Baby’s Death Raises Agonizing Questions : Earlier Incidents Involving Baby-Sitter Discovered

On Jan. 7, Karen and Larry Duncan dropped off their 6-month-old twins, Amanda and David, at the Canyon Country home of Vickie Maas. Maas had been baby-sitting for the twins for only four days, ever since Karen Duncan’s maternity leave had ended.

The couple had just settled down to breakfast at Patsy’s Cafe in Van Nuys when the controller of the company where they both worked ran in, telling them that Maas had called and said one of the babies had stopped breathing.

The Duncans went straight to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital and then to Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys where David was transferred for emergency surgery. There, physicians told them that David had little chance for survival. The baby died early the next morning.

Maas was arrested that evening.

Last week, after a preliminary hearing, Maas was ordered to stand trial on one count each of murder and child endangerment for allegedly shaking David so severely that he died of brain swelling.

In addition, Maas was ordered to stand trial on two counts of child endangerment stemming from two earlier alleged incidents involving infants in her care.

Although the Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services had investigated those two incidents, Maas was not charged until after David’s death.

The question in the minds of many in Judge Malcolm H. Mackey’s courtroom in San Fernando Municipal Court may have been: Why?

Why, Maas’ attorney, Larry H. Layton, asked in his closing arguments, hadn’t Maas been charged with the two alleged incidents last year in which authorities said the leg of a 7-month-old boy was broken and the head of a 6-month-old boy was bruised? Why, he asked, are these allegations being made now?

As they watched the courtroom drama unfold, parents of the three infants involved in the case and many of their friends and relatives were also wondering why, although from a different perspective.

“The first thing we thought is why didn’t somebody do something before?” asked Larry Duncan. “Nobody did anything. The scary part is this is just one case, and I perish to think how many more there are.”

If authorities had reacted differently to the earlier incidents, could David’s death have been prevented? Why did it take David’s death to make authorities think they had cause to charge Maas in the earlier incidents?

Layton argued during the two-day preliminary hearing that charges were not filed on the two earlier incidents because there wasn’t enough evidence, and that there still isn’t. The prosecution is only using the earlier incidents to stack the deck against Maas, he contended. If convicted, Maas could face a sentence of 17 years to life in state prison.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Davis-Springer wasn’t having any of it.

“There was a breakdown in communication between our office and law enforcement,” Davis-Springer said outside the courtroom. “The district attorney’s office was never notified of the prior allegations against Maas until David died.”

Davis-Springer acknowledged that there is no guarantee that her office would have filed charges on the earlier allegations if it had known about them. On the other hand, she said, if there had been better communication on those two earlier incidents, David’s death might have been prevented.

But the earlier allegations against Maas never made it to Davis-Springer’s office for a number of reasons--including conflicting medical opinions, the timing of the two incidents, possible computer error, a spelling mistake, conflicting office filing procedures and the criteria used by sheriff’s deputies investigating the incidents--all of which seem to add up to a hole in the system.

Layton said Maas would not be available for comment for this story.

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On June 21, 1987, Nancy McNerney of Acton brought 7-month-old Nicholas to Maas’ home for the first time. McNerney testified that she had learned of Maas’ services through an ad in a local paper after Nicholas’ regular sitter went on vacation.

Nicholas was in good health when his mother dropped him off on the morning of June 24, McNerney testified. But after she picked him up in the evening, she noticed that he would not put any weight on or move his left leg, she said. She testified that when she called Maas to find out if anything had happened during the day, Maas told her that Nicholas had been holding himself up by the edge of the couch when the phone rang, startling him and causing him to fall.

The next morning, McNerney brought Nicholas to see pediatrician Robert Grant Allison of Mission Hills who after examining the boy filed a suspected child abuse report with the county Department of Children’s Services. A 1980 state law requires those who work with children to report suspected child abuse to a child protective agency immediately. He testified that he believed Nicholas’ leg could not have been broken in the manner described by his mother.

As a result of Allison’s report, DCS sent a worker to the McNerney home. DCS determined that the Nancy and Joseph McNerney were not a threat to Nicholas’ safety and referred the case to the Sheriff’s Department.

DCS, which protects children from relatives living in the home, refers cases of child abuse in which other people are suspected to law enforcement authorities.

“DCS steps in only if intrafamilial abuse is suspected,” said Deanne Tilton, director of the Los Angeles County Interagency Council on Child Abuse, a coalition of 25 city, county and state agencies that provide protective services for children. “It’s a real problem.”

The agency, following its procedure, filed the case under Nicholas’ mother’s name. The agency does not cross-file cases under the names of suspected abusers, a fact that had a bearing on subsequent events.

On July 1, sheriff’s deputies from Antelope Valley visited the McNerneys, according to an entry in the station’s log. They told the McNerneys, who believed that Maas was responsible, that they could not make an immediate arrest because Nicholas was not bruised, Nancy McNerney said.

‘No Crime’

The deputies then talked with Dr. H.E. Yazdi, a Mission Hills orthopedic surgeon who had set Nicholas’ leg. He told Deputy James Saporito that the baby-sitter’s story was a plausible explanation of Nicholas’ injury. Saporito concluded the inquiry by writing “no crime” in the log book.

Allison said if deputies had contacted him about Nicholas’ leg he would have told them that the baby had been abused.

“Sometimes you file a report and feel it’s just going to cause a lot of fuss and bother,” Allison said in an interview outside the courtroom. “But in this case, I didn’t feel the circumstances added up to any other possibility besides child abuse.”

After Saporito talked to Yazdi, the log entry was sent downtown, where it was to be entered into the department’s computer system under the names of Nicholas, his parents and Maas.

Maas’ name was incorrectly spelled when it was entered in the computer at the dispatch center, said Lt. Frank Vadurro, the officer in charge of the department’s child abuse detail, a unit made up of 22 investigators specially trained to recognize signs of physical and sexual abuse. The spelling error may have been a factor in the case now in court.

There were at least two more breakdowns in the system. Maas was required by state law to have a license to provide child care in her home to two or more unrelated families. Although deputies and DCS workers were aware that Maas was not licensed, there is no record of a complaint filed with the state Department of Social Services’ Community Care Licensing Division, according to Donna Mandelstam, head of the San Fernando district, which includes the Santa Clarita Valley.

Offering child care to children from more than one family without a license is a misdemeanor, said Emery Bontrager, a DCS spokesman. DCS usually notifies either the district attorney or city attorney if it learns that a day-care provider is operating without a license. “Sometimes it doesn’t happen though,” Bontrager said. “This is not a high priority for law enforcement.”

Maas Not Charged

Maas has not been charged with providing child care without a license.

To obtain a license as a small family day-care provider, baby-sitters must be fingerprinted, take a tuberculosis test, provide character references and safeguard their homes for children by taking such measures as making sure heaters are vented and pools are fenced in.

Every applicant’s name is run through the state Department of Justice’s Child Abuse Central Index, which lists suspects in alleged child abuse incidents if the agencies involved send reports to Sacramento. The index is available only to authorities and not to parents seeking child care.

“The license is a minimal protection,” said Patty Siegel, executive director of the California Childcare Resource and Referral Network, a coalition of 65 child-care referral agencies. “But it’s an important one.”

Bontrager said DCS workers sent a report on the Maas case to the justice department index. But when deputies checked the index after the second alleged incident Aug. 17, nothing was listed under Maas’ name, Sheriff’s Lt. Vadurro said. There may have been a lag time between the filing of the report and its entry in the index, he said.

On Aug. 17, Travis Hoyt returned home from Maas’ house with bruises on his ears and upper back. Travis’ mother, Catherine Hoyt, testified that Maas told her Travis was hit on both sides of the head with an infant swing. She also testified that he once came home with a handprint on his leg, but that she believed Maas’ explanation at the time. She testified that Maas had told her that she grabbed Travis on the leg to prevent him from falling off a couch while changing his diaper.

On Aug. 18, Hoyt took Travis to Lawrence Menzer, a Van Nuys pediatrician. Menzer examined the boy and concluded that the account Hoyt said she received from Maas was not plausible. He then filed a suspected child abuse report with DCS.

DCS again sent a worker to investigate allegations concerning Maas, this time to the Hoyts’ home in Canyon Country. But because of the agency’s system of filing cases under mothers’ names, the worker was unaware of the incident involving Nicholas McNerney.

The DCS worker concluded that Travis was safe in the Hoyts’ home and referred the case to the Sheriff’s Department.

“There is no indication that the second worker knew of the first worker, and things might not have been that different if he did,” Bontrager said. “But the second worker could have told police about the two incidents if he had known about the first one.”

Ordinarily, detectives in the Sheriff’s Department’s child abuse detail would not have had to rely on DCS to tell them of a suspect’s history. About a year ago, the department computer was programmed to reveal prior reports made on a suspect if a deputy requested the information, Vadurro said.

But a computer search by Detective Alex P. Sandoval, assigned to investigate Travis’ bruises after patrol officers referred the case downtown, showed nothing under “M-A-A-S, Vickie.”

Name Not in Index

Sandoval also checked the justice department index under Maas’ name, but her name did not show up there either, Vadurro said.

The detective ultimately concluded his investigation into the Travis Hoyt case with a report that said no crime had been committed. No information was presented to the district attorney’s office.

“It was a unilateral decision,” Sandoval testified. “I did not feel there was sufficient evidence to hold anyone culpable for Travis Hoyt’s injuries.”

Vadurro said the detective made the proper judgment.

“When an investigator doesn’t provide the D.A. with a beyond-a-doubt suspicion, then cases won’t be filed,” Vadurro said. “It’s not any different than in robbery cases or any other kind of case.”

Gregory Denton, head of the district attorney’s child abuse unit, said there has to be a filtering system like the one used by deputies, “otherwise we would be inundated with cases, and our investigators would be wasting time that could be used to investigate more meritorious cases.”

He said it is often difficult to prove child abuse if there are no witnesses to the crime, the child cannot speak and all prosecutors have is the baby-sitter’s word against the parents’. If there are two reasonable interpretations of the facts, a jury is bound by law to take the one that points to a defendant’s innocence, Denton said.

However, Denton said prosecutors have a much stronger case if there has been more than one allegation of abuse presented to them, even if there were no eyewitnesses.

“If there was a breakdown in the system in this situation, it would be that the officer didn’t know of the earlier case,” Denton said.

Sandoval said that, if he had known about Nicholas’ broken leg, he probably would have presented information on both cases to prosecutors before David died.

After David’s death on Jan. 8, the Sheriff’s Department conducted another computer search. This time a computer program to find alternate spellings came up with Maas’ name.