Did a Durham mother traffic her child for drugs out of a camper?
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- Durham police arrested 40-year-old Antinett Lynn Lambertson on felony child abuse charges.
- Investigators say tipsters alleged Lambertson trafficked her child for drugs.
- Lambertson and co-defendant Kevin Bledsoe remain jailed without bail.
Between the fall of 2025 and this spring, law enforcement got at least four tips making the same claim: a Durham mother was keeping her children in a camper and letting men have sex with them for drugs.
That mother, the tipsters claimed, was 40-year-old Antinett Lynn Lambertson. Durham police arrested her last week on multiple charges of felony child abuse stemming from a sexual act, exposing a child to a controlled substance and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, court records show.
The investigation began in October, when someone reported to Durham County Child Protective Services that one of her children was being trafficked for narcotics. Lambertson and both of her children were using illegal drugs and living in a dilapidated camper in East Durham, search warrants claim.
That same month, police received an anonymous CrimeStoppers tip with the same claim, though this tipster “also stated there is a sex trafficking prostitution ring related to other adult individuals,” according to search warrants. Detectives spoke to at least three people who alleged Lambertson and others had been trafficking a minor for drugs, the warrants state.
The FBI became involved in April after its National Threat Operations Center got an anonymous tip that Lambertson and two others were sexually abusing a child, according to search warrants. Less than a month later, Durham police received yet another anonymous tip.
It wasn’t the first time Durham police had investigated Lambertson. They’d received multiple reports in 2025 and 2026 about Lambertson’s children, including several reports where one of the children mentioned being sexually assaulted by men at hotels in Durham, according to search warrants.
“When asked, [the child] advised her mother was not involved,” search warrants state. “Further review of the latest report revealed Lambertson introducing adult men to her children at a hotel, leaving them alone with adult men, being in the general vicinity at the time of the crimes, and (after being notified by her child that she was sexually assaulted) failing to immediately notify police.”
It’s not clear when the alleged assaults occurred or when police were first made aware of them. Lambertson’s arrest warrants allege she allowed men to sexually assault one of her children in March 2025, December 2025 and June of this year.
And those reports weren’t the first time Lambertson had been investigated for child abuse, either. Investigators found she’d been charged in New York in 2006 with endangering the welfare of a child, burglary, trespass, harassment and possession of controlled substances with intent to sell, according to search warrants.
A July 2006 newspaper clipping from a paper in Syracuse, New York, states the then-20-year-old Lambertson was arrested on those charges June 24, 2006, though it’s not clear what the ultimate disposition of the case was.
‘Unfit for human occupancy’
Durham investigators found Lambertson and her children were indeed living in a trailer, which they described as “extremely unsanitary and unfit for human occupancy,” search warrants state. The children also did not appear to be attending school.
A judge granted a request this month for police to place a pole camera facing Lambertson’s camper, according to search warrants. Investigators saw Lambertson, her children and “various adult men” coming and going from the trailer on multiple occasions.
But when police arrived at the camper June 10 to arrest Lambertson and execute a search warrant, neither she nor her children were there, according to court documents. The camper’s owner, a family member of Lambertson’s, told police she’d been living there for over a year, but he’d asked her to leave after “ongoing disturbances and safety concerns.” The family member provided an address for where she might be staying.
Investigators found Lambertson and her children at that address the same day and arrested her, according to search warrants. Police seized at least two bags containing lingerie, documents of Lambertson’s and two phones.
In addition to the accusations of allowing men to sexually assault her child, Lambertson is also accused of allowing her children to be exposed to crack cocaine; at least one child is believed to have consumed crack, arrest warrants indicate.
Man charged with sex offenses
A day later, a second arrest tied to Lambertson’s came when Kevin Matthew Bledsoe, 36, of Clayton was charged with multiple sex offenses against children, court records show.
It’s not clear how Bledsoe may have known Lambertson, but court documents refer to the pair as co-defendants, and Bledsoe is charged with sexually assaulting and physically assaulting one of Lambertson’s children.
Bledsoe is on probation out of Virginia until February 2030 related to a drug conviction, according to court records. A magistrate described him as having a “significant record,” including prior convictions of felony cruelty to animals and other misdemeanor drug convictions.
Newspaper articles indicate Bledsoe locked two dogs in a storage unit in Dumfries, Virginia, without food and water and tried to dump their bodies in May 2017. He was arrested again in April 2023 in Stafford County, Virginia, on allegations he’d been driving a stolen vehicle under the influence with three other adults and two children inside.
It appears Bledsoe moved to North Carolina in April 2025, when he registered his out-of-state probation with local officials, court records show. It’s not clear how investigators tied him to Lambertson.
Lambertson and Bledsoe remained in the Durham County jail without bail as of Tuesday afternoon. Lambertson’s children are in CPS custody, according to court documents.
