This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Augusta, Maine, convicted foster parent and former foster care worker Sally Ann Schofield seeks a probation change after she serves her 17-year manslaughter sentence in the suffocating death of her foster daughter Logan Marr, 5. Logan was duct-taped and left alone in Sally’s basement where she died on January 31, 2001.
“But a judge on Tuesday rejected Sally Ann Schofield’s request to relax her probation conditions banning direct or indirect contact with children under 12, ruling that it’s premature because she’s still in prison.”
“Schofield’s attorney indicated that Schofield’s eligible for home confinement later this year and is concerned she could violate probation if she has incidental contact with a child at a grocery store, at church or elsewhere.”
Imprisoned Maine foster mom seeks probation change
[NECN 5/15/13 by Associated Press]
Previous media on this case
“She was a little girl who loved grape soda, butterflies and the PBS cartoon “Arthur,” and experts say Logan’s death served as a catalyst for widespread changes that transformed Maine’s foster care system into one of the best in the nation.
Logan died Jan. 31, 2001 — 10 years ago Monday — after her foster mother, Sally Schofield, confined her to a highchair in the basement of her Chelsea home and wrapped layers of duct tape around her head, mouth and chest. Logan suffocated, and Schofield is serving a 17-year sentence after her conviction for manslaughter.
In the years since, the number of children in foster care in Maine has been cut in half. Those who are in the foster care system are three times more likely to be placed with family members than with strangers. Caseworkers now visit foster children at least once a month, rather than the three-month standard back then.
Maine’s child welfare system has been held up as a national model by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private organization in Baltimore that works on child welfare issues. Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government named it a finalist for its prestigious Innovations in American Government awards in 2009.
Logan’s death was the driving force behind the improvements, said Jim Beougher, director of the Office of Child and Family Services at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. The case helped awaken the department to respond to abuse and neglect cases more quickly and see foster children in their homes more often.
“I think Logan’s tragedy crystallized that for us,” Beougher said.
Logan Marr wasn’t breathing when police were called to Sally Schofield’s home on Jan. 31, 2001. She later was pronounced dead at an Augusta hospital.
Schofield, who was a former foster care caseworker herself, was serving as a foster parent for Logan and her half sister Bailey, a toddler at the time. The girls had been taken from their mother by the state.
Schofield told police Logan struck her head after falling from a highchair during a timeout. But investigators were suspicious because of inconsistencies in her story and because Logan’s eyes showed signs of hemorrhages consistent with suffocation. An autopsy determined that the girl died from asphyxiation.
At the trial the next year, prosecutors demonstrated how Schofield used 42 feet of duct tape to cover Logan’s mouth, strap her jaw shut and bind her to a highchair in a cluttered basement after the girl awoke from an afternoon nap screaming. Schofield was acquitted of murder, but a judge found her guilty of manslaughter.
The case shone a spotlight on Maine’s troubled foster care system, which came under fire after Logan’s death.
The PBS public affairs show “Frontline” ran a three-part series, “Failure to Protect,” that focused on the Logan Marr case and Maine’s child welfare system. The series raised questions on why the state removed Logan from her mother’s custody in the first place, and whether it failed to heed warning signs that she was in trouble under Schofield’s care.
A child’s death always spurs changes in child welfare systems, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. Often those changes are for the worse, he said, but the reforms in Maine — to the state’s credit — were good.
Since 2001, the number of children taken from their homes has dropped by 30 percent, and the number of children in foster care on any given day has been cut in half, he said.
At the same time, the proportion of foster children placed in group homes and other institutions has dropped from about 28 percent to 10 percent, making Maine one of the best in the nation at avoiding placing foster children in “congregate care” settings, Wexler said.
It has been said that reforming a child welfare system is “like fixing a bicycle while you’re riding it,” Wexler said.
“Nobody’s reached the mountaintop yet, but Maine is halfway to two-thirds there,” Wexler said. “Most of the rest of the country is just getting off the ground.”
Tracy Feild, of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said child welfare managers, caseworkers and advocates, as well as some legislators from Virginia, Louisiana, Maryland and Indiana, have visited Maine in recent years to get a firsthand look at its child welfare system.
“Maine was not on the map as being a leader in the past,” Feild said. “Now they’re viewed as having really good outcomes.””
10 years after Logan’s death, Maine foster care is US model
[Bangor Daily News 1/28/11 by Clarke Canfield/Associated Press]
PBS Frontline January 30, 2003
Logan Marr case says “Sally was the third foster mother to take in Logan since she was removed from her birth mother, Christy Marr, in August 1998. The teenaged Christy had moved in with her mother, Kathy Baker, shortly after Logan’s birth, and the two had fought constantly over how to raise the baby. It was Kathy who initiated Christy’s first contact with Maine’s Department of Human Services; in May 1996, she called the department to report her concerns about Logan’s safety. According to DHS records, Kathy told an intake worker that she had always worried “that Christy is too immature and troubled to be a good parent to Logan,” and that “Christy can’t or won’t put Logan’s needs before her own. Kathy said that Christy screams and hollers at the baby all the time and handles her extremely roughly.”
DHS sent caseworker Diane Sanborn to assess Logan’s situation. Despite Kathy’s allegations, she did not find anything that immediately concerned her about Christy’s parenting. She did believe that Christy should work on what DHS considered an unhealthy relationship with her boyfriend, an admitted drug user.
The department told Christy that in order to maintain custody of Logan, she would have to begin living under a strict set of rules: Any boyfriends or individuals allowed to stay over in her apartment would have to be cleared with DHS. And she would have to cut off her troubled relationship with her mother.Kathy had married a man named Mitch, whom DHS had been told, falsely, had been convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage girl years before. As long as Kathy and Mitch stayed together, DHS warned, Christy would have to stay away or risk losing custody of Logan.
Christy tried to stay away from her mother, but she had few other sources of emotional support. Inevitably, she ended up drifting back. One day, she left Logan with a babysitter at her mother’s apartment. Mitch, who had previously moved out, turned up and was seen by a neighbor, who called DHS. The department immediately sought custody of Logan, citing Christy’s failure to protect her from potentially unsafe people.
Hearing of the department’s plan to remove Logan, Christy took her daughter and fled, heading south toward Boston. But she soon realized her efforts were futile, and turned around and returned to Maine the same day. By the next morning, two caseworkers had come and removed 2-and-a-half-year-old Logan into state custody. She was soon placed in a foster home.
Now pregnant with her second child, Christy had to prove to DHS that she could change if she wanted to regain Logan and keep her new baby. A new agreement was drawn up, requiring her to sever all ties with her mother and to attend a variety of counseling services, including one-on-one counseling, parenting skills classes, and job training. She was to stay in a group home until the birth of her child, and then locate appropriate housing for herself and the children.
After the birth of her baby girl, Bailey, Christy moved into a new apartment. She communicated with her mother only through videotapes that she made, showing Kathy the new baby and the apartment. Her efforts to stay away from Kathy and fulfill the requirements of the agreement reassured her DHS caseworker, and after seven months the department returned Logan.
But Christy had paid a heavy price to regain her daughter — she had cut herself off from the only lasting relationship in her life. Now completely on her own, responsible for two young girls, 21-year-old Christy set out to reunite with her father, who lived a thousand miles away in Florida. Her father had become alienated from the family after an ugly divorce in which Christy had accused him of molesting her, an accusation her father denied and that she later recanted.
Putting the past behind her, Christy and her girls moved in with her father and his new family. For a while, things were good. With something approaching a normal family life, Logan appeared to thrive. But Christy chafed under her father’s rules, and her attempt at reconciliation soon failed. After nine weeks, she and the girls returned to Maine.
With no job and no home, Christy moved back in with her mother, and attached herself to another boyfriend of questionable character, a convicted burglar named Paul. Before long, they were married.
When DHS learned of Christy’s trip to Florida — which in the department’s view put the girls in jeopardy by exposing them to an accused sex offender — and her new relationship, they reopened her case and assigned it to a new caseworker, Allison Peters. Peters soon received a tip — never confirmed — that Paul had hit Christy in front of Logan. Peters moved quickly, arriving unannounced at Christy’s door with two police officers and a court order to remove the girls. Logan and Bailey were driven to a foster home two hours away. It would be the last time Logan would ever live with her mother.
Determined to get her girls back, Christy divorced Paul, worked two jobs, and attended mandatory classes and therapy sessions, riding for hours in DHS vans to get to them. Logan and Bailey were living with a new foster mother, Mary Beth Anderson, and 4-year-old Logan was beginning to show the effects of separation from her mother. According to Mary Beth’s journal, Logan asked from the beginning when her mother would “get her back.” That month, Logan was seen by a therapist five times. The therapist listed the themes in Logan’s play as “Mommy and Daddy fighting; Mommy and Daddy losing their baby; Big sisters taking care of little sisters; and Someone took me away but I don’t know why.” According to Mary Beth’s journals, Logan began to have raging temper tantrums. She writes, “Logan’s outrage is still bad. The child has anger by the ton. Logan pushes and pushes and if I don’t react, pushes further with whining and screaming and punching with closed fists and kicking.”
Concerned that Logan might have been abused some time in her past, Mary Beth brought Logan for an evaluation to the Spurwink Clinic, which specializes in child abuse. Despite extensive examinations, counselors found no evidence of any physical or sexual abuse. They did recommend, however, that Logan receive counseling to cope with the separation from her mother.
As Christy was struggling with the loss of her girls, and Mary Beth struggled with Logan’s increasing tantrums, DHS caseworker Sally Schofield had begun to think about adopting a little girl of her own. She had two boys: Derek, 14, from a previous marriage, and 1-year-old Shaynen. But she had always longed for a girl. DHS discourages its caseworkers from adopting children from within the system, but Sally was determined to be an exception. She enrolled with her husband in a mandatory training program for adoptive parents, and began the process of getting approved as an adoptive home.
After a physical incident between Mary Beth and Logan — an incident both Mary Beth and the department refuse to discuss — DHS moved quickly to get the girls into another foster home. Caseworker Allison Peters called Sally and asked if she would be willing to take the girls temporarily. According to Sally, it was understood at that point that DHS would pursue terminating Christy’s parental rights, freeing the girls up for eventual adoption. The girls moved in with Sally and her husband in early September 2000. Though she was concerned at what she saw as signs of neglect in Logan — her need to take care of her younger sister and her quick attachment to her new caretakers — Sally says she fell in love with the girls that first weekend.
As Sally sought to bond with the girls, DHS cut back Christy’s visits with them. She would have to provide her own transportation, though she didn’t have a car. She wasn’t allowed to know Sally’s last name, address, or occupation. According to Sally, DHS said this secrecy was required because of “safety concerns.”
Discouraged, Christy began to falter. She missed classes and counseling appointments. In a fit of pique, she remarried Paul, the man whose presence had led to the removal of Logan and Bailey. At one point, she stormed out of a meeting with her caseworker and therapist. Her therapist wrote to Allison Peters:
Christy’s progress the past five months has been slow at best. She has missed several appointments blaming transportation and oversleeping (our appointments are at 2 p.m.). Recently when cut off from seeing her daughters Christy ‘fell sick’ not leaving the apartment or calling me for help. Christy has on a regular basis blamed others for her problems. Can’t pay the rent — no job. Can’t get GED — have to be available for my girls. Can’t get a driver’s license — no one will lend me a car. The bad guys have changed since [the beginning of her counseling], but little else has. I hate to think that her relationshipo with her little girls will be on this yo-yo schedule for so long.
The girls, meanwhile, were settling in at Sally’s. Though not rich herself, Sally was able to give Logan things that Christy had not: swimming lessons and dance classes. But Logan didn’t seem happy. Her rages continued, and escalated. According to Sally, they were often particularly bad after visits with Christy. DHS notes from an October visit read:
Logan kept telling mom throughout the visit that she was her favorite person in the whole world. As the visit was ending, Logan ran to mom and said, ‘I want to go home with you.’ At one visit, Logan asked Christy if she knew what Sally looked like. Christy said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen her,’ and Logan responded, ‘I don’t like her.’
As Logan’s behavior deteriorated, Sally found herself at a loss. Logan would rage out of control, screaming, kicking, and thrashing so violently that Sally was afraid she would hurt herself. Suddenly, all the confidence Sally had accumulated as a parent and a DHS caseworker seemed to vanish. “I was supposed to be trained,” she told FRONTLINE. “I was supposed to be educated. How come I couldn’t help her? How come I didn’t know what to do?”
At her supervised visits with the girls Christy could see that Logan wasn’t doing well. She was discouraged by DHS, though, from discussing what was making Logan unhappy. At their videotaped Christmas visit on Dec. 18, 2000, while a DHS supervisor sat listening, Logan stopped opening her gifts and told Christy that Sally had hurt her. She squeezed her cheeks together with one hand, and said, “She did this to me, and I cried, and it hurts me. She did it to my sister, too.” When Christy tried to find out more about what happened, she says the DHS supervisor shook her head, forbidding her from going into detail about the incident. In early January 2001, during another supervised visit, Logan again told Christy that Sally had handled her roughly, wrapping her up in a blanket. Again, Christy was signalled not to pursue the matter.
DHS rules require caseworkers to visit foster homes quarterly, and to promptly investigate any complaint of physical abuse. Logan’s caseworker, Allison Peters, did neither. Peters declined FRONTLINE’s request for an interview.
By January, Sally had quit her job as a caseworker, and DHS had decided to pave the way for her adoption of the girls, despite clear and repeated warnings that she was having a difficult time dealing with Logan. Discouraged, Christy had begun to believe that she would never get her children back. She wrote them a letter, which she planned to give them at their next scheduled visit, on Jan. 31, 2001:
Dear Logan and Bailey, my sweet little ladies. I think of you so much and often it seems hard to believe you girls have been gone so long now. In a month or so from now, I stand the chance to lose the both of you forever. And it’s been no picnic, but this is not your fault. It’s mine, and mine alone. I want the both of you to know that no matter what happens, I love you, and will never stop fighting for you.
The girls never received the letter. The visit was cancelled because of a snowstorm. And that evening, Logan died in Sally’s basement.
According to Sally, Logan had been in one of her rages in the afternoon. “I asked her if she needed to scream and she said yes,” Sally said. “I said, ‘OK, well then let’s put you some place where you can scream.'” Sally put Logan in an unfinished portion of her basement in a high chair. She left her there for over an hour, she says, periodically checking on her. When she came down to check after starting dinner, she says she found Logan lying in a heap on the floor, still confined to her high chair. She wasn’t breathing. She was rushed to Maine General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
That night, the police came to interview Sally. She told them she thought Logan must have knocked herself over in the high chair and hit her head. Although she claimed that Logan had not been restrained in the high chair, in a subsequent search of Sally’s house, the detectives found evidence that raised doubts about her story. Strewn amid boxes in the dank basement were clumps of duct tape, some 40 feet in all. Police tests revealed that the tape had been looped repeatedly around Logan’s body and head, and across her mouth. Tufts of her hair were stuck to the tape. And an autopsy revealed that Logan had not died from a blow to the head, but from asphyxiation.
The police returned and confronted Sally with the new evidence. At first, she maintained that Logan had tangled herself in the duct tape, but her story soon crumbled. Sally was arrested and charged with depraved indifference, murder, and manslaughter. A prosecution affadavit alleged that she had taped Logan into her high chair, and taped her mouth shut. Sally waived her right to a jury trial, and a judge concluded that she had not intentionally killed Logan. But he found her guilty of manslaughter and sentenced her to 20 years in prison.
Caseworker Allison Peters testified at the trial, but was never asked about her failure to respond to Logan’s complaints about Sally. She was placed on paid administrative leave for a month, and has since left DHS. No formal disciplinary action was taken against any DHS employees in connection with Logan’s death, although the case prompted the state legislature to initiate two investigations of the department.
Bailey was moved to a third foster home after her sister’s death. For the next year, Christy battled with DHS to get her back. Finally, in February 2002, she was returned to Christy for good.”
Police Interviews with Sally
Police Interviews PBS Frontline [PBS Frontline]
“Dealing With Logan’s Rages
INVESTIGATOR: When you say “no” to her, is that enough to set her off? Does she go into a rage then?
SALLY: No, she doesn’t– She’s not in rage all the time. It wasn’t like this was a daily thing. It certainly wasn’t. Oftentimes we’d go weeks without anything more than she might have to go to time out on the couch, or she might have to come in her room and be quiet for a few minutes. There would be weeks without a rage. And then, you know, we hit a space where we would rage like two or three times a week for a couple of weeks. And then it would taper off.
INVESTIGATOR: When she would rage, would she like punch walls and stuff, and kick and scream?
SALLY: Oh yeah, she would lay on her bed and she would flail and kick. I don’t know if you can see the ding on the wall over here. She had her boots on. She would lay on the bed and she would, you know, kick her feet and throw up her arms, and throw herself all around. And she would oftentimes, you know, hit the head rail and foot rail and kick the wall and stuff. And I was really afraid she was going to hurt herself. And she just didn’t care; she was just raging.
INVESTIGATOR: I’ve never come up with a way to handle that. What do you do when a child does so?
SALLY: We would just say, “You need to not do that.” At the time that she was actually doing it, to the point where I was really concerned she was going to hurt herself, there was a blanket, a fleece blanket on her bed, over her quilt. And what I did was just flip the blanket over her and just kind of use my arms and say, “You need to calm down. This is not OK. You are going to hurt yourself, you’re going to hurt the room. This is not OK. You need to be talking to me.” When she was in a rage like that, if I could– if I could kind of, you know, envelop her, then oftentimes she would initially spike, but then she would decompensate usually pretty quickly.
What was interesting, the first time I did that, the minute I started to release pressure, she escalated again until I resumed pressure. And then she settled right down. And I ended up staying there. Like I was kneeling, I was kneeling on the floor. And I ended up staying there just enveloping her for like over an hour, probably an hour and a half. And then slowly, gradually just kept talking to her, and talking to her. And, you know, giving her words, and offering, you know, “What I see it looks to me like you’re really struggling with this. I think that you must be feeling this way.”
And she was generally able to say yes or no, “That’s how I feel,” or, “No, it’s not.” But, whatever– whatever it was that seemed to work. And that’s actually a technique I picked up when [therapist] Dan Hughes was working with a kid on my caseload, a foster mom was doing that, a couple of different foster moms had done that, that particular technique. And they had reported that it’s been very successful. And one day I go, “Let’s try that thing. If it works for everybody else, let’s see if it works for Logan.”
INVESTIGATOR: Is that the binding that you’re talking about [inaudible].
SALLY: Well, there’s an actual thing called the blanket wrap that they do in psychiatric facilities. And I’m not crazy about that, because that’s just too confining. But, just kind of containing her, you know, swaddling her.
INVESTIGATOR: She told her bio mom, because I’ve got one of the reports in which she’s telling her bio mom about the blanket wrap.
SALLY: I know, they sent that to me this morning.
INVESTIGATOR: How many times did you use that, the blanket wrap?
SALLY: The blanket wrap that we used was on the bed, wrapping the blanket that was on the bed, wrapping her.
INVESTIGATOR: You described it as two different types of blanket wrap, is a blanket roll?
SALLY: There’s the blanket wrap that they do at psychiatric facilities, where they literally rolled out over …(inaudible) again in a blanket so they can’t move. They’re like mummified. And that’s– I have a real issue with that. I think that’s …(inaudible)
INVESTIGATOR: So, that’s not what she’s describing to her bio mom then?
SALLY: I don’t know– Well, that’s not something that happened to her here. I mean, we would tuck the blanket around her. Restrain and holding are very different things in my mind. I have a real issue with restrain. Restraints [are for] prisoners, who are trying to get away. But, if you have a 2-year-old who’s out of control, you don’t allow a 2-year-old to go off on a rampage. You still come up and you hold them in your lap. You’re not restraining them. You’re doing some supportive holding to them. And so you’re kind of containing them, as opposed to restraining.
And, I think, that there’s a very different intent there. And even when I was holding her there on the bed like that, you know, the message that I kept saying to her was, “You know, you need to be in control of your arms and legs. You need to be in control of your arms and legs. And you need to do good touches with your arms and legs. So, when you’re ready, you let me know.”
So, at one point, she did say, “I’m ready. …” I said, “OK, are you ready for your legs?” And she said, “Yeah.” I said, “OK, that’s fine.” I said, “Let’s try this.” And so I kind of rearranged and didn’t have any weight at all on her legs or anything and that was fine. I mean, she was fine. So, then we talked to her a few more minutes, and then you know, I said, “Are you ready to have your arms yet?” And she said, “No.” I said, “OK, that’s fine. I’ll continue to hold them for you.”
And at that point, it wasn’t even– it wasn’t even a holding. But, for her, that was enough pressure that she felt like I was in control. And she needed somebody else to be in control with them. And she was really scared, I think.
You read all this literature, you read all the books, and you go to the trainings and you work with the kids. And you know it’s all about control. And it’s so paradoxical because on one hand, they want all the control, because that’s the only way they feel comfortable. “Nobody had ever taken care of me; I’ve got to take care of myself. I must be in control of everything.” And on the other hand, there’s this part of them that says, “I’m only a kid, I can’t have control. Somebody else must be in control of me.”
So, it’s a very– it’s a very huge stretch for them. But at those particular times, Logan really needed for somebody else to be in control.
INVESTIGATOR: That was a pretty big role for you to fill as far as to undo what had been done for five years, and to redo her in a way in which she knew that she wasn’t the parents, and that she couldn’t call the shots. That certainly is not something that’s easy to do.
SALLY: There are no guarantees with kids. There are no guarantees in life, you know. You make a commitment, you stick to it, and you do what you need to do because it needs to be done. It’s not what I signed up for, but this is what I’m getting. So, I’m going to learn everything I can about it, and I’m going to do whatever I can. And we are going to get through this.
The Day Logan Died
SALLY: And then about quarter of three, ten of three, I get home, and she was still sleeping at that point.
INVESTIGATOR: And she wakes up around what time?
SALLY: It must have been about quarter after three or so. But she woke up literally screaming.
INVESTIGATOR: What do you do when she does that?
SALLY: So I thought something was going on. I was at the computer, and [my son] Derek was on the couch watching TV. And I just kind of looked at Derek, like “What is her problem?” I thought, well, maybe she was having a bad dream, or maybe she was in pain and didn’t feel good, or something. So I came back and I go, “Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on?” And she couldn’t’ tell you. She just was crying [and raging].
INVESTIGATOR: So what happens then? Did she calm down?
SALLY: No.
INVESTIGATOR: So is this when she goes down [into the basement]?
SALLY: No. She didn’t go down until about 3:30. I spent that time talking with her: “Are you sick? Are you scared?” Going through the whole litany of offering her words. “Is something the matter? Are you afraid? Do you need something? Did something happen?” She would like deescalate — not calm down, but she would deescalate. And then I would think, OK, now we’re really getting somewhere. At one point I said to her, “OK, you know, maybe we just need to kind of regroup. You kind of look like you’re still really tired. Do you need to go back to sleep?” “No!” She started all over again. OK, obviously, that’s not working.
INVESTIGATOR: Did you have [to] use that swaddling?
SALLY: No, I didn’t at that point. I just said, “You know, you can either calm down and stay up here– if you need to scream, that’s OK, but you’re going to have to go the basement if you’re screaming because Shaynen is asleep, and Bailey is about to go down for her nap. And I’m not going to have you keeping them awake. So if you need to scream, that’s OK, but you’re going to have to do it in the basement. You just need to let me know what choice you’re going to make.”
INVESTIGATOR: And she kept screaming?
SALLY: She just kept crying and screaming. She couldn’t make a choice. And I said, OK– You know, I am always, “You need to make a choice. And if you can’t make a choice, that’s OK, because I’ll make one for you. But you need to know that this is the choice that I’m going to make for you. So if you want a different choice, you probably got to speak up now.”
INVESTIGATOR: So she doesn’t stop screaming. So she’s made her choice kind of in a round about way, that it’s going to be time-out. And she was in a time-out around 3:30.
SALLY: I said, “Well, then, you know, if you’re going to continue to scream, then I guess we need to go to the basement.” “No! No! No!” “If you need to scream, that’s OK, but you’re not going to do it up here because Bailey is in her room sleeping. It’s not fair for you to keep her awake.”
INVESTIGATOR: She goes down to the basement, and this is in the seat that I’ve seen, right?
SALLY: Um-hmm.
INVESTIGATOR: It’s angled one way at first.
SALLY: It was initially angled towards the wall.
INVESTIGATOR: — she goes in her seat, facing the wall. Is she buckled at that time?
SALLY: I don’t remember if I buckled her at that time or not. I honestly really don’t. I know at some point she got buckled. I don’t know if she buckled herself in or I buckled her in. She often would buckle herself in, especially if she had slippery pants on. She didn’t like the sensation of kind of moving down. So she would buckle herself in.
INVESTIGATOR: Are you making dinner at this point, 3:30, because I know you talk about putting in pork chops and stuff later on. But I mean, at some point, you got to be doing the Shake and Bake and whatever it is you’re doing to get the pork chops ready. What are you doing at 3:30, do you remember?
SALLY: I was probably checking my email and doing something on the computer.
INVESTIGATOR: She’s still crying?
SALLY: Intermittently, yes. So every few minutes I’d go down and check on her. “How are you doing? Are you about done? About ready to come up?” “No!” “OK, I’m just checking. I’ll come back in a few minutes.”
INVESTIGATOR: Would she cry when you went back down?
SALLY: When she heard me coming down the stairs she would start crying. But she had stopped. She’d start crying again, “Mommy, Mommy.” “What is it you need?” “I don’t know.” At one point she was yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” So I went downstairs and said, “What do you need?” “Nothing.” I said, “Oh, wasn’t that you I heard yelling, ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy?'” “Yes.” “Well, what is it you need?” “Nothing.” “Oh, so you were just yelling at Mommy for no reason?” “I don’t know.” “OK. Probably not a good choice. Remember we talked about this, when you call for Mommy and there’s nothing wrong.”
INVESTIGATOR: There should be a reason.
SALLY: “Remember the little boy who cried wolf? Remember we talked about this?” And that was something she never understood, and we reinforced over and over and over again. “When you don’t tell the truth, what happens is, people don’t trust you. And that’s going to come back and bite you in the butt, because someday you’re going to tell them the truth and they’re not going to believe you.” That was probably somewhere in the vicinity between 4 and 4:15, because that was before I had called Dean.
INVESTIGATOR: And then you called Dean at what time?
SALLY: About quarter after four, just to find out the time he was going to come home for supper, so what time I should–
INVESTIGATOR: Did you tell Dean about Logan, what’s going on?
SALLY: He said, “What’s going on at the house?” And I said, “Oh well, you know, Shaynen’s asleep and Bailey’s asleep, and Logan’s in the basement.” He was like, “Oh, having a good day, are we?” “Well, you know, well you know, having a tough time following directions and good choices. Same old, same old.”
INVESTIGATOR: Did you describe, like, the extent of this rage that she was in, or anything like that? Did you get into that?
SALLY: I don’t think so. I probably just told him that she was screaming in the basement or something like that. I don’t really typically tell Dean like every detail.
The Duct Tape
INVESTIGATOR: OK, so when you go down [to check on her] the time that she’s into the duct tape. She’s got it through her hair. She’s got it on her shirt–
SALLY: Her head, everywhere.
INVESTIGATOR: Can you describe it on the sides of the seat as well. Has she got like her arms taped to the seat?
SALLY: No. Well, no, because she couldn’t do that.
INVESTIGATOR: Or, one arm? Did she have one arm taped to the seat?
SALLY: No, but there was tape– There was like– She had [inaudible] yards of it, I’m sure yards of it. It just looked like a lot of it. I’m sure it wasn’t that much, but– And there was– I don’t remember. Because I was at an angle, so I don’t really– I didn’t see her left side. But, her right side there was some right here, kind of on the side of the chair. And I don’t know where– I didn’t really pay attention whether or not there was attached to a lot, but I just remember seeing duct tape there, and just thinking, you know, “Oh man, this is [inaudible]. You really did this one good.”
INVESTIGATOR: Is this the time when you say, “Alright, you want to see what it’s like? You don’t want to be like that. That’s not really what you want. I’ll show you what it’s like,” and you wrap her around.
SALLY: And went over, “You don’t like this. Remember, you don’t like to not have [control over] your body. You don’t like to have your arms not moving. This is what it would be like. This is not what you want. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, but this is not what you want to happen.”
INVESTIGATOR: Did you use tape from the roll when you did that?
SALLY: Yup.
INVESTIGATOR: So, you used the roll itself and went around.
SALLY: Hmm.
INVESTIGATOR: Do you remember how many times you went around?
SALLY: It was once– It might have been twice, I don’t know. It wasn’t like I was [inaudible] or anything. I just wanted to get the point across to her: “This is what it would be like for you, and you’re not going to like it. This is not the place you want to go. This is not how you want it to be.”
And, you know, usually if you do that kind of stuff with her, she can get it. She’s a real bright kid. And she can– she can usually get that kind of stuff. You know, “This is what this is going to mean. Are you sure you really want to go there?” “No” … [inaudible]
INVESTIGATOR: Is that what you said, as you recall, “Are you sure that this is what you want,” or–
SALLY: I said to her, “This is not what you really want to have. This is not what you want.” I didn’t even ask. I knew that wasn’t what she wanted. “This is not where you want to go.”
INVESTIGATOR: Did you get all of the tape off of her, all the tape off? Was there any tape left on her?
SALLY: I almost think that I remember vaguely a little patch on her left arm. The tape, part of it started to split. I almost think there was– There wasn’t a piece of tape– It must have been adhesive, some of the adhesive maybe stuck to her sleeve. There was something– I just remember vaguely, something on her left sleeve, or her left arm kind of being there.
INVESTIGATOR: And how about off of the seat, high chair type seat itself? Was there any left on there?
SALLY: I don’t remember all of that. I wouldn’t have been concerned about whether or not it was on the seat.
INVESTIGATOR: The seat’s still facing– the back of the seat still facing–
SALLY: Hmm.
INVESTIGATOR: Do you recall seeing any tape over the back of that seat when you went back upstairs?
SALLY: Honest and truly, I don’t recall, but for some reason, I think, like over here maybe on this part of the chair, there might have been some adhesive or something that [inaudible]. But, that would have been the same side that– that the adhesive stuck on her arm. I don’t know if– I don’t know that that’s a real …(inaudible), but for some reason it jumps out in my head, that there might have been some adhesive on that part of the chair. But, again, it wasn’t, you know, like important at the time.
INVESTIGATOR: So, you go back upstairs.
SALLY: Hmm. Go back upstairs to check on Bailey. And Bailey and Shaynen, they were still sleeping. And went back down to check on her. And we had this discussion about how I was going to serve supper, and you know, she really needed to come and pull things together. In that way she wouldn’t have to spend the entire evening, only quiet time. And I said, “I’m going to put supper in the oven, and I’ll come back and check on you. And maybe you’ll be in a better space. And maybe you’ll be ready to come upstairs then.” And she was kind of “No, no” kind of thing. And “OK, that’s your choice and that’s OK.” You know, “It’s your life, and you can spend an hour, if you want to spend that kind of thing.” So, I went upstairs, and that’s when I went to do the pork chops. And I remember when I put the pork chops in the oven it was 4:47.
INVESTIGATOR: Is she buckled [into the high chair] at this point?
SALLY: I don’t know. I didn’t pay attention.
INVESTIGATOR: Did she have any tape on her at this point?
SALLY: I don’t know, I got it all off.
INVESTIGATOR: And then that’s when you say 4:47 on the microwave, about three minutes or so, so about 4:50.
SALLY: Three to five, five minutes max. I mean, how long does it take to put pork chops in a pan. Six potatoes [into a] microwave.
INVESTIGATOR: And then it’s quiet.
SALLY: And then it was quiet, yeah.”
The Medical Evidence
INVESTIGATOR: I can fill you in a little bit on what the medical– I talked to the medical examiner again today. They’re still waiting for some tests. Like I told you, they’re doing some microscopic tests. One thing that they do have is they have– have you ever heard of petechiae. You know what that is?
SALLY: I don’t know that term.
INVESTIGATOR: Petechiae is hemorrhaging or bleeding that occurs in very, very small vessels. Little small vessels, and it’s usually in your eyes. Small vessels that rupture due to pressure or due to a lack of oxygen. The vessels will rupture, and you can see the little dots in the eye.
SALLY: Oh yeah, OK.
INVESTIGATOR: They have found that on Logan. They found petechiae in her eyes, and they found them in her lips as well. Because there’s also a lot of small vessels in your lips. And any type of a wet mucousy type of membrane due to the pressure that builds up and the lack of oxygen.
SALLY: So, what would that be from?
INVESTIGATOR: That is from lack of oxygen, lack of air. And not being able to breathe. So, that’s what we’re left with at this point, is that we have indications that–
SALLY: Does that have anything to do with the vomit [inaudible]?
INVESTIGATOR: Vomit is most likely– You said you pressed on her stomach.
SALLY: Yeah, I could smell the vomit, and then I kind of pressed so I heard the gurgling and stuff. [inaudible] I was wondering if maybe she had choked on vomit or– I still don’t– I can’t for the life of me figure out how in the world she ever took the chair over–
INVESTIGATOR: The vomit is one thing that we’re going to look for on the duct tape. To see whether or not the duct tape was on when she was already dead, to see whether any of that came out onto the duct tape. Because the duct tape is in a totally different area from where– You said the vomit came out on the carpet area, so there really shouldn’t be any vomit.
SALLY: No there shouldn’t be–
INVESTIGATOR: On the duct tape. If there was that would certainly be a big problem, because it wouldn’t be consistent with what you told us. As far as the duct tape being off her mouth at that point.
The other things, like I told you, they’re looking for the mouth print on the tape. They’ve got a way that they freeze the tape and that makes it so it’s pliable so they can open it back up and look for things like that. The other thing is the hair that was on the tape. They’re looking for whether or not there’s going to be any signs that hair came out after she was already dead, which would again put the duct tape on her when she was no longer breathing. Therefore, her blood’s not still flowing through the system, and she wouldn’t have any bleeding when the hair came out. Those are all things that we’re looking for. And, I guess, you know, so far that’s what we’re finding. Everything is adding up to this point, to pretty much the same as like I told you yesterday, what I believe happened.
That Logan was down there with the duct tape on, and that that’s when she stopped breathing. And whether it’s due to the fact that she kicked herself over, and fell over, and ended up in a position where she couldn’t breath, but yet the duct tape’s not like completely over her mouth, but yet to a point where she’s having difficulty breathing, I could understand how that could have happened. But, those are what– what we’re looking at right now. And that’s what everything is adding up to. And I really don’t see any other explanation at this point.
SALLY: [inaudible]
INVESTIGATOR: I don’t see anything as being intentional. Did you want to hurt Logan?
SALLY: [inaudible] No. I couldn’t hurt my child. I mean, [inaudible].
INVESTIGATOR: But, can you make a mistake?
SALLY: I’m sure I made lots of mistakes … [inaudible] I’m sure I made lots of mistakes. But, I could never do anything to harm my children.”
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update:” Christy Darling is beside herself knowing that the woman who suffocated her kindergarten-age daughter 16 years ago will be released from prison in just over a month.
Darling, 39, feels it’s more than an injustice; it tarnishes the memory of her daughter, Logan Marr.
Sally Ann Schofield, 55, a former state child caseworker who suffocated the 5-year-old foster child with duct tape, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Schofield remains at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham and is due to be released on probation on April 25.
“I can’t believe it’s happening,” Darling said in an interview. “There’s no peace and justice for (Logan). It just must be nice to walk around free knowing you killed a child while the rest of us sit around and suffer. It blows my mind.”
Logan and her younger sister, Bailey, had been taken away from Darling – then known as Christy M. Baker – and placed at a series of foster homes before being moved to Schofield’s home in Chelsea. At the time, Schofield was a supervisor in the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and the placement violated state rules.
In 2002, Schofield was convicted of killing Logan a year earlier by wrapping the hysterical-acting child in 47 feet of duct tape, some of it covering her mouth. The girl was bound to a highchair and left alone in a basement, where she was later found unresponsive.
After Logan’s death, Bailey was returned to her mother.
The shocking case spurred reform throughout DHHS, leading to sweeping changes in Maine’s child welfare system, including an effort to place children with relatives rather than in foster care.
The state continually has notified Darling of any change in Schofield’s status, and Darling has weighed in on some proposals, including objecting to a request from Schofield to be put on home confinement rather than remain in prison – a request that was later rejected.
“I slammed my feet a million times on the floor,” Darling said. “They wanted to do it around Logan’s birthday. I said, ‘Oh, hell no.’ ”
Logan was born on Oct. 14, 1995.
The latest missive from the state to Darling was about Schofield’s imminent release from prison.
An attempt to reach Schofield via family members was unsuccessful. A woman who answered the phone at Schofield’s husband’s home hung up.
A policy on the Maine Correctional Center website says: “We do not accept incoming phone calls for prisoners.”
‘I’M PRETTY TIRED’
Schofield’s release, meanwhile, is coming at a particularly strenuous time for Darling, who lives in Durham.
She also is dealing with a form of lung cancer that has metastasized to her right leg. Darling received the diagnosis of nonsmall-cell lung cancer in January, a day or so before the 16-year anniversary of Logan’s death.
“I just went through my first chemotherapy appointment,” Darling said. “I’m pretty tired.”
She’s had five bouts of radiation to shrink the tumors in her kneecap, and she’s been told to let the leg rest and recover.
“I go between a walker, a wheelchair and a cane, whatever’s easiest,” she said.
Darling, who works for L.L. Bean, currently is receiving short-term disability payments. She depends on her wife, Audra, for help and support. Currently, the couple are living with Darling’s family, several of whom smoke, so Darling is hoping to get into a smoke-free environment.
“It’s their home,” Darling said. “We can’t expect them not to smoke.”
She has started a gofundme page as well, and would use those contributions to help defray costs that are not covered by medical insurance, including a move to a wheelchair-friendly residence closer to her doctors in Scarborough. As of Friday, contributions were approaching the first $1,000 of her $13,000 goal.
Donations have come from all over, including from people directly linked to Logan and the investigation into the girl’s death on Jan. 31, 2001, in the unfinished basement of Schofield’s home in Chelsea.
Darling takes comfort from her wife and family and from her surviving daughter. “Bailey is wonderful,” Darling said. “She’s 18 and on her own. She’s a good kid. I wouldn’t trade her for the world.”
Darling repeated a request she has made several times in the past: “Don’t forget Logan’s voice. Just don’t forget her voice.”
GASPING FOR BREATH
In a nonjury trial in June 2002 in Bath, Schofield was acquitted of depraved indifference murder but convicted of reckless or criminally negligent manslaughter.
To illustrate the crime for the judge, William Stokes, one of the prosecutors in the case, took 47 feet of duct tape and wound it around and around a life-size doll in a child’s highchair just like the one Schofield placed Logan in for a timeout as punishment for what Schofield said was misbehavior.
Investigators found that length of duct tape – some of it with evidence of Logan’s saliva and small hairs from the skin between her mouth and nose – near the tipped-over highchair on the basement floor.
The judge at the time, Thomas E. Delahanty II – who was ousted recently as Maine’s U.S. attorney by the Justice Department – said any remorse Schofield expressed was minimized by her argument at trial that Logan died from a seizure rather than asphyxiation caused by Schofield. He described Logan’s death as “slow and agonizing and with substantial suffering.”
When he originally sentenced Schofield to 28 years in prison with eight suspended, Delahanty ruled Logan’s death to be among the most severe cases of manslaughter. She appealed, and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Schofield must be resentenced because she had not been given the option of a jury trial to determine whether the crime rose to the standard of being the “most heinous and violent” to merit more than 20 years.
Delahanty determined nothing had changed since Schofield’s original sentence to lessen the seriousness of her crime, and he handed down the maximum sentence now possible – 20 years. He suspended three years so he could include a period of probation.
Conditions of Schofield’s probation prohibit her from contact with children under 16 except for her own children and those of her relatives with supervision and permission of her probation officer.
Schofield also was ordered to do 500 hours of public service work not involving children within 24 months of probation. However, a judge later agreed that Schofield’s public service work behind bars – provided it was documented by a supervisor – could count toward that.
Stokes said at the time that the state accepted a sentence of no more than 20 years to spare putting Logan’s family through another painful trial, during which the grotesque specifics of her death would be recounted.
“Gasping for breath is not an easy way to die. It’s a hard way to die,” Stokes said in arguing at the time for the maximum penalty. “This certainly does border on torture.””
Release of child’s killer stirs painful memories for mother
[Kennebec Journal 3/18/17 by Betty Adams]
My God. In an effort to “protect” poor Logan from POSSIBLE abuse, the Child Welfare dept set in motion the chain of events which led to her abuse and death.
First question: WHY DIDN’T THEY FIRST CHECK OUT WHETHER IT WAS TRUE OR NOT THAT MITCH WAS A CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER? That would be an easy task, since it would be a matter of public record. They removed a source of psychological support for Christy by telling her to stay away from her mother Kathy, without even knowing if it was warranted!
Then there’s threatening to take Logan if Christy didn’t hew to DHS stipulations about boyfriends and friends. Aside from the wisdom of starting their “help” on an adversarial note, would they have made such an intrusive condition to a married, financially-stable couple? Or if Logan hadn’t been an eminently-adoptable healthy white toddler?
The double standard social services workers have for their presumed-to-be-bad clients as opposed to their presumed-saintly foster parents is clearly illustrated by THIS provision– as is the bias AGAINST family preservation for poor birthfamilies, no matter how much disappointed foster-adopt PAPs whine.
So have any of you seen THIS? It is a video from an orphanage of nannies BEATING the children and taunting them. Care to cover that? Or is that not important?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjPNvzBiWD8
Don’t know what THIS is as you haven’t linked to it. Also don’t know what that has to do with Logan Marr’s death. We do cover abuse in orphanages-try clicking on that topic on the home page to see the ones we have found. We are happy to cover another one but you do need to send a link.
I see an actual video posted where I left my comment. Is is not showing? If not I will happily provide another link.
I do see it now. Where is this at ? I can’t make a post unless I have more information about where this is and when this was and again this really has nothing to do with this child’s death case but you don’t seem to care about that.
I’m glad that Bailey was returned to her mom. I watched the Frontline episode and what disturbs me is how Sally speaks so calmly about the chain of events surrounding the death of Logan Marr. She certainly used extreme measures to “discipline” Logan. The entire agency is at fault for their cavalier approach to monitoring the Logan Marr case. Sally should never be allowed to see the light of day! I hope to God that Sally is never around any children EVER! Shame on her and everyone affiliated with the death of that beautiful little girl, Logan. All Logan wanted was her “Mommy, Chelsea” not that wicked wannabe “Mommy Dearest” aka Sally Scofield!