close to the boys” while they worked on the show. He and Gilbert also told the detective, Marvin Brown, that they socialized with the boys and their family outside of work and bought the boys Christmas presents, the Daily Mail reported.

But in the affidavit Brown wrote to support the arrest warrant, he described Busfield’s alleged behavior as “classic grooming,” according to KTLA.

“He would invite the family to off-set gatherings, with his wife buying Christmas gifts to foster closeness, making (one boy) feel special and dependent-classic grooming to erode boundaries, isolate the victim, and silence suspicions by blending abuse into normalcy,” Brown stated, according to KTLA.

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