Sister fills in disturbing details
McAnulty’s mistreatment of Jeanette Maples began when the murdered girl was 7, according to testimony
The younger half-sister of a 15-year-old River Road girl who died of abuse and starvation in 2009 testified Thursday that their mother’s harsh treatment of Jeanette Marie Maples began as soon as Angela McAnulty regained custody of Jeanette at age 7 after she spent six years in California’s foster care system.
That sister also told jurors considering the death penalty for McAnulty that days before Jeanette’s death, her mother revealed a quarter-sized wound on the back of Jeanette’s head and told her that if someone was “stabbed in the back of the head with a branch, it would cause brain damage.”
By that time, Jeanette was “acting kind of strange,” said the sister, now 13 and living with foster parents.
Jeanette spoke incoherently, the younger girl testified, asking for a blanket already covering her as she lay on a piece of cardboard where she slept on the floor. Jeanette would fall as she tried to stand with her face to the wall and her hands extended over her head — a longtime daily punishment, her sister said.
Under gentle questioning by prosecutor Erik Hasselman, Angela McAnulty’s second daughter said she had some memory of when her half-sister first came back to live with her and her mother in the early 2000s — including the fact that Angela did not allow her daughters to talk to each other. After her mother married Richard McAnulty in 2002, the younger girl testified, Jeanette was confined to a bedroom in the back of their Sacramento home, so she would “not really be part of the family.”
She also told jurors that both Angela and Richard McAnulty punished Jeanette by depriving her of food and water, hitting her with shoes and “popping” her on the mouth with the back of their hands, sometimes drawing blood. That statement contradicted Richard McAnulty’s testimony Wednesday that he caused Jeanette’s death by failing to protect her from her mother, but never injured her himself. He also is charged with aggravated murder in the teen’s death. His trial is set for May.
The younger girl said she felt sorry for her sister, but when she tried to sneak her water, their mother retaliated by yelling at her and beating Jeanette anew.
The sister also testified that Angela McAnulty forced her on several occasions to gather the family dog’s droppings from the backyard and that her mother then would smear the feces on Jeanette’s face as the girl stood as ordered with her hands over her head.
“Jeanette would cry and say it was disgusting,” the sister recalled.
McAnulty, who could become just the second woman in Oregon history sent to death row, showed little emotion as her daughter testified. Lane County Circuit Judge Kip Leonard later told jurors that he had ordered her not to visibly react to or look directly at her surviving daughter, so as to make the ordeal less upsetting for the girl.
A court order barred cameras during her testimony Thursday. She appeared in casual teen fashion, wearing jeans and a hoody sweatshirt layered over several other tops. She spoke up politely when answering Hasselman’s questions, but occasionally glanced toward her mother and acknowledged that testifying was scary.
Earlier Thursday, the sentencing trial took an unexpected 90-minute detour when Angela McAnulty’s attorneys told Leonard they intended to present jurors evidence detailing her husband’s alleged involvement in a September plot to escape from the Lane County Jail. The judge ruled that evidence inadmissible, however, after hearing arguments from attorneys for both sides, as well as testimony from a detective who investigated the purported scheme.
Lane County sheriff’s Detective Carl Wilkerson told Leonard that a federal prisoner being held at the jail alerted him that Richard McAnulty and three other inmates planned to take hostage civilian leaders of a jailhouse Bible study. The informant said the inmates planned to incapacitate a deputy guarding the Bible study using a bar of soap in a sock as a weapon. The federal inmate also said the four intended to demand a vehicle and weapons, then flee to Mexico.
Acting on that tip, deputies searched Richard en route to the Bible study, but found no bar of soap. Wilkerson did find an escape “survival list” in McAnulty’s cell, listing such items as camping supplies, throwing knives and a “choke rope.” But Hasselman dismissed the list as a “pipe dream” and told Leonard his office did not find enough evidence to file a charge in the case.
The prosecutor also said the informant may have initiated the escape discussion for reasons of his own. He said that inmate later tried to get a reduced federal sentence based on tipping off authorities to the alleged plot.
Jeanette McAnulty’s attorneys, Ken Hadley and Steven Krasik, argued that jurors needed to know that Richard may have provided exaggerated testimony against his wife out of gratitude that no charges were filed — or to ensure that none would be — over the alleged escape plan.
They also asked Leonard to grant a mistrial after he refused to allow the panel to hear that testimony. The judge swiftly denied that motion. Jurors were not in the courtroom for any of that 90-minute discussion.
In other testimony Thursday, Cascade Middle School cafeteria worker Michelle Mullins said she began secretly feeding Jeanette school lunches in sixth grade because she was concerned that the girl was “getting skinny.” When she once asked to see the lunch Jeanette’s mother had packed, Mullins said, she was shocked that it contained only one piece of cheese and a cracker.
A crying Jeanette came into her office later that year, saying she had to stop eating the lunches because “my mom notices that I’ve been gaining weight because I’m eating.”
Mullins said she reported the situation to state child protective services, which opened a case but closed it after an investigation.
In the younger sister’s testimony, she also acknowledged falsely reporting that “Jeanette was fine” when a state child welfare worker questioned her at school about the suspected abuse. She did so, the girl explained, because Angela Mc*Anulty reminded her children daily that “what happens in the house stays in the house.”
Her trial is scheduled to resume on Tuesday.
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms...irl-angela.csp
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