Brady-Lunny / Vogel Unforgiven

The Untold Story of One Woman's Search for Love and Justice
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-6201-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 270 Seiten

'Save my babies!' Amanda Hamm's screams echoed in the late summer air surrounding Clinton Lake in rural Illinois. 'The Unforgiven' is the story of how what appeared to be an accident turned into a crime. But was it murder? In this anatomy of an exceptional case that attracted national media attention, readers journey through unspeakable tragedy, small town justice and the consequences of scalding decisions that changed people's lives forever. The story stretches well beyond the deaths of Amanda's three children to a Chicago courtroom years later where she is caught once again in the state's sticky web of justice. This time the lives of her three new children are at stake. 'The Unforgiven' offers an inside look at how the criminal justice system handled this exceptional case. The co-authors are veteran journalists with extensive first-hand knowledge of the matter and access to nearly every record related to the court proceedings. Edith Brady-Lunny covered the story from start-to-finish. Steve Vogel, who lives nearby, is author of Reasonable Doubt, a New York Times best-seller.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brady-Lunny, Edith

Vogel, Steve

Leseproben

Chapter Two

Dr. David Gill was in the middle of his routine emergency room shift at Clinton’s Dr. John Warner Hospital when he heard a police radio dispatch about a multi-victim accident. Additional doctors and nurses were immediately summoned to beef up the small hospital’s skeletal medical staff supervised by a single physician.

As the three children arrived in the two emergency vehicles, he recognized them. Their mother brought one or more of them to the ER almost monthly for treatment of what generally was nothing more than a case of the sniffles. Now they were rushed to separate treatment rooms and individually paired with a doctor and nurse prepared to put every shred of their medical knowledge, skill and energy into trying to revive the three children.

The two-story hospital’s parking lot was overflowing with emergency vehicles when Randolph’s squad car screeched to a stop. He moved quickly through the ER’s automatic doors and, looking behind, saw Amanda and Maurice were slow to emerge from the vehicle. Once inside, Amanda rushed to get to her children, but she was stayed by nurses otherwise busy organizing life-saving resources.

Maurice remained closer to the entrance, away from the first-floor hallway and two treatment rooms where the three children were taken. It was already crowded with rescuers, police and even some family members. Amanda’s mother Ann Danison and aunt Kathy Clifton had been brought to the hospital by Ann’s fiancé, Lindy Powers. He had been watching TV when he got an urgent call: Bring Amanda’s mother to the hospital right away, the receptionist told him, offering no details.

Lindy and Ann were engaged and living in her childhood home on Clinton’s north side. With no specifics to offer about the nature of the emergency, Powers pulled Ann and her sister from a church meeting they were attending. Their ailing mother had probably taken a turn for the worse, they speculated, as they drove the few blocks to the hospital. But that thought evaporated as Lindy maneuvered his car through the maze of emergency vehicles. Something was massively wrong, he thought, and it almost certainly didn’t involve his fiancé’s mother. What they saw was a chaotic nightmare.

When Ann first heard, then spotted her daughter in the hallway, Amanda was screaming and crying, angry because she wasn’t being allowed to see her children. As she hugged Amanda, Ann was curious why her daughter’s clothing and hair were wet. She saw Maurice further down the hallway, yowling as if he were drunk, a sound unlike any cries Ann had ever heard before.

Overwhelmed with fear and dizziness, Ann couldn’t bring herself to ask Amanda what had happened to her grandchildren and was instead helped to a nearby waiting room where she was given oxygen. Amanda passed the hallway but joined her mother periodically, laying her head on her mother’s lap and crying, “I want my babies.”

Lindy Powers stood by helplessly as he watched utter despair saturate his future wife and stepdaughter. He felt it, too.

Dr. Brit Williams, a physician summoned for the emergency and assigned to Christopher, was guardedly optimistic when rescue workers told him his patient had been in the water about 15 minutes—not so long, he thought, that the boy couldn’t be revived.

As he worked on the six-year-old, Dr. Williams determined a blood oxygen level of 20—far below a normal 80 to 100. Warmed liquid packs were applied to the boy’s body. Warm saline was infused through an IV in an effort to raise his body temperature above its 92 degrees. The doctor noted Christopher’s airway was full of water, a factor that added to his growing skepticism about how long the boy was said to have been underwater.

Meanwhile Dr. Gill was working on Austin, who had arrived with no detectable pulse or blood pressure. Still, the doctor believed the child might be saved.

Blankets were placed over Austin to raise his low body temperature while Dr. Gill tried to restart the boy’s heart. Forty-five minutes into the resuscitation effort, the temperature had risen to 98 but the heart would not beat.

Dr. Gill found the boy’s mother in the hospital’s chapel at the end of the hall and broke the news to her. Austin was gone.

“Oh my God, no! No!” Amanda screamed. She fell to the floor.

With miracles and medical wonders exhausted, doctors pronounced both boys dead at 9:15 p.m.

Dr. Tricia Scerba had been about to sit down to dinner with guests at her Clinton home when Dr. Gill called, asking her to come to the hospital right away to help with the emergency. She had arrived at 8 p.m., minutes before the ambulance, and met with Drs. Gill and Williams. They quickly decided that she, a pediatrician, would care for the youngest victim.

Dr. Scerba, too, began to question the report that the children had been submerged for 15 minutes when she discovered how much water was in the baby’s lungs and stomach and its body temperature was only 85 degrees. After 40 minutes of effort, Kyleigh’s body temperature had risen to 97 degrees and her heart began to beat sporadically. Dr. Scerba met Amanda in the small chapel. Surrounded by family members, she briefed Amanda on her daughter’s grave condition and plans to airlift her to a children’s hospital an hour away in Peoria. If Amanda was going to have time with Kyleigh, it needed to happen right away, the doctor told her.

Amanda followed the doctor to the treatment room where the little girl lay on a gurney. “I’m sorry,” Amanda said. “I’m sorry,” she repeated several times.

Dr. Scerba, seeking a better understanding of what had happened, asked Amanda.

“We went to the lake before going home to watch movies,” Amanda told the doctor. “We were getting ready to leave and he got confused on which way. He put it in the wrong gear and hit the gas and we sped into the lake. He got mixed up.”

“Did you try to get them out?” the doctor asked.

“It was all tangled.” Amanda struggled to put words together. “I couldn’t find anything. I’m so sorry.”

It was the first of many apologies Amanda would be offering authorities and those closest to the children. They all sought—nearly demanded—an explanation that made more sense, one that more closely mirrored feelings that the mother could have—should have—saved her children.

At 9:40 p.m., a helicopter set down in the parking lot of a nearby Dairy Queen restaurant that served as a landing site for medical transports. A nurse accompanied Kyleigh on the 30-minute flight to St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

Trauma produces myriad reactions. Some people are calm and focused, putting all their energy into dealing with what’s in front of them. Others become hysterical, draining away any ability to manage the ordeal, replacing it with paralyzing fear and anxiety. With two brothers dead on tables in the emergency room and their little sister clinging to life on a medical transport, questions began to surface in hushed tones and subtle observations among those who responded to the call for help.

“There’s something wrong with this,” one EMT told Dr. Gill. “We got in there and the water was so shallow. It wasn’t hard to get them out.”

Detective Rick Hawn, a 10-year-year veteran with the DeWitt County Sheriff’s Department, had just finished photographing the nude bodies of Christopher and Austin when Amanda was allowed to see her sons, starting with Austin. Standing in the corner of the treatment room littered with medical supplies spent in the futile attempt to save a life, Hawn closely observed Amanda’s demeanor and reactions and those of her cousin, Jackie Blackburn, who was with her.

Blackburn loved her three young relatives but barely tolerated their mother. She considered Amanda an inadequate parent based on multiple relationships that never worked out—most especially her most recent lover. Blackburn couldn’t overlook the fact that Maurice’s roving eyes had once settled on her.

“I love you Austin,” Amanda said to her younger son as she plunged her face into the pillow still supporting his head on the gurney. “I want you to come home with me. Why did this have to happen to you?”

Minutes later in another room, Amanda and her cousin spent time with Christopher. Again, Amanda buried her face in a pillow and didn’t look directly at the deceased child.

“I love you so much,” she said. Tears did not come. “You were doing so good in school. I never wanted anything to happen to you. I’m so sorry. I tried so hard.”

Hawn didn’t take his eyes off Amanda. He assessed her every move and how she expressed her grief. His observations, and those of others who witnessed the adrenaline-filled moments at the lake and hospital, would shape perceptions, a lengthy investigation and its conclusions.

Yet those closest to Amanda knew tears and raw emotion had long been extinguished in her as she dealt with the trauma and abuse of her childhood. As an adult, Amanda hid her wounds as best she could, sometimes becoming defensive, almost armored, when life’s challenges were more than she could manage.

Hawn, however, was unaware of Amanda’s past struggles. He knew only what his...