By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM – The arrest of a Potsdam woman for allegedly making up a story about armed masked men invading her home and tying her up will not likely result in charges against her father.

“I don’t think the dad’s complicit,” said St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Det. Sgt. Tom Caringi.

Mary Widmann, 23, was charged Monday with two Class A misdemeanors, third-degree falsely reporting an incident and making a false written statement.

Mary is alleged to have told her father and police that two masked men armed with handguns entered her home at 6185 State Rt. 56 south of the village a week ago demanding marijuana, but Caringi said the story wasn’t true.

Her father, Gerald Widmann, told Caringi and NorthCountryNow.com that he had come home at about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 11 to find his daughter tied to a kitchen chair. She claimed the men had held her at gunpoint, bound her, and slammed her head onto the kitchen table when she moved to stop them.

Det. Sgt. Caringi said that Widmann’s account of the incident did not add up and she was brought to the sheriff’s department for further questioning. Caringi said early yesterday he was investigating the possibility that the story was a hoax and that an arrest was imminent.

Today he said that, in addition to her alleged untruthfulness, “Yes, I believe she tied herself up.”

She had claimed the two armed men went through drawers and threw food on the floor. She said one of them had taken the woman’s three-year-old daughter upstairs and placed her in her bed and had removed an infant daughter from her crib and placed her in her mother’s bed.

Her uncle, Charles Widmann, a chauffer in the St. Louis, Mo. area, had put up a $1,000 reward for information about the armed men, saying last week that “I want these a**holes found.”

After speaking with the uncle this week about his niece, Caringi said, “He’s upset” about the more recent developments.

As for what Mary Widman’s motive might have been, he said “I have no idea.”

Widmann was issued tickets, scheduled to appear in Potsdam town court, and released.