Newborn Iacona
Cause of death not proven
in a court of law
Convicted of involuntary
manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison was the baby's mother,
Audrey Iacona, 17, who secretly delivered the baby in her basement.
Due to receiving an email
claiming I had not reported the facts of this case and was in fact sensalizing
this story because I had murdered listed as the cause of death I am updating
it with actual newspaper articles so I cannot be accused again of not stating
the facts.
And because of this email
I will be stating my own personal comments regarding this story...As far
as to how the baby died, be it by suffocation or from infection the facts
are that he was thrown away like a piece of garbage. His body was stuffed
into two garbage bags, not just one, but two and left in the basement for
several hours until police discovered it. The "mother", who had already
had an abortion knew very well she was pregnant again. After delivering
the baby she called a friend and told her of the delivery, however didn't
call an ambulance to see if the baby could have been saved if he had been
born dead or close to it as she claimed. And if he was born dead and who
proved her to be an expert on determining if he was or not, then why hide
him, why hide in a basement to deliver the baby and then dispose of it
like garbage? In my opinion the eight years she received is what she deserved.
And if and when her parents decide to quit making excuses for their daughter
and allow her to face the consequences of her own mistakes and if she looses
her appeal and has to serve her sentence at least that way that will be
five years of knowing for sure she won't get pregnant again to either kill
another baby by aborting it or throwing another one away. And my last personal
opinion is that this girl should never ever become pregnant again as she
has no maternal instincts whatsover and is only sorry that she might have
to face the consequences of her cold heart.
MEDINA _ As a former cheerleader
held her hands to her face and sobbed, a jury convicted her of involuntary
manslaughter Friday for the death of the baby she secretly delivered in
her basement.
A judge sentenced Audrey
Iacona, 17, to eight years in prison for the death of her unnamed boy,
who police found wrapped in a towel and placed inside two plastic bags
hours after it was born last May.
The Medina County Common
Pleas Court jury could not reach a verdict on a murder charge against Miss
Iacona. Seven members of the panel wanted a conviction, while five voted
for acquittal.
Medina County Prosecutor
Dean Holman said that so long as Friday's convictions are upheld on appeal,
he will likely not seek a retrial of Miss Iacona on the murder charge.
Miss Iacona also was found
guilty of endangering a child and abuse of a corpse.
In a wrenching scene, Miss
Iacona's mother, Angela, and other relatives wailed and shrieked when the
jury announced its verdict and again minutes later as Judge James Kimbler
sentenced Miss Iacona.
"Oh Audrey! So unfair,"
her mother cried out at one point. At another, a man got up and yelled
at Kimbler that he wouldn't have sentenced his own child to prison time.
The man, apparently a relative of Miss Iacona's, then stormed out of the
courtroom.
Kimbler, who could have
sentenced Miss Iacona to 10 years in prison on the manslaughter conviction,
said outside court he was comfortable with his decision.
"There was no reason for
this child to die," he said.
During her sentencing, Kimbler
told Miss Iacona that "there are thousands of couples in Ohio who would
have adopted this child," triggering shouts from her family.
Miss Iacona, a former student
at Holy Name High School near Cleveland, will be eligible for release in
five years. She was taken from the courthouse in handcuffs minutes after
sentencing.
Prosecutors and defense
attorneys agreed that Miss Iacona did not tell anyone except a few friends
about her pregnancy and that she gave birth to a premature, 3.8-pound boy
in the basement of her home about 35 miles south of Cleveland.
During the two-week trial,
prosecutors portrayed Miss Iacona as an uncaring youth who smothered her
baby because she couldn't be bothered to care for it.
Defense attorneys argued
that the baby was born dead. Miss Iacona _ who did not testify _ was afraid
to tell her parents about her pregnancy, partly because she had undergone
an abortion earlier, they said.
After delivering the baby,
Miss Iacona called a friend and told her what happened. The friend became
nervous and told her father, who then alerted police to the child's birth.
Defense lawyer Richard Marco
said he would appeal. "She is a girl who is not a danger to society," he
said
MEDINA -- The Iacona family
was praying for another guardian angel to help them produce Audrey Iacona's
bond, and seven appeared out of nowhere, Mark Iacona said Thursday.
The Iacona family has received
calls from seven people in three counties in the 24 hours since common
pleas Clerk of Courts Kathy Fortney notified the family the five properties
and cash presented as bond Tuesday did not satisfy the requirements, Mark
Iacona said.
He presented paperwork for
$1.895 million worth of property and a $100,000 check to Fortney on Tuesday
and said he didn't have an alternative plan if the deal fell through.
The family could present
$1 million cash or $2 million worth of property to get the 18-year-old
Audrey Iacona out of the county jail, but not a combination of both, Fortney
said.
"What they presented to
me was not complete surety. I am not satisfied with the surety," she said.
The guardian angels that
appeared came in the form of acquaintances and three strangers, Mark Iacona
said.
"It's the most humbling
thing in the world," he said. "And they're all saying the same thing: 'To
me, it's not a risk. How can I help. ' "
Four of the donors' properties
could not be used because they were in Cuyahoga and Summit counties, he
said, adding he would not release the names of the donors until they were
needed.
The properties used for
bond must be located in Medina County, Fortney said.
She listed several other
requirements she would need to free the convicted felon from the county
jail. Among them were deeds to the properties, proof property taxes were
paid, statements from all lien holders and affidavits from all property
holders stating their willingness to use their property for surety.
She added she needed proof
the properties were worth the amount Mark Iacona claimed.
"They keep putting up roadblocks,
but the questions they were asking were not deal breakers by any means,"
Mark Iacona said.
He added he already is in
the process of obtaining appraisals on the additional properties offered
as collateral and hopes to have his daughter out of jail before her new
trial hearing Thursday.
Audrey Iacona has been in
the county jail since her Feb. 13 conviction on five felony counts, including
involuntary manslaughter, relating to the death of her newborn son.
The then 17-year-old girl
gave birth to Joseph Bryan Iacona-Clink alone in the basement of her Granger
Township home, 3111 State Road, on May 1, 1997.
She then placed her son
inside two plastic garbage bags, where a sheriff's detective found his
body several hours later.
She was sentenced to eight
years in prison by Judge James L. Kimbler, who also set the $1 million
bond.
The main focus for the Iacona
family is to bring Audrey home before she is sent to the Ohio State Reformatory
for Women in Marysville, Mark Iacona said.
MEDINA: The crux of Audrey
Iacona's appeal is nothing more than ``an elaborate conspiracy theory,''
Medina County Prosecutor Dean Holman said in a court brief filed yesterday.
By claiming blood culture
reports were hidden, Iacona is trying to blame the prosecutor's office
for ``her multiple felony convictions,'' as a way ``to provide an innocent
explanation for her newborn baby's death,'' Holman wrote in a brief filed
yesterday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Holman's filing yesterday
is in response to Iacona's appeal, which was filed Jan. 19.
Iacona, who was convicted
of involuntary manslaughter in the death of her newborn son, is appealing
her conviction and eight-year prison sentence.
Iacona, then 17, gave birth
to a 3.8-pound boy on the afternoon of May 1, 1997. Later in the afternoon,
police -- who were called to Iacona's parents' home by a friend's father
-- found the baby dead inside two plastic bags.
The Medina County coroner
ruled the death a homicide, saying the baby suffocated inside the plastic
bags. Iacona, however, said the boy was born dead or near death.
At the center of her appeal
is a coroner's report that shows Group A streptococcus present in a culture
of the infant's blood.
That infection, Iacona's
attorneys say, is the real cause of death. And, they add, the jury was
not able to hear the evidence of that infection, because Holman and the
Cuyahoga County coroner's office -- which performed the autopsy -- withheld
the evidence from defense attorneys until late into the trial.
Holman, however, has vehemently
rebutted that charge all along and continues to rebut it in his brief.
The blood culture report,
he said, was both hand-delivered and faxed to Iacona attorney Richard Marco
10 weeks before the trial. The culture was also part of the packet of information
defense experts reviewed at least twice at the Cuyahoga County coroner's
office, he said.
``Since February 23, 1998,
when she filed her motion for a new trial,'' Holman writes, ``(Iacona)
has advanced an elaborate conspiracy theory which alleges that the Medina
County prosecutor and his assistant prosecutors were so intent on convicting
her at trial that -- with the full cooperation of the Cuyahoga County coroner
and her deputy coroners, the Summit County medical examiner, the Medina
County coroner, Dr. (Mark) Collin and Dr. (Paul) Gatewood -- they deliberately
withheld or concealed the . . . blood culture report of Baby Boy Iacona
from the defense.''
What that theory fails to
take into account, Holman says in the brief, is that the blood culture
has no bearing on how the baby died.
The infection was ``a meaningless
contaminant'' and ``not evidence of infection in the baby,'' Holman said,
adding, ``There was no supporting evidence of disease, infection or inflammation
in the baby, in the umbilical cord, or in (Iacona).''
Plus, he said, the infection
took nearly 48 hours to grow in the culture, not the 24 hours it would
take for a ``true infection'' to grow.
Iacona's attorneys disagree,
saying the infection is proof that the infant could have died from septic
shock, not from suffocation within the plastic bags.
Iacona attorney Niki Schwartz
could not be reached for comment yesterday. However, he said during the
new trial hearing, ``If that evidence had been presented at trial, it would
have changed the result of the trial dramatically.''
In addition to the blood
culture, Iacona's appeal touches several other subjects. Among them:
Iacona's eight-year sentence
is excessive and ``contrary to law.''
Holman disagrees, saying
the sentence is reasonable and less than the maximum sentence Iacona could
have received: up to 10 years on each count of involuntary manslaughter,
up to three years on each count of child endangering and up to six months
for abuse of a corpse.
Police illegally searched
the Iacona home May 1.
Holman said Iacona's mother,
Angela, consented to the search, making it legal, as Common Pleas Court
Judge James Kimbler ruled before the trial.
Iacona's attorneys will
now have 10 days to respond to Holman's brief. An oral argument will then
be scheduled for the case.
Iacona continues to be free
on $1 million bond during her appeal.
GRANGER TWP.: Twenty-four
hours after Audrey Iacona was released on $1 million cash bond, her family
was looking for a little quiet.
``We've had a pretty nicely
uneventful day,'' Mark Iacona, Audrey's father, said yesterday.
Audrey Iacona spent her
first morning home in three months visiting with family and friends. She
was convicted Feb. 13 of the involuntary manslaughter of her infant son.
``She slept in late and
did some personal things she couldn't do in jail,'' her father said.
Mark Iacona said there had
been no sign of sightseers or the ``sickies'' that worried him when they
called a talk radio contest to say what they would do if they saw his daughter
on the street after she was released from the Medina County Jail.
The Iaconas struggled to
raise a combination of cash and property to pay the bond, which required
$2 million if property was used. Finally, A-1 Bond Service of Cleveland
assisted the family and Audrey Iacona was released Friday.
In the community, opinions
about Iacona's conviction and release on bond were a confused mix of traditional
moral standards and a reluctance to pass judgment.
Sally Elder, 57, is a teacher
who spent her childhood a few doors down from the Iacona home. She sees
what has happened to Audrey Iacona and her family as ``one big symptom
of what is going on in our society.''
Elder used to teach at an
Arapahoe reservation in Wyoming, where the poverty rate was as high as
85 percent and many people were on welfare. Still, she was struck by how
the people valued children.
``The most energy you'll
find there is in the young girls who had babies and wanted a better life
for them,'' she said.
Back home, Elder said she
sees a work ethic developed to the detriment of relationships.
``When the family was on
TV yesterday there was no indication that they had addressed the issues
that brought them to this point. She still looked like she was in so much
denial that she hasn't even felt anything yet. And how could she, at 17?''
``Whether that child was
dead or alive doesn't matter much at this point,'' she said.
People talking about Iacona
often mentioned what they viewed as society's acceptance of abortion.
Bob Fortney, 58, of Detroit,
makes regular trips to Granger Township to visit his 89-year-old mother.
He thought Iacona should serve some time in jail, but also faulted the
teen's parents.
``Ask my mother and she'll
tell you (Audrey Iacona) should go to jail for 15 years. But it's a tough
call. There should be some punishment, but if she's had a previous abortion,
and her parents knew about it, they should have made sure she got help.
I feel sorry for the young lady. She's probably needed some help for years.''
Nick Vukich, 63, of Fairlawn,
echoed Fortney's concerns. ``Whatever happens, I just hope that she and
her family have a chance to get their lives together, but she bears some
responsibility in this even if she is a teen-ager.''
Charles Klein, 52, of Parma
Heights, saw Iacona's release as another problem.
``If her parents continue
to bail her butt out, how will she learn to be responsible?'' he said.
``I just don't think you can teach a kid respect for authority if you do
that -- and obviously her parents didn't -- so they all share in this.''
And now here is the URL
for the website of the person who emailed me and who obviously believes
Iacona was just a scared misguided teenager.
http://lek.net/~schedule/index.html
And I guess the bottom
line of that site is that just because teenagers have sex they do not have
to face the consequences of those actions such as an unplanned pregnancy.
Just claim how scared and misquided they were if they decide to either
kill their babies or throw them away. And won't even go into the fact of
no prenatal care and maybe if Iacona had received it instead of hiding
her pregnancy then the baby would have been born at full term and there
would have been no speculation as to rather or not she killed him or if
he was born dead or close to it.
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Susie Keidel
12 years old
Died in an arson fire
&
Kelly Keidel
8 years old
Died in an arson fire
In May 1995, Lori Romaneck
asked a clerk at the state's Office of Vital Records for copies of two
death certificates. "I wanted to bury my two sisters with my mother, and
I needed the right paperwork," she says. "That was it." But at that moment,
Romaneck saw something that literally made her fall to her knees and weep:
The Maricopa County's medical
examiner had amended the death certificates in a January 1967 west Phoenix
house fire that claimed the lives of Susie and Kelly Keidel --Romaneck's
sisters.
Officials in 1967 had called
the fire an accident But Dr. Philip Keen on December 12, 1994, had changed
that to arson. That meant 12-year-old Susie and 8-year-old Kelly had been
murdered.
To Romaneck, the change
was a godsend. A month earlier, Romaneck's father, Gene Keidel, had been
convicted of murdering her mother in September 1966. "It made official
what I'd known in my heart for a long time," she says. "My father hadn't
only murdered my mom and buried her in our backyard. He also murdered my
sisters and almost me by burning us up when we were sleeping."
The 37-year-old Romaneck
-- who was five at the time of the fire -- survived horrific burns and
other injuries. She returned home to her father, to be subjected to unspeakable
abuses before breaking free and trying to salvage her sanity.
But Gene Keidel never has
been charged with murdering his children -- and probably never will be.
Despite their strong suspicions, authorities in the 1960s also did not
charge Keidel with killing his wife, DiAnne, just four months before the
fatal fire.
Romaneck's torment would
not ease for years. Then, in June 1993, she told police that she'd seen
her father beat her mother into unconsciousness, and she knew he'd buried
her in the family's backyard.
In spring 1995, a jury convicted
Keidel of first-degree murder. Keidel -- who maintains his innocence --
is serving a life sentence at the Arizona State Prison in Florence. He
is 61.
The revelation of her long-held
secret also allowed Lori Romaneck to lay her mother's remains next to those
of her late sisters. It wasn't exactly a happy ending, but it seemed about
the best she could hope for. But Gene Keidel's conviction didn't mark the
end of Romaneck's saga.
In December 1995, Lori Romaneck
sued the City of Phoenix, claiming its fire and police departments had
been negligent in their investigations of her mother's disappearance and
of the fire. The agencies' failures had condemned Lori to an unnecessarily
savage upbringing, the suit alleged, and the City of Phoenix was liable.
In June, the city admitted its negligence. The settlement also made Romaneck
eligible to collect $5.5 million from three of
the city's insurance carriers.
But like everything else in this bizarre tale, it's not that simple.
An Unbelievable Case
DiAnne Keidel's September
1966 disappearance had been an unsolved mystery for almost three decades.
Police reports from the time indicated detectives had suspected Lyle Gene
Keidel of being linked to his wife's vanishing. But the case had languished,
and finally was forgotten. Then in June 1993, Lori Romaneck walked into
Phoenix police headquarters and told an eerie tale from her childhood.
She alleged that, on Friday,
September 17, 1967, she and her half-sister, Susie, had watched their mother
slide unconscious to the floor during a late-night brawl with their father.
"He [Keidel] stood over my mother's body and he turned and saw us," Romaneck
would later testify. She said she'd seen DiAnne Keidel's lifeless body
next to a backyard swimming pool, saw Gene (who apparently didn't see her),
then heard him digging around the side of the house.
Hers wasn't a "repressed
memory," in which individuals are said to recall traumatic memories that
had been buried somewhere in their psyches. Romaneck says she'd never forgotten
her mother's murder. Instead, she had lived in fear of her father, even
years after she'd moved away from him.
Romaneck's story sounded
outlandish. Police wouldn't bust through a concrete slab in the former
Keidel residence in the 4200 block of West Citrus Way until 16 months after
Romaneck first told her story in 1993. Detectives found DiAnne's remains
where Romaneck said they'd be. A nylon stocking was tied around the victim's
neck.
It wasn't the only tragedy
Lori Romaneck had endured: One day after 31-year-old DiAnne Keidel disappeared
in 1966, Gene Keidel -- who had been living nearby with his father -- moved
back to the family home. Four months after that, just before midnight on
January 9, 1967, the home caught fire, with the four Keidel children inside.
The Keidels' son, 9-year-old
Greg, escaped through a window unharmed. But Susie and Kelly died. Lori
suffered horrific burns over half of her body; her heart stopped twice
during resuscitation efforts on her front lawn.
A young firefighter named
Ray Mullens found Lori beneath her oldest sibling, Susie, on a bedroom
floor. Susie was shielding Lori from the intense heat and toxic smoke,
giving her life to save her sister's.
A quarter-century later,
Mullens would become romantically linked with her. That was enough of a
twist. But, remarkably, Mullens had yet another role to play. No tale like
this would be complete without a conspiracy theory.
Retired fire captain Mullens
provides it. Mullens is convinced his ex-employers have tried to keep truths
about the fire from being revealed, both in 1967 and in recent years. In
1995, he says, he urged Phoenix police to seek obstruction of justice charges
against the fire department. Mullens' conspiratorial musings don't bear
up under scrutiny. However, some of his points do contain grains of truth.
For example, the fire department
wanted little to do with the old fire case after Lori Romaneck came forward,
despite a request from police detectives. It wasn't until after police
recovered DiAnne Keidel's remains in September 1994 -- and after County
Attorney Rick Romley spoke publicly about the fire -- that fire officials
seriously revisited the long-forgotten fire.
Romley said at a press conference
that a still-unidentified fire investigator had expressed concern "about
why the [1967] arson investigation was dropped so quickly." He also said
he'd learned that an accelerant had been used to start the fatal fire,
and that the investigator "had been waiting 28 years" for the County Attorney's
Office to look into it.
Even then, the fire department
didn't release its new report until March 1996, 18 months after it was
completed. It concluded, "the Phoenix Fire Department is preparing to reclassify
the probable cause of this fire [from accidental] to incendiary. . . ."
Three of four investigators
who have re-examined the Keidel fire since 1994 -- the two from the fire
department, and experts hired by the litigants -- say the house was torched.
The exception was Patrick
Kennedy, a Florida-based expert hired by the City of Phoenix. Not surprisingly,
Kennedy refuted the fire department's own findings, which had given a big
boost to Lori Romaneck's chances of winning her lawsuit. Kennedy billed
the city more than $50,000 for his efforts.
If it was arson, then it
also was murder and attempted murder. The best investigative lead was Gene
Keidel -- especially from the perspective of opportunity (in 1967, long
before officials knew for sure that DiAnne was buried in the backyard).
Where was Keidel when his
children were burning? He said he'd gone to a laundromat a few minutes
earlier. He'd followed the fire engines to Citrus Way, he said, shocked
to find his own home ablaze and three of his children unconscious on the
lawn.
Police knew before the smoke
cleared on Citrus Way that DiAnne Keidel had been missing for four months
-- and that Gene Keidel was the prime suspect in what looked like foul
play. That alone should have been reason enough for authorities to go slowly
in determining the fire's cause. They didn't.
Phoenix arson detective
Bill Moore concluded in less than a day that the fire was "accidental."
His report said an aluminum pot on a stove had overheated and exploded,
spattering metal onto nearby curtains and igniting. That spelled the end
of the fire investigation.
But even Patrick Kennedy,
the city-hired expert, says Moore
was wrong. "I don't believe
the pan had anything to do with the fire," Kennedy said in a May 4 deposition.
"[But] there is absolutely no evidence that this is an incendiary fire,
no evidence of any kind. . . . I know a lot about this fire, but I don't
know what happened. No one does. A fire started in the kitchen. . . . The
problem with this case is that everybody agrees that Gene Keidel is a rotten
guy, a despicable man. Being despicable doesn't make you an arsonist."
Filed in December 1995,
Romaneck's lawsuit did seem a far reach. "If the city had not been negligent
in this matter in 1967," Romaneck's attorneys wrote, "it would have had
overwhelming evidence that Gene Keidel set fire to his house and killed
two of his daughters while attempting to kill all of his children. . .
.
"The [police] suspected
Gene Keidel of murdering his wife a few months before the fire. The city,
but for their negligence, would have not only suspected Keidel of arson,
murder and attempted murder regarding his children, it would have been
able to prove it and convict him, or otherwise protect Lori." Attorneys
Randy Hinsch and Richard Plattner claimed that, if authorities had done
their jobs adequately, Romaneck would have been spared years of torture
after her mother's murder and after the fire.
"[Lori] will prove
that the [city] believed as of the day of the fire that Keidel had murdered
his wife and buried her in the backyard," the attorneys said in court papers.
"The firefighters who battled
the blaze at the Keidel home thought it was an arson fire. The police officers
at the scene believed that Keidel's conduct was suspicious, and that [they
knew] he was the principal suspect in his wife's disappearance within an
hour or so of arriving at the scene."
The City of Phoenix claimed
it was immune from such a suit, and that Romaneck had filed it too late
anyway. In any event, the city's lawyers argued, the case failed on its
merits. "At worst," they contended, "fire and police investigators misinterpreted
or misevaluated physical evidence at the scene and exercised their own
individual judgment in not pursuing criminal charges based on the circumstantial
evidence available to them.
"The family life endured
by plaintiff during her youth is a tragedy no human being could examine
without feeling strong feelings of sorrow and sympathy. That sympathy,
however, does not relieve [Lori] of establishing that the city of Phoenix
--rather than her father -- is legally at fault for that abuse."
Several events improved
Lori's odds of winning her lawsuit, including a police detective's December
1994 meeting with the county medical examiner. After the meeting, Dr. Philip
Keen changed the how of the girls' deaths from "accidental" to "house fire
due to arson." (That was the paperwork Lori Romaneck found months later.)
But detective Ed Reynolds said earlier this year he's not confident a jury
would have convicted Gene Keidel at an arson/murder trial. "I was willing
to give it a shot," he said in a deposition, "but I didn't think there
was really enough to get him convicted because there wasn't that smoking
gun on the fire like there was on DiAnne's death. . . ."
Romaneck has collected $500,000
from the first of three insurance carriers to whom the city paid premiums.
(Her attorneys take 40 percent.) The city also agreed not to fight Lori
Romaneck's quest to collect the remaining $5 million from the other two
insurance carriers. It's her attorneys' job to collect from the insurers,
not the city's.
"This was not a settlement
of the case," says Phil Haggerty, a city attorney. "It was a settlement
of insurance. Admitting negligence is how the city avoids paying money.
We never would have paid that kind of money ourselves in this case. Never,
ever."
On June 29, the second insurance
carrier in the chain --Transport Insurance Company -- sued Lori Romaneck
and the City of Phoenix, saying the settlement was illegal. The lawsuit
says Transport has no intention of paying its $2 million share. Lori Romaneck
says she knows that resolution of the latest lawsuit, like most things
in her life, won't come easily.
She's a rarity -- a litigant
who sounds believable when she says her quest isn't about money. (The owner
of a small but profitable cleaning service, Romaneck says in passing that
she's given part of her share of the $500,000 to a foundation for burned
children.)
"Whatever the lawyers and
the insurance companies and the courts decide, that's their business,"
she says. "I'm doing this for my murdered mother and my two murdered sisters."
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