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***UPDATE***
November 30, 2001
Trial Continues
Witnesses: no one in park day in question
as reported in
The Times - Republic
By Sherry Waters
Reporter
Three witnesses told the jury in the Kevin Ziebart murder trial Thursday
that they were in Legion Park around the time Ziebart claimed to be there
with two-year-old Kloie Van Hoveln and they did not see anyone
else in the park.
Ziebart, 31, Watseka, is charged with first-degree murder in the death
of Kloie Van Hoveln. Kloie was the daughter of Ziebart's girlfriend,
Paulette Moenck.
He contends that Kloie incurred her injuries when she fell from a sliding
board in Legion Park, but medical doctors and a coroner's report revealed
that Kloie died from a severe blunt trauma to the head and other
injuries consistent with shaken baby syndrome.
Ziebart has said that Kloie at first seemed OK after she fell, but a short
while later she became unresponsive and he took her to the hospital.
Traci Bishop, Samantha Geiger and Carol Kaufmann, all of Watseka, were
in Legion Park on the morning of Aug. 29, 2000, between 8:30 and
9:00 a.m. and all three ladies said they had not seen another person in the
park. Kaufmann, however, did say she had seen a dark-colored car with a
sloped back end parked on the lower road at the west end of the park.
(Ziebart drove a black Camaro.)
Bishop and Geiger had walked to the park from the high school and
entered the area from Belmont Avenue.
They walked through the park to the playground equipment on the west
side of the park and sat in swings and talked.
Bishop and Geiger each said they arrived at the park about 8:30 a.m.
and saw no one.
Carol Kaufmann said she'd also entered the park from Belmont Avenue
and had parked her car in the circle area across from the pool.
Kaufmann said she frequently takes her chocolate Labrador Retriever to the park
for exercise, and they arrived at the park later that usual on Aug. 29, 2000.
"We got there about 8:30 a.m.," she said.
Kaufmann said she and the dog walked to the lower road after she'd
checked to make sure there were no people around and especially no
children because the dog was unleashed and he likes to run after children and
play with them. "She's a big girl and she could scare someone," Kaufmann said.
However, Kaufmann saw no one in the park. "There was a car parked on the lower
road and because of where it was parked and the way it was parked, I thought
there might be someone in it. But I couldn't tell from where we were," she said.
Kaufmann didn't know the make of the car but she did note it was dark in color
and appeared to be a newer car with a sloped back
.
Kaufmann said that was the first time that summer that she and the dog had
the park to themselves. "It was great," she said.
Also testifying Thursday morning was Watseka Deputy Chief of Police Don King,
Tammy Moore who lived with Kloie and her mother, Paulette Moenck in Oppyville
near Watseka, and two Illinois State Police investigators.
King said he had been called by Watseka Dispatch after the hospital had
called on a suspected child abuse case. King and Detective Elizabeth Perzee
went to the hospital and while they were there, Perzee questioned Ziebart.
King said he learned the child was going to be airlifted to Carle at Champaign
and he and Perzee went to Champaign as well. "The child was being treated and
there was nothing we could do. We knew we could return and talk to the family
and attending physicians so we came back to Watseka," King said.
King received a phone call from the city police dispatcher later that night
informing him that Kloie had died about 11:30 p.m. He said it was about that
time that he learned the child might have been injured outside the
city limits so he called Lt. Randy Eimen of the Iroquois County Sheriff's Department.
The police officers met at the Watseka Police Department and share information
they had gathered with Eimen and his officers. King accompanied Eimen to Ziebart's
parents home on South Fourth Street to pick up Ziebart who came with them
willingly. King also went to the jail and when Ziebart's attorney Jamie Boyd asked
him why he was at jail if the little girl's death was a county matter, King said
the two agencies often cooperate with each others cases.
"I believe in pooling all the information and knowledge you have and working in a
cooperative manner," King said. He thought he could be of assistance to the county,
he said.
Boyd asked King when Ziebart had been read his Miranda rights and he replied,
"About 1:00 a.m."
"Was he under arrest? Was he free to go?" Boyd asked King.
"I believe he could have," King said.
"Did you tell him that?" Boyd asked.
"I don't believe so," King replied.
"Did the others tell him?" Boyd asked.
"I don't know; I don't think so," King answered.
King said between the hours of 1-4:30 a.m. Ziebart was always in the sight of
one of the police officers.
King said it was Eimen who decided to video tape an interview with Ziebart
about 4:30a.m.
Watseka police officer Josh King testified that he was assigned to secure
the apartment at Oppyville and continued to do that job on Aug. 30, 2000,
which was his day off. He made sure no one except police personnel
went in and out of the apartment and stopped the garbage service from
emptying the dumpster at the complex.
State Police Crime Scene Investigator Michael Trummel testified about
gathering hair and fiber evidence from a slide at Legion Park, from the
Oppyville apartment, and from Ziebart's car. He said he found hair on
Kloie's nightgown, from a pillow, near the sofa and coffee table and found
a single hair caught in a cobweb on the sliding board at Legion Park.
Illinois State Police Forensic Scientist with the Illinois Crime Lab,
Glenn Schubert, testified regarding his examination of the hair samples
he'd been provided.
Schubert said by using various methods, he can determine whether a hair
feel out naturally or whether it was forcibly removed from a head.
He said, too, that while he cannot positively say a hair comes from a particular
person he can exclude whether the hair came from that person.
Schubert said he was given hair to analyze from Kloie and Ziebart as well
as the hair that was collected at the scenes. He said the hair collected
from Kloie's nightgown, from the end of the coffee table, from the east
corner of the couch were all consistent with the strands of Kloie's hair.
However, he did not think the hair found on the slide was similar to the
Kloie's head hair standard. "There were some similarities but the tests
were inconclusive on the origin of it," Schubert said.
The state also showed the taped interview of Ziebart with Eimen and King.
In that interview, Ziebart was visibly tired and yawned several times.
The Ziebart on the video bore very little resemblance to the man on trial.
On tape, Ziebart was much thinner and his head was nearly shaved.
He seemed unable to sit still and was moving about in the chair, rubbing
his face, his head and his arms. He was, however, articulate and adamant
about not harming the child. At one point, he said Kloie's mother stayed
up all night the night before her daughter died. "She was snorting cocaine.
That's what she told me she'd been doing," Ziebart said.
He also said that he had never struck Kloie, that he had never even spanked her.
He said that he loved children and people who knew him knew that.
"I ain't the one who blistered her ass every time she did something wrong,"
he told police.
Ziebart said the child had fallen twice the night before she died. Once,
she fell and hit her head on the coffee table and another time she fell
from her little green chair. "She was standing up on the arms of the chair, and it
tipped on her. She fell on the floor," he said.
Ziebart said her mother was there when Kloie fell.
"That'll teach her little ass to stand up in the chair,"
Ziebart quoted Moenck as saying. "I never even spanked her, never whupped her,
never did anything mean or hateful or derogatory to that child," he said.
Eimen is expected to take the stand today.
Please keep Kloie's family and friends
in your prayers.
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