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Christina's Story
- Newspaper Articles
The following links take you to various articles in Christina's story
as it appeared in the South Florida media.
PLEASE DO NOT COPY THE INFORMATION ON THIS SITE BEFORE ASKING.
Thank you!
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In Loving Memory Of May 23, 1987 - September 16, 1994 "Beautiful Child who has found love from the angels...RIP..." |
 (Not her actual headstone) |
These
pages contain all of the articles from the Palm Beach Post and The
Sun-Sentinel throughout the years. |
|
Accused Mom Fails
To Win Release (11/6/94)
High Profile Child Abuse Cases Renew Debate Over HRS Role
(11/6/94)
Lawyer Argues For Release Of Pauline Zile (11/6/94)
Sometimes Anger Just Isn't Enough (11/6/94)
Christina Vanished, And Nobody Noticed (11/6/94)
Sometimes, Silence Is Deadly (11/6/94)
Pauline Zile's Arrest Is Challenged (11/6/94)
Link In Child Killings: History Of Neglect, Abuse (11/6/94)
Police Urged To Assume Foul Play In Missing Kid Cases (11/7/94)
Thousands Remember Five Lives Lost (11/7/94)
ACCUSED MOM FAILS
TO WIN RELEASE
The Palm Beach Post
November 6, 1994
Author: JENNY STALETOVICH and ANGELA HORNSBY
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The 24-year-old woman who first posed as a frantic mother searching
for her lost child, then the abused wife of a murderous husband appeared
in court Saturday under tight security to face charges in the killing
of her daughter.
Standing in the center of deputies,
later overheard discussing their contempt for her, Pauline Zile stood
silent with her arms crossed.
Zile, who was charged Friday with first-degree murder and child abuse
in the death of her 7-year-old daughter, Christina Holt, is being held
in protective custody at the county jail. John Zile, the girl's stepfather,
was charged Oct. 27 with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.
During the half-hour hearing, Pauline Zile's attorney, Ellis Rubin, argued that the basis of his client's arrest - a six-page affidavit - contains conflicting statements. He asked that she be released.
``I searched high and low for when this first-degree murder or aggravated child abuse came about,'' he said.
Citing state law and passages in the affidavit, Rubin pointed to a witness' testimony that showed Pauline Zile pleading for her husband to stop beating
Christina. According to the affidavit, Dale Ackerman, a neighbor of the Ziles, told police she heard a man yelling in the couple's Singer Island apartment. About a week later, Ackerman heard a young girl crying in the apartment and a hitting sound. Next she heard a woman say: ``John that's enough. John stop it.''
While Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez said there may be contradictions in the affidavit, he ordered Zile to remain in jail because the murder charge carries no bond. The validity of the affidavit will be determined by Criminal Court Judge Stephen Rapp.
``It is difficult to read the almost six pages that serves as the state's basis for the probable cause,'' Alvarez said. ``Not as an officer of the court, but as a human being.''
Zile, dressed in dark green prison scrubs, remained silent behind Rubin during the hearing, occasionally turning to stare at media cameras positioned at the rear of the courtroom.
Zile has stayed publicly silent since she first appeared before television cameras, tearfully pleading for the return of Christina, the daughter raised by paternal grandmothers until this summer.
Zile reported her daughter missing from a bathroom at the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop Oct. 22. But less than a week later, her story unraveled when investigators found a pair of bloody jeans belonging to Christina in the Ziles' apartment.
As investigators searched further, they found traces of blood on the floors and walls of the apartment. They also found that Pauline Zile told different people different versions of what happened to her daughter even before Christina was reported missing.
On Oct. 7, she told a school official the girl had returned to Maryland, where she lived with her grandmother. Later she told Christina's teacher she was teaching the child at home, the affidavit said.
Then on Oct. 27, the couple's 5-year-old son told investigators that Christina was dead, the affidavit said. That night, after Pauline Zile failed a lie detector test, she broke down and told investigators her husband had beaten Christina to death a month earlier. John Zile later said he was punishing the girl but never intended to kill her.
This past week, Pauline Zile again appeared tearfully to the media, letting her attorney plead her case. Rubin said John Zile used psychological torture to force his wife to go along with the Swap Shop ruse and called him a ``Svengali.'' It was John Zile, he said, who hid Christina's body in a closet for nearly four days while searching for a place to bury her. It was John Zile who masterminded the abduction story.
Pauline Zile, he said, was an abused wife forced to go to a Home Depot with the couple's two young sons to buy a shovel, tarp and rose bush for the girl's
burial. But investigators say the evidence they have collected proves
otherwise. ``She bought the coffin. She bought the tarp,'' sources said. ``That's how ripped up she was. My God, it was like a little family outing.''
Authorities also were surprised when Rubin read a statement Pauline Zile wrote this week, expressing her regret at not having stood up to her husband. The letter, sources said, places Pauline Zile at the murder scene and can be used against her.they have not questioned John Zile since the interview.
Zile told the reporter that Pauline also beat Christina.
News of the murder charges following Pauline Zile's first tearful appearances have angered those who knew the Ziles and those who did not.
Lonie Lindsey, a gas station attendant who talked to Pauline Zile the morning she drove to Fort Lauderdale to stage the abduction, remembers the young woman because she was a regular who stopped in several times a week over the past month.
Handing out change Saturday, she shook her head in disbelief.
``It just gnaws at me about Christina,'' she said. ``I really didn't see Pauline as a victim. She had ample time to call police. She was by herself all the time.''
The morning of the abduction act, Pauline Zile pulled into the gas station in her white Eldorado Cadillac about 11 a.m.
``We talked just a little. Not much. She was kind of in a hurry. She told me she had to go to Fort Lauderdale. I think she said something about the Swap Shop because I remember saying I wish I could get off and go shopping.''
Christina was not with Zile, Lindsey said.
Strangers have continued to place flowers and gifts at the spot behind a Tequesta shopping center where John Zile admitted he buried Christina.
At the couple's Singer Island apartment, neighbors have avoided the media. Linda Kauppinen, who told investigators Pauline described her daughter as snotty and spoiled, moved from the small hotel and apartment complex Friday night, her landlady said. Kauppinen has a young son who played with the Ziles' two boys, and she is trying to shelter him from the case, the landlady said.
Others are afraid to open their doors, said the landlady, who refused to let reporters on her property and declined to give her name. Neighbors and other witnesses named in the affidavit could not be reached by telephone.
``You did your work, but it's two weeks now,'' she said. ``We are the
victims.'' Sources said Saturday that since hearing disclosures made by investigators, Pauline Zile's mother has distanced herself from her daughter. Paula Yingling was not in court with her daughter Saturday.
When she answered her door Saturday afternoon, she declined comment and referred questions to Ellis Rubin.
Following Saturday's hearing, attorney Guy Rubin, Ellis Rubin's son, described his client as ``a fragile, 24-year-old girl'' and asked the public not to transfer rage directed at the South Carolina woman charged with killing her two children to Zile.
STATEMENT OF PAULINE ZILE
REGRETS:
1. Not knowing a lot was going on in the degree it was.
2. Not knowing he was being so rough when I wasn't home.
3. Not being able to confront John.
4. Not being able to walk out the door and call the cops that night.
5. Not knowing he scared the boys so much.
6. Not knowing his past was so bad.
I hope this will help other mothers come forward if their children are being beaten or punished to a bad extent.
I will never forget seeing Christina on the living room floor, nor her laying (sic) on the bed.
I pray that everyone who ever knew and will know me will forgive me for not being a strong person and eventually will trust me again.
If I could say anything to John now it would be:
1. Thanks for nothing.
2. I've now lost 5 children since I met you.
3. I've tried and worked so hard for my life and my children and now its (sic) ruined.
4. You and God know the truth of all this and how you hurt me and our children so much.
5. I pray you have the guts to come clean and admit your wrongs.
6. Christina, Daniel, Chad, and myself deserved a lot more.
7. I really thought you loved me, how can you treat somebody so bad that you say you love. How could you do something you knew was wrong towards all of us. Especially my dear Christina. If only I had the strength to walk out, like with Frankie.
8. My brain is like scrambled
eggs thanks to you and your damn ultimatums. That car exhaust has fried
by (sic) memory when I need it most.
HIGH-PROFILE CHILD ABUSE CASES
RENEW DEBATE OVER HRS ROLE
The Palm Beach Post
November 6, 1994
Author: WILLIAM COOPER JR.
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
It is all sadly familiar: murdered children, an outraged public, the
state's promise to join with everyday citizens to help stop the horror.
Today's outrage flows from the
deaths here of Christina Holt and Dayton Boykin, and of Michael and
Alexander Smith in South Carolina.
Five years ago, it was Bradley McGee, and reminders were everywhere:
on posters, billboards, buttons, radio and television.
Reminders to be alert, to get involved, to take responsibility.
The material pictured children with black eyes, and had slogans such as ``Many Abused Children Have A Hard Time Talking About It'' beneath pictures of children with adult hands covering their mouths.
Florida's 1 (800) 96-ABUSE hot line was promoted heavily as a 24-hour service for the public to report suspicions of child abuse. State statistics showed that a case of abuse occurred every four minutes somewhere in Florida.
Child abuse, state officials announced, was an epidemic.
It remains one, although the posters have been taken down, the billboards covered over, the buttons tossed in drawers.
WITCH HUNT FEARS
\ Stung by charges that it was promoting witch hunts, dogged by occasional failures to protect children who had been reported at risk, the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services changed emphasis from raising public awareness to internal reforms. Legislators appropriated millions for investigators and training programs.
Still, children died. And while everyone agrees that not all abuse deaths can be prevented, the debate about the agency's role and its priorities
continues. Democrats push for more social programs that make HRS an integral part of helping troubled families. Republicans want to diminish the state's Big Brother perception by reducing the agency's role with families.
``I think it's a hollow gesture if you don't get behind the serious causes of child abuse,'' said Jim Towey, who heads the agency under the current Democratic administration. ``It takes more than buttons and bumper stickers. Prevention doesn't come cheap.''
But GOP gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush's comments during last week's debate with Gov. Lawton Chiles indicate a different direction.
``I don't think HRS ought to intervene in family life to the extent that it does today,'' Bush said. ``I believe that we ought to get HRS to take a couple of steps back.''
LIMIT HRS' ROLE?
\ Groups like the Family Rights Committee Inc., which ran newspaper ads throughout the state charging HRS with using Nazi-like tactics when removing children from homes where abuse is suspected, have had an effect. John Ostalkiewicz, an Orlando diamond importer, launched the campaign because one of his employees was falsely accused of child abuse.
Some law enforcement officials believe HRS' role should be limited to tracking child abuse cases, not taking the lead in investigations.
``This is a criminal problem, not a social problem,'' said Lt. Steve Newell, who heads the unit at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's department that investigates child abuse. ``Why do you want to call the hot line and wait two or three hours for someone to show up? John Q. Citizen ought to call 911.''
There are two ways social service officials can handle child abuse: Avoid it or face it head-on, said Gregory Coler, the former HRS secretary under Republican Gov. Bob Martinez.
Within months of announcing Florida's revolutionary child protection system, Coler had to deal with the death of Bradley McGee, who was killed by his stepfather while under HRS supervision. His death brought reforms, prompting legislators to appropriate some $30 million to improve Florida's child welfare system.
The McGee case was the first in which HRS social workers faced criminal charges for failing to protect a child. The 2-year-old's death also prompted Coler to institute annual child abuse reports and form a committee to review child abuse deaths.
lawsuits. EMPHASIS ON PREVENTION
\ In November 1990, a federal judge ruled that the abuse registry was unconstitutional because the law creating the registry did not allow due process for anyone named in the ``indicated'' category. The classification - which no longer exists - was for cases in which HRS workers found signs of abuse, but lacked the evidence to confirm it.
The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of three teachers who had been reported to the hot line.
After that, HRS seemed to back away from efforts to publicize the depth of child abuse in Florida. After 1990, HRS no longer held press conferences releasing its annual statistics on child abuse deaths and the number of reports made to the hot line.
The reports that were released in subsequent years didn't include the number of child abuse deaths.
Towey said HRS' attention was focused on prevention programs like Healthy Start, which helps new mothers with their babies by providing information about parenting.
Last October, HRS changed the way the hot line operated. Plagued by some 80,000 calls that went unanswered in one year, the state agency switched to a voice mail system rather than having callers speak immediately to an HRS
counselor. Some question whether the move is wise.
``For people who are already nervous about making a report, it will serve as another barrier,'' said Linda Spears, a senior consultant with the Child Welfare League of America in Washington.
Even with an automated system, callers may have to wait up to 30 minutes before speaking to someone because counselors are overwhelmed.
When the hot line began, it started out with 89 counselors answering calls. The first year brought 426,156 calls.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT URGED
\ Today, 86 workers are supposed to man the telephones, but HRS has nine vacancies, leaving the department with 77 people to do the job.
Jack Levine, executive director of the Florida Center for Children & Youth in Tallahassee, said despite the system's flaws, it is better than it was five years ago. People in Florida should know by now to call the abuse hot line, he
said. However, until politicians hear from the communities that they want more money spent on programs that support families, child abuse will increase because young families will have fewer places to go for help.
``How much child neglect are we
willing to tolerate before it gets to our conscience?'' Levine asked.
``We're beginning to grow child abuse like kudzu.''
Back To Top
LAWYER ARGUES FOR RELEASE OF PAULINE
ZILE
AFFIDAVIT DOESN'T SHOW REASON MOM SHOULD BE CHARGED, JAILED
Sun-Sentinel
November 6, 1994
Author: SARAH RAGLAND Staff Writer
Staff Writers Marego Athans, Mike Folks, Kirk Saville and Jill Young
Miller contributed to this report.
Pauline Zile wants to get out of jail.
At her first appearance in court at the Palm Beach County Jail in West
Palm Beach on Saturday, her attorney pushed for her release, arguing
that prosecutors failed to show there was a good reason to jail her
on charges of aggravated child abuse and first-degree murder in the
death of her daughter, Christina Holt.
Ellis Rubin, Ziles' attorney, pointed to a paragraph in the six-page police affidavit used as the basis for the charges against Zile.
In the affidavit, police say that one of Zile's neighbors heard a woman say, "John, that's enough; John, stop it," on the night Christina died.
Rubin said that's proof enough that Pauline Zile tried to stop her husband, John Zile, from beating Christina, proof that Pauline Zile did not intend to harm her child.
"What do they think of a mother hollering to the beater of her child, `John, that's enough, John, stop it?'" he told Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez. "She tried to stop her husband."
But Palm Beach County Assistant State Attorney Scott Cupp countered that Pauline Zile's failure to protect Christina from the abuse that led to her death is just cause for a charge of first-degree felony murder, he said.
"Even if the defendant is not even present, she could still be held legally accountable," Cupp told the judge.
Alvarez said he would not overturn the decision to jail Pauline Zile even if there may be contradictions in police affidavits.
Pauline Zile stood blank-faced, hugging herself and occasionally peering back toward the crowd in the courtroom as the lawyers parried.
She bowed her head as she was led out of the courtroom, back to the mental health unit of the jail, where she is being held, one floor away from her husband.
Both of the Ziles are under 24-hour guard, kept from other inmates who are threatening them.
On Monday their cases go to the grand jury, which will determine whether the Ziles will be indicted in for Christina's murder.
John Zile was arrested and charged on Oct. 27 with first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated child abuse after Pauline Zile told police that her husband had beaten Christina on the night of Sept. 16, John Zile admitted beating her and covering her mouth with a towel to stifle her screams. Christina went into convulsions and died.
After stashing Christina's body in a closet for four days, John Zile buried the second-grader behind a Kmart in Tequesta.
Pauline Zile was arrested and charged with Christina's murder a week later, after the medical examiner ruled Christina's death a homicide and police had gathered evidence from the Ziles' apartment, their neighbors, family and friends.
The picture that emerges from the police reports is not of the grieving mother who two weeks ago told police her daughter was abducted from the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop, the woman who wept in televised appeals for Christina's safe return.
Nor is it the woman Rubin described last week as a battered wife under the control of a violent and threatening man.
Pauline Zile's neighbors, instead, told police of a woman who whacked her 3-year-old son Chad with a stick, a woman who called Christina a "snotty, spoiled child who was too much to handle."
Many neighbors, friends and relatives of the Ziles could not be reached for comment or declined to comment on Saturday.
At the Sea Nymph Apartments in Singer Island, where the Ziles lived with their two sons and Christina, all but two of the tenants who lived in the eight-apartment building at the time of the murder have moved out, a tenant reported. Some left disgusted, some haunted by the idea that they were living in the building where a child was killed.
"Just about everyone is moving out," said Michelle Boettcher, as she loaded her blue pickup truck. "A few people, their conscience got to them. They knew what was going on and they didn't do nothing about it.
"It is eerie here," said Boettcher, who is moving to Missouri. "This is hitting a little close to home."
The Ziles' former next-door neighbor, who asked to be identified only as Greg, said he left because of the "smell of death."
"I think about that little girl all the time," he said.
In Maryland, where Pauline Zile spent most of her childhood, former neighbors are stunned by the news of her role in a murder that's capturing national attention.
"I'll be damned," said a former neighbor, who had not recognized Pauline Zile in TV news accounts. The neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said she remembers her as a "good kid" who read a lot.
"Pauline was real eager. Gung-ho. Get an education, and so forth," the neighbor said. "I thought she was going to do well with her life."
But along the way, something changed. At one point, Pauline Zile had alcohol and drug problems, according to court records.
She dropped out of Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Md., at 16. Only months before, she had married Franklin Delano "Frankie" Holt Jr., then 20, at a Methodist church in Cabin John Md., and her belly was growing with Christina.
"I was not sure that the marriage was going to last very long, even made a notation to that effect," said the Rev. W. Shropshire Jr., who married them. "The two of them were both very young and not certain about what the future held."
SOMETIMES ANGER JUST ISN'T ENOUGH
Sun-Sentinel
November 6, 1994
Author: GARY STEIN
Commentary
What is the emotion you are supposed to feel after anger?
What is the word you use when "angry" just won't cut it?
I need the word. I need the word to describe what I feel.
I felt it the other day, when I heard the psychobabble on TV hours after we learned Susan Smith had confessed to killing her two small boys.
Before we had time to comprehend
the horror of all that, there were the psychologists and other big talkers
on the tube, telling us about the stress this woman had to be under.
Going through a divorce makes people do strange things, we were told.
Divorce can make you lose control. Can make you snap.
And I felt like snapping right there.
I mean, how many miserable excuses are we going to come up with for people who do unspeakable acts to their own children?
Everyone's a victim
What is the emotion you get to when "outrage" just isn't enough?
I need to know the word. It's what I feel.
I feel it when I hear people talking about how the pressures of life might have somehow caused Susan Smith to do what she did, and might have caused John and Pauline Zile of Riviera Beach to do what they are accused of doing to 7-year-old Christina Holt.
My God, people have had pressures and tensions forever. Divorce is hardly a new phenomenon. Dysfunctional families are not just a thing of the '90s.
But people years ago didn't go around killing their kids, no matter what kinds of problems existed in the family.
Of course, nowadays we have people to help justify our actions, no matter how despicable. A guy like Ellis Rubin can always help.
Pauline Zile - who thankfully was charged with murder on Friday - was under the control of her husband, Rubin said.
Poor, pathetic Pauline. Yeah, she's a victim in this, too. Ellis says so.
Maybe that's why she watched her kid die. Maybe that's why she lived with her dead child in the closet for several days. Maybe that's why she made up her pitiful lies.
"This case is going to be a combination of battered woman syndrome and child abuse," Rubin said at another press conference.
And if you wanted to toss your cookies when you heard that one, you are not alone.
"I have no sympathy for Pauline Zile," said Miami's Patrick Sessions, whose daughter Tiffany has been missing for five years.
"Nobody put a gun to her head for a week. She could have called the police. She's despicable."
What word is strong enough?
What do you feel when anger and outrage aren't enough? What is the next level?
I don't know, but I probably approached it when I thought about how Susan Smith might try to defend her actions.
Taking a wild stab here, I'm guessing she'll talk about her marital difficulties and how she was under so much strain and she felt she had nowhere to turn and there was this ex-boyfriend and she just snapped.
Yeah. Maybe that's why she let her two little boys die in that lake, strapped in their car seats. I wonder if she kissed them goodbye.
And now we have parents of missing children holding a news conference in Fort Lauderdale, worried that the public will stop being concerned about their real cases because of a couple of tragic shams.
Maybe some good comes of all this. Maybe people become more patient and understanding with their kids. Hopefully there are some extra hugs.
But what is the word to use when "anger" and "outrage" and "disgust" don't say it?
I don't know. But I feel it.
Local columnist Gary Stein is published on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
CHRISTINA VANISHED, AND NOBODY
NOTICED
Sun-Sentinel
November 6, 1994
Author: Kurt Greenbaum
My neighbors have planted two wooden, 6-foot storks on their front lawn
- one pink, one blue. They had twins last month and the storks advertise
the names, birthdates and weights.
We don't know the couple; we've
only seem them outside their house once or twice. Still, in another
day in another town, my wife and I might have been there within the
week, offering a casserole and congratulations.
But a week has passed already and we still haven't made the time. We
know so few of our neighbors; we isolate ourselves so much. So much,
apparently, that almost nobody noticed when a 7-year-old girl vanished
from the face of the earth last month.
For six weeks, until her parents' story collapsed like a house of cards, nobody realized a little girl named Christina Holt ever was. The Riviera Beach girl was killed on Sept. 16, hidden in a closet until Sept. 20, and unearthed behind a K mart 38 days later.
It is the most heart-breaking of all the facts surrounding Christina's murder: Almost nobody missed her.
A teacher at Jupiter Farms Elementary School called Christina's mother, Pauline Zile, a couple of times to find out why the second-grader wasn't in school. Zile's excuses, however, were enough to divert the teacher from the truth.
What else could the teacher have done? Had the child no friends? Had her parents been that isolated that none of their acquaintances had a clue? Did the neighbors in the Riviera Beach apartment building where she lived not miss the sound of the little girl's voice?
How long could Christina's very existence have been concealed if the Ziles had not concocted what police say was a false report that their daughter was missing on Oct. 22 from the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop.
How could anyone do this? We drive in and out of our neighborhoods with a wave to a neighbor, a nod to a passer-by. But we spend most of our time elsewhere, at work, with friends in other parts of South Florida, with family outside the state.
Would anyone notice if my daughter no longer climbed onto the backyard swing-set? Would taking her out of child care unexpectedly raise an eyebrow? How long could we keep our friends at bay before they noticed something horribly wrong?
For almost three years, my daughter has been a part of this world. I would like to think she has made enough of a mark that someone would miss her if she were gone. I hope we are not that isolated. It's about time my wife and I make that casserole and pass along our well-wishes to the newborn twins.
-- Family Matters appears Sundays in Palm Beach Plus. Kurt Greenbaum is a Sun-Sentinel staff writer from Deerfield Beach. Call with column ideas at 496-5463 in south Palm Beach, or 523-5463 in Broward, then enter 5878.
SOMETIMES, SILENCE IS DEADLY
CHRISTINA'S NEIGHBORS IGNORED CHILD'S CRIES
Sun-Sentinel
November 6, 1994
Author: BARBARA WALSH Staff Writer
Seven-year-old Christina Holt was no stranger to beatings.
Her stepfather, Walter John Zile, called it discipline. It was no secret
to his neighbors and friends that Zile thought children should be spanked
or whipped with a belt when they misbehaved.
Weeks before police say Zile beat Christina to death in their Riviera Beach apartment, a family friend watched Zile throw Christina onto her bed, whip her five times with his belt, then pull down her pants to show his friend the welts across her buttocks.
The friend told Zile he didn't think whipping a little girl was appropriate. But he didn't call police.
Another neighbor knew of a September evening when she thought Christina was beaten unconscious. She, too, did not call police.
Police now think that may have been the night Zile's discipline turned deadly.
There were other neighbors who heard screams coming from the Ziles' apartment. But they didn't report anything, either.
And that, experts say, is the crucial weak link in child abuse cases: reporting the abuse.
While few people would have trouble turning in someone they think sexually abused a child, many are reluctant to report a parent who slaps or spanks a child too hard or too often.
Too many neighbors, friends and family members don't want to intrude into another family's business, and would rather turn their heads when a parent severely disciplines a child.
"Society is waking up to domestic violence when it comes to spousal abuse," state Health and Rehabilitative Services Secretary Jim Towey said. "But there is an ongoing debate when it comes to child abuse. There are people who believe HRS should stay out of people's living rooms. But those people have never met someone like Christina or her parents."
Spare the rod and spoil the child is still a popular belief, Towey said. And separating discipline from physical abuse remains a gray area for many. "Everybody talks about letting parents keep the right to discipline their kids," Towey said.
"But what do you call it when someone's drunk vs. sober and hitting their kid? What do you call it when you're calm and trying to lovingly change your child's behavior patterns and swat him on the fanny compared to a parent who is out of control and angry and pounding his kid like his dad used to hit him?"
There were 130,801 cases of child abuse reported in Florida from July 1, 1992 to June 30, 1993, the most recent statistics available. Nearly 9,000 of those cases occurred in Broward County and 7,000 in Palm Beach County, about 12 percent of the total. The two counties are home to nearly 16 percent of the state's population.
Sixty-three children died in Florida in 1993 from neglect or abuse.
But despite those staggering numbers, children's advocates think many physical abuse cases are never reported.
"The scary thing about the statistics is that they don't tell you about the unreported abuse," Towey said. "Christina is the perfect example. She's the worst example."
Police learned about Christina's beatings when they questioned Zile's neighbors and friends while investigating her Sept. 16 killing. Ziles, 32, eventually confessed that he accidentally killed Christina while disciplining her for soiling her pants.
He smacked her buttocks, her face, her lips. When she started crying, he covered her mouth with a towel so neighbors wouldn't hear her screams, as they had before. Stricken with seizures, choking uncontrollably, she fell to the floor and died.
Zile and Christina's mother, Pauline Zile, 24, tried to cover up the murder.
When Christina's teacher called to ask where she was, Pauline Zile made up excuses and eventually said Christina was transferring to another school. Then, on Oct. 22, a frantic Pauline Zile told police her daughter disappeared during a visit to the Swap Shop, west of Fort Lauderdale.
Six weeks after Christina died, the couple confessed.
Both have been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. It appears police now think Christina's mother also beat her and played a role in her death.
Children's advocates say that, as in Christina's case, people hesitate to call HRS or the police because they fear they may be overreacting, that the state might wrongly remove a child from the home.
But the real lesson from Christina's death is to call someone whenever you suspect abuse.
"If anyone is uncomfortable about what they witnessed, they should make the phone call," said Phyllis West, who supervises the state's child abuse hotline at 1-800-962-2873. "Trained counselors talk to them and determine whether it is abuse or not. They have nothing to lose."
West said counselors will question callers about the incident. How old was the child? Did the parent hit them with their hand? A closed fist? With a belt? Was the child injured? Was this an isolated incident or has the parent struck the child before?
If the counselor thinks the child is in danger, an HRS investigator and police will be sent to talk to the family immediately, West said.
If they think the child may have been abused but is not at risk, an HRS counselor will go to the home and talk with the child and the family.
"We don't say, `That child has a mark on him' and accuse the parents of abuse," said Diane Frazier, who supervises HRS' child protective unit in Broward County. "A lot of cases fall into a gray area. We have parents who say, `I didn't mean to abuse my child. My mother used to hit me with a belt. This is the way I was raised.'"
When parents can't control their temper or inappropriately hit their children, HRS offers counseling and parenting classes.
"Our main goal is not to take the child away but to make sure they are safe," Frazier said.
Some people might worry about retribution if they report someone for child abuse, but all calls made to the hotline are confidential. Revealing the name of a caller is a misdemeanor punishable by 60 days in jail.
Most often it is professionals who report abuse - teachers, doctors and nurses. They are bound by the law to report any suspicious injury to a child. In Christina's case, the second-grader spent so little time in school her teacher at Jupiter Farms Elementary did not have the chance to notice anything was wrong.
Christina spent five days in school this year. School started Aug. 22. There were 16 school days between the start of school and her death Sept. 16.
"We didn't notice anything wrong with her," Jupiter Farms Elementary Principal David Horan said. "We learned that she liked Barney, stuffed animals and the color purple. But had we suspected anything we would have called the hotline. We'd rather be safe than sorry."
Teachers in particular often notice the first signs of abuse.
"Kids sometimes can't sit down in school because they've been paddled or whipped so badly," Broward County prosecutor Charles Kaplan said.
"Some of these parents really whip their kids with hangers, extension cords. You see scars on these kids where the welts break open. It's a real tragedy. No matter how bad these kids are, they don't deserve to be tortured and scarred for the rest of their life."
If a parent hits a child but there are no marks and no history of abuse, the case usually is not prosecuted, Kaplan said.
"You get cases where kids call the hotline and say, `My parent slapped me on the butt and I don't like it,'" Kaplan said. "We don't go forward with those."
HRS Secretary Towey hopes Christina's case brings public attention to the child abuse problem, that neighbors will start watching out for the children who live next door.
"It would dishonor Christina's life to wring our hands and say, `Let's stop child abuse,'" Towey said. "We need more community involvement. HRS or the government can't stop abuse on their own."
PAULINE ZILE'S ARREST IS CHALLENGED
MOTHER MIGHT STAY JAILED UNTIL TRIAL
Miami Herald, The (FL)
November 6, 1994
Author: LORI ROZSA Herald Staff Writer
Sobbing into a crumpled tissue, Pauline Zile learned from a judge Saturday
that she will likely remain behind bars until she goes on trial for
first-degree murder in the beating death of her 7-year-old daughter,
Christina Holt.
Zile, 24, was teary-eyed and shaking at her first court appearance in
West Palm Beach. She regained some composure during the 20-minute hearing,
frequently looking with curiousity at a bank of press photographers
in the back of the courtroom.
She had a blank expression on her face when her attorney read some of the allegations against her. The attorney, Ellis Rubin, said the arrest warrant is full of inconsistencies and doesn't show that Zile took part in the beating. Zile is also charged with aggravated child abuse.
Using neighbors and her two young sons as witnesses, investigators say Zile beat Christina and her other children, described the little girl as "a snotty, spoiled child," and did nothing to stop her husband, John, from fatally thrashing the screaming girl.
John Zile was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse Oct. 27, after police interrogated the couple for hours. Pauline told them she was asleep when the deadly beating began, but woke to find her husband beating Christina. They granted her limited immunity in exchange for her statement.
But investigators spent the past week interviewing other witnesses, and on Friday said they had enough evidence independent of Pauline Zile's statement to charge her, too.
"At no time during this incident did Pauline Zile attempt to protect Christina from the punishment which led to her death," investigators said in the arrest affidavit.
But they also quote a neighbor, Dale Ackerman, who said that one night she heard "a hitting sound" and a young girl crying inside the Zile apartment. She said she heard a woman say, "John that's enough. Stop it."
Rubin, her lawyer, said that's inconsistent with the allegation that Pauline Zile did nothing to stop the beating.
Her lawyers also said Saturday the state did not have enough evidence to keep her in jail without bond while she awaits trail.
Judge Alvarez disagreed.
LINK IN CHILD KILLINGS: HISTORY
OF NEGLECT, ABUSE
Miami Herald, The (FL)
November 6, 1994
Author: LORI ROZSA and TOM DUBOCQ Herald Staff Writers
Again and again, you hear the question:
How could a person do a thing
like that?
The query has been widely heard since the highly publicized cases of
Pauline Zile and Susan Smith -- both mothers who claimed their children
had been abducted when they apparently knew the youngsters were dead.
Pauline Zile, charged Friday in her daughter's death, had her first appearance before a judge Saturday at the Palm Beach County Stockade.
Experts who study child abuse say a common thread binds the Zile case and two of South Florida's other high-profile child killings: In each, the youngsters were helpless "target children," victims of uncontrollable rage on the part of parents whose maturity levels were that of teenagers.
Three cases whose horrific details churned stomachs in South Florida:
* Bradley McGee, dead at 2. Killed after his stepfather repeatedly slammed him head first into a toilet.
* "Baby Lollipops" -- Lazaro Cardona, dead at 3. Killed after his mother and her lover beat him with a baseball bat,
and abandoned him under a bush in Miami Beach.
* Christina Holt, dead at 7. Died after her stepfather hit her.
Common points emerge in these cases.
The parents had rotten childhoods. Some suffered from extremely low self-esteem. Some suffered abuse nearly as heinous as what they put their own children through.
All of them took it out on a target child, sparing other children in their families.
*
John Zile spent much of his own teen years either drugged or drunk -- so thirsty for booze that he once stole liquor from an invalid.
As a kid, he says, his father disciplined him with force. "My dad used to beat me with a belt once in a while for lying and stuff," he said.
"I admit I was a juvenile delinquent. I did a lot of pot," he said.
Zile never made it past the ninth grade, getting kicked out for being "too rowdy," he once told a probation officer. On his right arm, he tattooed the name of his favorite marijuana, "Colombian Gold," but alcohol was his drug of choice.
"He was a chronic alcoholic," said James E. Davitt, a lawyer who represented Zile when he was 20 and facing a burglary rap. "He was out of control; his parents had written him off. With low self-esteem and alcohol, he fits he classic profile of a young offender who goes on to bigger things."
Zile grew up in Montgomery County, Md., on the outskirts of Washington. When he wasn't confined to juvenile shelters, home was a neat, two-story brick colonial.
His parents, Charles and Patricia Zile, are a hardworking couple who own a mom-and-pop beef-barbeque pit.
John says he hasn't talked to his parents in years, since a family rift.
Court records indicate that John Zile got in trouble early. "Mr. Zile states that he has abused cocaine, has experimented with PCP, (with) speed in high school and has used marijuana a couple of times each week for five years. Mr. Zile does not consider his alcohol use to be a problem," a 1986 corrections evaluation said.
He was a lone wolf, Davitt said, with a few younger friends: "They were all fellow drunks. They didn't socialize; they got blitzed together."
Zile was 20 when he faced his first serious criminal offense: a burglary charge in 1983. According to Davitt, Zile and a couple of teenage pals broke into the unoccupied home of a sickly old man. They took a .22 caliber rifle and some silverware. Davitt said they also broke into the old man's liquor cabinet.
Zile was convicted, sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to get counseling for drug and alcohol problems.
But he didn't have the discipline to comply with the terms of his probation. After an arrest for drunken driving, a judge revoked his probation in 1986 and he did seven months in jail.
At 25, Zile surfaced in Jensen Beach, got a job as a sheetrock hanger, and moved in with 17-year-old Pauline Yingling Holt.
Like Zile, Holt was from Montgomery County and left behind big problems when she headed south -- a history of drug and alcohol abuse, a failing marriage and a baby girl, Christina Diane Holt, who went to live with relatives.
She and Zile married, had two kids, now 3 and 5, and worked together in Treasure Coast restaurants. They were expecting their third child when Christina arrived on the doorstep of their crowded apartment. Christina was singled out for discipline that the boys didn't have to endure.
And in trying to discipline the little girl in September, Zile hit her and she died.
A few weeks later, the newborn was given up for adoption.
Experts say while it is impossible to predict human behavior, it is easy to assess what kind of parent a person will make by examining their background.
"More than 90 percent of adults who abuse were abused themselves as children," said Kristin Lindahl, a psychology professor at the University of Miami.
"The kids who have best shot at not being abusive when they get to be adults are those that were able to form a healthy relationship with at least one caretaker-type person, even if it's not a parent."
Thomas Coe was an outcast as a child -- so miserable that his mother paid kids to play with him.
He was born to Don and Mary Coe not only with tonsillitis, but also with life-threatening kidney problems and a displaced hip. Low self-esteem was a constant in his life.
He spent a third of his childhood in a body cast, in and out of hospitals.
The medication he took blackened his teeth, making him reluctant to smile. His hip problems gave him a permanent limp.
"Tom has had a very hard life," his mother says. "He couldn't run and play like other kids. They taunted him. I had to pay them to play with him, and they still wouldn't."
In 1987, when he was 22, he married Sheryl McGee. Sheryl was 20, and had a 3-month-old baby, Bradley. She said Bradley was the product of a rape.
Sheryl's mother was a suicidal alcoholic who died when Sheryl was a teenager. Both parents admitted to hitting Bradley, and doling out sadistic punishments as a form of potty training.
On July 28, the pair flew into a rage when Bradley soiled his diaper. Tom Coe picked Bradley up by his ankles, and dunked him into the toilet, while Sheryl held the boy's mouth. He died a day later of a brain hemorrhage.
Coe was 22, but psychological tests showed he had the maturity of a 15-year-old.
Tom Coe is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse at Florida State Prison, where he is a model inmate. He's kept in a "special population" of snitches and others so other inmates won't attack him -- child abusers are notoriously unpopular in prisons.
Sheryl pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a life sentence at Lowell Correctional Institution.
*
In many cases, child abuse starts suddenly.
"Ninety-plus percent of child abuse cases are just regular, ordinary people who are stressed out, who don't understand, who came out of a bad environment, who don't know what's appropriate, and who have some kind of crisis occur in their life that makes them lash out," said Jim Spencer, project director of the state's child protection team in Gainesville.
"When that happens," Spencer said, "a child gets hurt."
*
Baby Lollipops' time on earth was longer than Bradley McGee's, but, if possible, even more painful.
Ana Cardona was nine months pregnant with Lazaro when the baby's father, Fidel Figueroa, was gunned down in a drug-related shooting in 1987.
Until then, Figueroa's money kept her in a penthouse apartment on Miami Beach. She ran with a fast, monied crowd.
She left a 15-year-old in her native Cuba, and had four children after she moved to Miami, including Lazaro.
Acquaintances and family members said Cardona hit the children, but they never noticed her being exceedingly violent except when it came to baby Lazaro. The tiny boy incurred her wrath to the point where a cousin begged HRS to let him take care of the boy.
After Figueroa's death, Cardona took up with Olivia Gonzalez-Mendoza. The two became lovers. In the months before Lazaro's death, they lived in a one-room Hialeah efficiency, owned by Luis Piloto.
"She personally was someone who spent most of her time sleeping," Piloto said. "She would lay in her bed with the front door completely open, like someone who had nothing to worry about."
A few months later, Lazaro's battered body was found on a pile of leaves under a bush in front of an expensive Miami Beach home. Police gave him the name Baby Lollipops, because of the design of brightly colored candies on his T-shirt.
Cardona told the jury and judge that she had a difficult, abusive childhood. She pleaded for mercy but she never mentioned Lazaro by name nor apologized for what happened to him.
She was sentenced to death, and is serving her time at the Broward Correctional Institution in Fort Lauderdale until her date with electric chair.
Herald staff writers Aminda Marques, David Kidwell and Liz Donovan contributed to this report.
Psychologists say it's impossible to predict human behavior. But some research has shown that child abusers often share some traits and behavior patterns. Among them:
* Abusers suffer acute distress. They're lonely, they distrust others, they don't have a support system of family and friends.
* Abusers are rigid in their expectations of what children are capable of doing. The issue of when a child should be potty trained often triggers abusive behavior in parents.
"If you have very rigid expectations with a child, who isn't very sophisticated and who will make a lot of mistakes, problems will develop," said Joel Milner, director of the Family Violence Research Program at Northern Illinois University.
* Beliefs and attitudes about children: Problems can arise, Milner said, if parents are too stringent about "whether all the toys should be in place, and if a child should never play in a mud puddle."
Milner and Brenda Oakes, program service specialist in child abuse and neglect with the Palm Beach County Children's Service's Council, said other warning signs include:
* Overwhelming family money problems.
* A history of aggressive behavior on the part of adults.
* Substance abuse.
* Animal abuse.
If somebody is abusing the family pet, "that's a good indication that they'll take it out on the children," Oakes said.
POLICE URGED TO ASSUME FOUL PLAY
IN MISSING KID CASES
The Palm Beach Post
November 7, 1994
Author: TIM PALLESEN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
With a Riviera Beach couple charged with murdering the child they had
reported missing, the U.S. Justice Department urged police agencies
Sunday to assume foul play as a possibility in every missing child case.
``It is recommended that law enforcement
agencies respond to a report of a missing child as if the child is in
immediate danger,'' says a manual on missing children investigations
that the federal agency released Sunday.
Otherwise, officers often assume a child is lost or has run away and
``miss the opportunity to immediately identify critical information,''
says the manual that will be sent to 17,000 law enforcement agencies
this week.
The FBI used advance copies of the manual in both the Riviera Beach case, where John and Pauline Zile were charged with murder, and a South Carolina case, where a mother is accused of killing her two sons, said Ron Laney, a Justice Department official who supervised the 220-page manual's production over 18 months.
Pauline Zile told police her daughter, Christina, 7, was abducted from a Fort Lauderdale flea market restroom Oct. 22. Her husband, John, the child's stepfather, was charged with Christina's murder on Oct. 27. Pauline Zile was charged Friday.
Police had found blood on the floors and walls of the family's Singer Island apartment and in the trunk of their car before John Zile led police to the child's remains buried behind a Kmart in Tequesta.
That apartment search followed a key guideline in the manual: ``When a child is reported missing, always search the home; even if the child is missing from another location.''
The manual also advises that police ask parents to submit to a polygraph test early, saying parents may not sense ``an accusatory purpose'' when police make their request early.
In the Christina Holt disappearance, the FBI didn't conduct polygraphs until Oct. 27 - five days after she was reported missing. Riviera Beach police Lt. David Harris defended that delay Sunday, saying parents might seek an attorney's advice if a police officer requests a polygraph too early in the investigation.
``There's no way a lawyer is going to approve that polygraph test or further cooperation,'' Harris said. ``You've got to be so delicate . . . a police officer's sixth sense will tell you when to request it.''
A Palm Beach County sheriff's detective who investigates child abuse said Sunday the new manual is already standard procedure in missing children cases where the child is 10 years old or younger.
The likelihood that older children have simply run away from home is too great to search homes for evidence or do polygraphs, Detective Scott Smith said.
THOUSANDS REMEMBER 5 LIVES LOST
S. FLORIDA STRUGGLES WITH CHILDREN'S DEATHS
Sun-Sentinel
November 7, 1994
Author: KEN SWART and LANE KELLEY Staff Writers
Staff Writer Patti Roth contributed to this report.
They lighted candles at a Unitarian church in Boca Raton.
They said prayers at a Lutheran church and a Church of Christ, in Fort
Lauderdale.
And they got counseling at a Baptist church in Delray Beach.
Thousands of churchgoers in South Florida spent Sunday recalling the brief lives and tragic deaths of five children here and in South Carolina.
They and their pastors also struggled with conflicting emotions - compassion for the children, hatred for the parents.
Many dealt with those emotions by doing something about them.
The Rev. Donald Himmelman, of First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fort Lauderdale, led a prayer for "all dysfunctional families and the children in those families."
The Rev. W.F. Washington, of Golden Heights Church of Christ in Fort Lauderdale, spoke more specifically.
Washington prayed for the South Carolina mother accused of killing her two sons. And he prayed for the "coming together" of blacks and whites in South Carolina, who were at odds because the woman said a black man abducted the children.
During the regular worship service at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton, the Rev. Paul L'Herrou lighted white candles for all the children, while his wife, the Rev. Sylvia Howe, whispered the names:
Kayla Basante, 9 months old, of Royal Palm Beach. Dayton Allen Boykin, 4 months old, of Royal Palm Beach. Christina Holt, 7, of Singer Island in Riviera Beach. Michael Smith, 3, and brother, Alex, 14 months old, of Union, S.C.
Weeks ago, L'Herrou had settled on a subject for his sermon: "Bang-Bang, You're Dead: The Marketing of Violence."The sermon took on extra meaning on Sunday.
"In recent days, we've been confronted and saddened by these deaths - concealed as reports of child abductions," L'Herrou said. "We remember those times when we have come dangerously close to harming our own children."
During the annual family gathering on Sunday with deacons at Lakeview Baptist Church in Delray Beach, several couples remembered those times, too.
"I knew people would bring it up," said Ken Cann, the church's minister of music. "There was a common [theme): `So many times we don't want to bother people with our problems.' Well, we wanted to bring across this message: The time is now."
At Spanish River Church of Boca Raton, the Rev. David Nicholas' already scheduled a sermon on the Beatitudes of Mercy and Righteousness took on special meaning.
"When all of this attention was being paid [to Susan Smith of South Carolina), I thought of all the compassion that had come to her when people thought her children had been abducted," Nicholas told his Presbyterian congregation. "Then, when [police said) she murdered her children, that compassion turned to cries for justice."
Yet, the concepts are not mutually exclusive, said Howe, of the Unitarian church.
"It's not either-or. It's both-and," Howe said. "What was done [to these five children) was wrong and tragic, yes. But we also have to have compassion for a parent who was so distraught that they would do this."
The Rev. Denzil Southwood-Smith, of Melrose Park United Methodist Church in Fort Lauderdale, agreed.
He recalled what Jesus said to a crowd that wanted to kill a prostitute.
"It's very easy to throw the stone," Southwood-Smith said. "But the Christian attitude should be to hate the sin, not the sinner."