An article that has not reached national news but something from my hometown. What are foster parents thinking? Honestly they make the decision to foster a child and then end up killing the child.
Tell me your thoughts on this. It may be a little long. More updates coming later
quote:
David and Liz Carroll pinned their 3-year-old foster son's arms behind his back, covered him in a blanket and then wrapped him with packing tape like a mummy, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said Tuesday.
Only the toddler's head was exposed, he said.
Then, as Marcus Fiesel cried out in fear, the Union Township couple turned on a fan, shut the door to the 5-by-7-foot closet, walked down the stairs and left the house for a day-and-a-half to attend a family reunion in Kentucky, Deters said.
Marcus was dead by the time they got home early in the morning of Aug. 6. "He was wrapped like a cocoon," Deters said, choking up.
That wasn't the first time the Carrolls left Marcus trussed up like that, Deters said. He said similar bindings had happened before, but this was the first time the boy had been left in a closet.
"I don't know how you could leave a child in that condition for that long and believe he would be alive."
A Hamilton County grand jury Monday indicted the Carrolls on charges of involuntary manslaughter and two charges each of child endangering.
David Carroll, 29, was indicted on an additional charge of gross abuse of a corpse.
The grand jury Tuesday added two charges of inducing panic and a charge of making false alarms against the Carrolls, and indicted Liz Carroll, 30, on two charges of perjury.
MORE CHARGES LIKELY
Deters said he and Clermont County Prosecutor Don White have heard the public concern that the involuntary manslaughter charge is too lenient.
"The reason for that charge was to simply hold them and seize the children," Deters said.
The Clermont County Department of Job and Family Services took the Carrolls' four children away Monday.
"It is the opinion of this office and the Clermont County Prosecutor's Office that these two individuals should be charged with murder," Deters said. He also did not rule out the death penalty.
Deters and White will meet later this week to determine what charges should be brought to a grand jury for consideration.
"Our goal is to have these individuals locked up as long as possible," Deters said.
Deters said the new charges were warranted. The false-alarms charge said that in the past two weeks, the Carrolls' false reports about Marcus' disappearance cost law enforcement more than $5,000.
Deters said the actual cost is many times that.
The inducing-panic charge alleges that the Carrolls made false alarms that "caused serious public inconvenience or alarm."
Liz Carroll's perjury charges stem from two lies to the grand jury Monday, according to records.
When asked whether Marcus was dead or alive, Liz Carroll said she didn't know, Deters said.
She told grand jurors the same story she told the community, Deters said. "Both were lies," he said.
ARRAIGNMENTS TODAY
The Carrolls will be arraigned at 2 p.m. today before Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Patrick Dinkelacker. They are being held in the Hamilton County Justice Center.
Thousands of people searched for Marcus during the past two weeks after Liz Carroll told authorities that, Aug. 15, she fainted from a heart condition while at Juilfs Park in Anderson Township and Marcus wandered off.
She tearfully begged the public to help her find Marcus, even holding a news conference in the same clothing she wore that day. She claimed she wore the clothes in the hope of triggering the memory of someone who saw Marcus that day.
Her performance was a charade, Deters said.
In fact, Marcus' disappearance in Juilfs Park was one of two plans the couple hatched, Deters said. He said the couple also considered going to Kings Island and saying Marcus wandered off.
Deters said he doubts that Liz Carroll really fainted that day. Marcus had an appointment with social services less than an hour later, and the couple had already turned away a caseworker wanting to check up on the boy Aug. 10.
"It was planned out the whole time, hence the charges today."
GIRLFRIEND KEY WITNESS
Amy Baker, the girlfriend of both Carrolls, is a key witness against the couple and led investigators Monday night to an old stone chimney in Brown County, where she said David Carroll Jr. burned Marcus' body.
"He went back repeatedly to burn the body," Deters said.
Baker has not been charged in connection with the boy's disappearance.
"She has been cooperating," Deters said. "This is one of those cases where we literally had to rely on somebody."
The decision about whether she'll be charged depends on whether she harmed Marcus, Deters said.
Hamilton County Sheriff's Office investigators and criminologists from the Hamilton County Coroner's Office collected material from the chimney, Deters said. DNA testing is being done at the coroner's office.
Anthropologists also have been called in to help determine whether ashes taken from the chimney are the remains of Marcus.
Investigators think that what wasn't burned was tossed into the Ohio River. They searched the river Tuesday near Aberdeen.
"The recovery process is ongoing," Deters said.
WHO DROPPED BALL?
Deters said Marcus' death could have been avoided if child protection service agencies did their jobs.
"I think that Marcus had special needs that these people had no training in," Deters said. "They accumulated as many foster kids and day-care kids to maximize how much money they made."
Liz Carroll told The Enquirer that the couple was paid $2,500 a month for day care, $1,000 a month for Marcus and got additional help for nutrition.
"Whoever placed Marcus, it is a serious understatement to say they dropped the ball," Deters said. "They should have made unannounced visits and insisted on seeing him, and they didn't."
Lifeway for Youth is the agency that placed Marcus with the Carrolls, and that agency is currently being investigated by the state.
"I hope if any good comes out of this horrible tragedy, I hope there is a serious review of the foster care program," Deters said. "The vast majority of foster parents are saints, doing it for the love of children. I don't think that was the motivation of the Carrolls."
Butler County Children Services Board officials said the agency will pay Marcus' funeral expenses and make arrangements for services according to the wishes of Donna Trevino, Marcus' birth mother.
Children Services took Marcus from Trevino after he was found wandering in the street in April.
Trevino's pastor at Healing Word of God Assembly in Liberty Township said that when he saw Trevino on Monday, soon after, she learned the gruesome details of her son's death and was distraught.
The Rev. Don Shepherd said he counseled Trevino and told her that Marcus was surely was with God.
"I said he was far better off with God than the unsafe world he was in," Shepherd said.
Staff writers Eileen Kelley and Sheila McLaughlin contributed to this report.E-mail scoolidge@enquirer.com.
Life is like a bubble, often filled with hopes and dreams, popping only when one feels that life isn't satisfactory
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