EXCLUSIVE: The feds are now on the case to arrest Timothy Busfield on child sex abuse charges out of New Mexico.
“Albuquerque Police Department is working with the U.S. Marshal Service to get Mr. Busfield into custody,” APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos told Deadline on Monday of the DOJ’s primary agency for fugitive investigations. “I do not have a timeline,” added Gallegos, director of communications for the department.
An arrest warrant issued January 9 charges Busfield with with two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor and child abuse.
Two brothers born in 2014 who worked on Fox’s now-canceled The Cleaning Lady, on which Busfield directed several episodes and served as an executive producer, claim that the Emmy-winning thirtysomething vet touched them inappropriately. One of the boys, referred to as SL, told APD Officer Marvin Brown, who wrote up the comprehensive warrant after a few months of investigation, that Busfield touched his “penis and buttocks, masking it as play” on more than one occasion.
Not revealed until last fall by the children’s parents, who had been in contact with at least one local law firm, the alleged misconduct by Busfield supposedly started when the boy was 7 years old.
While the U.S. Marshals’ HQ in Arlington, VA did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment and information today, law enforcement sources say that Busfield, who lives in Upstate New York with spouse Melissa Gilbert, could be brought into custody in the next few days. Busfield’s Innovative Artists management team also did not response to request for comment, but lawyers for Busfield are said to be preparing for his arrest, I hear.
The 68-year-old, who was accused but never charged in two previous sexual assault allegations in 1994 and 2012, could face three to many more years in state prison if found guilty of the New Mexico charges. Under that state’s statutes, sentencing time and felony class can go up significantly in sex crimes if the crime involves children under 13 years of age — as it allegedly does in these cases.
Although Brown proclaims in the warrant that “pedophiles often infiltrate families under a trusted role, like Timothy, who, as a producer, exploited the hectic film sets,” Busfield himself has suggested there could be another motivation at work.
In a November 3, 2025 phone interview with Busfield cited in the dense 12-page warrant, the actor told Brown that Cleaning Lady “lead actress, Elodie Young” informed him over a year ago that “the mother of SL and VL (sic) that she wanted revenge, and I’m going to get my revenge on Tim Busfield for not bringing her kids back for the final season.”
Earlier in 2025, Cleaning Lady producers Warner Bros TV launched a probe into Busflield’s behavior on the Albuquerque set of the drama after an anonymous SAG-AFTRA hotline complaint about the actor-director “tickling and caressing the head and body of minor boys.” Upon his own reading of the investigation conducted by an outside law firm, APD Officer Brown said in the warrant that Solomon investigator “Christina McGovern was not able to talk with anyone who would support evidence that Timothy Busfield engaged in this behavior.”
As Busfield’s arrest and likely move back to New Mexico for an arraignment looms, NBC today pulled a January 15 episode of Law & Order: SVU that had the actor in a guest-star role as a judge. Instead, the network will push up the SVU episode that was originally set to air January 22.
