Christina's Story: Newspaper Articles

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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.

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*In Loving Memory Of* Christina Diane Holt 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.

Zile Lawyer: Toss Evidence Of Blood Found in Apartment (11/18/94)
Prosecutors Seek Death For Ziles (11/19/94)
State Will Seek Death For Ziles (11/19/94)
Rubin Wants County To Pay Tab For Pauline Zile (11/19/94)
State To Seek Electric Chair in Christina's Death (11/19/94)
Seeds Of Destruction (11/20/94)
Mothers Perceived Differently (11/20/94)
Association Fosters Care For Children (11/20/94)
Front (11/20/94)
No Dismissal Of Justice (11/21/94)

ZILE LAWYER: TOSS EVIDENCE OF BLOOD FOUND IN APARTMENT
Miami Herald, The (FL)
November 18, 1994
Author: DAVID KIDWELL Herald Staff Writer

With the confession of accused child killer John Zile already facing a court challenge, his defense attorneys now plan to attack the discovery of blood stains in his home.
The blood -- found by Broward Sheriff's Office detectives as they searched the apartment for hair samples and fingerprints of Zile's missing 7-year-old stepdaughter -- transformed what had been a child abduction case into a murder investigation.

Iola Mosley, the assistant public defender who represents Zile in the murder of Christina Holt, said Thursday the blood should be thrown out because police did not have legal permission or authority to look for it.

At issue is whether the consent Zile gave to search his apartment was improperly expanded to include spraying a chemical that makes otherwise invisible traces of blood glow. Mosley said she will ask Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp to exclude the blood as evidence at Zile's trial.

"It's like a link in a chain of events," Mosley said. "If one of those links dissolves away, then it brings into question the strength of the whole chain."

But the 25-year veteran forensics detective who conducted the search at the Ziles' Riviera Beach motel apartment said this week that the charge is "ridiculous" and everything about the search was legal and proper.

"We had those people's permission to be there looking for any evidence we could find," said BSO Detective Bob Foley. "We didn't need a search warrant."

Mosley said she also will file motions to throw out Zile's Oct. 27 confession and any evidence from it, including the subsequent discovery of Christina's body. Zile asked for, but did not receive counsel before he confessed.

The loss of such evidence could cripple the prosecution's case and force a deal with Zile's wife in exchange for her testimony, legal experts say.

Pauline Zile, 24, who said she witnessed the beating death and then helped concoct an elaborate tale of child abduction, also is charged with first-degree murder. Her arraignment is set for today.

Several motions will be argued today, including a request by Mosley to have Christina's body and tissue samples preserved so defense teams can conduct their own tests. Mosley said she may also request the two murder trials be separated.

John Zile, 32, was arraigned Monday.

The blood stains were found in the family's apartment on Oct. 24, two days after Pauline Zile told Broward deputies that Christina had been abducted from a restroom at the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop. Christina had been dead and buried for more than a month.

As part of their search, Broward detectives asked the Ziles if they could collect Christina's fingerprints and hair samples to use for comparison. Both Pauline and John Zile agreed.

After the blood stains were found, the Riviera Beach Police Department, in whose jurisdiction the crime occurred, took over the case.

There was tension between the two departments from the beginning. Accounts of the search, and what ended it, differ.

Foley said he noticed a small amount of blood on Christina's blue jeans and mattress. He tested the stains using a drop of the chemical Phenolphathalein.

Legal experts say Foley's investigation was proper to this point because the blood was in plain view. But what Foley did next raises a question.

"I decided to go over it again with Luminol," Foley said. "I wanted to double check it. I also wanted to see if I could tell where those blood stains originated."

Luminol, applied in a mist with a spray bottle, can locate blood that has been cleaned from walls or floors. According to forensics experts, it is no more accurate than Phenolphathalein.

"It just brings up blood in areas where you can't see it," Foley said.

Foley said some of the spray got on the wall and floor. "Up to that point, I had just happened upon everything," he said. "There was nothing accusatory about our search at all. But when I saw how much blood was there, I knew something out of the ordinary had occurred in that apartment.

"That's when I knew we had enough blood in that apartment that something was wrong," said Foley, who because of the Zile case had delayed a trip to accept a lifetime achievement award
from the Florida chapter of the International Association of Identifiers.

Foley said he stopped the consent search, locked up the apartment and contacted Riviera Beach police to obtain a search warrant necessary to begin a criminal investigation. "I had found enough probable cause," he said.

Riviera Beach detective Ed Brochu and Lt. David Harris offered a different account shortly after the arrests.

Brochu's written report says the Ziles signed a "consent to search form . . . for hair samples or fingerprints of Christina Holt."

"That's what they (Broward detectives) told us," Brochu said Thursday. "The problem is I've yet to see any of their reports. This case has been going on a month, and I haven't seen any of their work product. We can't figure out what they were doing here without us in the first place."

Said Foley: "Don't believe anything Riviera Beach tells you. Riviera Beach was upset they weren't in on this from the beginning."

Investigators from both departments returned the next day with a search warrant.

Mosley questions why "suddenly we have people in that apartment spraying Luminol, when it clearly wasn't mentioned in any search warrant or consent.

"Why didn't they stop and get a search warrant when they saw the blood?" Mosley said. "There certainly wasn't any hurry at that point. It wasn't like my client was going to come in and start cleaning things up."

PROSECUTORS SEEK DEATH FOR ZILES
The Palm Beach Post
November 19, 1994
Author: CHRISTINE STAPLETON
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

John and Pauline Zile will face their worst fear - Florida's electric chair - if convicted of first-degree murder.

Assistant State Attorney Scott Cupp announced Friday that prosecutors decided this week to seek the death penalty against the couple, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Pauline Zile's daughter, Christina Holt.
``Under the circumstances of what's happened so far, it doesn't surprise me at all,'' said Ellis Rubin, Pauline Zile's attorney. ``It shocks my sense of justice.''

At a Nov. 3 news conference, Rubin said John Zile tormented his wife with the threat of the death penalty after he stashed the 7-year-old girl's body in a closet for several days, then buried her behind a shopping center in Tequesta.

``Every day `the electric chair' were the three magic words that kept her in line,'' Rubin told reporters. The couple, who glanced at each other occasionally in court Friday, showed no emotion when Cupp discussed the death penalty.

The couple's trial is scheduled for March 27.

A ``death penalty committee'' made up of 10 prosecutors and State Attorney Barry Krischer voted to seek the death penalty against the Ziles. Michael Edmondson, spokesman for the office, declined to comment on the vote or the evidence that the committee considered in reaching its decision.

The committee used the same instructions a jury will be given to decide whether to recommend a life sentence or death, Edmondson said. Among the 11 aggravating circumstances a jury can consider: a prior violent felony conviction; killing a police officer or public official; murders that create a great risk to others or occur during an escape attempt; and murders that are cold, calculated and premeditated.

But most aggravating circumstances don't fit the Ziles. If the Ziles are convicted of first-degree murder, prosecutors probably will argue that the crime was ``heinous, atrocious and cruel.''

Under the law, the kinds of crimes that juries should consider heinous, atrocious and cruel are those ``accompanied by additional acts that show that the crime was conscienceless or pitiless and was unnecessarily torturous.''

Defense attorneys can present mitigating circumstances in an effort to persuade the jury to recommend a life sentence without parole for 25 years. Juries must consider whether the murderer was ``under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance'' or ``under the substantial domination of another person.''

The murderer's age, character or ``any other circumstances of the offense'' also must be considered by the jury. Rubin has already laid the groundwork for a battered-spouse, child abuse defense, describing John Zile as a domineering husband and Pauline Zile as an abused child.

``No mother just stands there and allows her children to be murdered in cold blood,'' Rubin recently told reporters at a news conference in which he outlined his defense strategy.

Also Friday, Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp refused to dismiss the indictments against the couple and indicated he would not disqualify Krischer's office from handling the case. The defense had accused Krischer of prosecutorial misconduct for talking to the media and overstepping his role as prosecutor in the investigation.

Rapp strongly urged attorneys not to talk to reporters and hinted that he would impose a gag order if necessary.

The judge granted a request by John Zile's attorneys to preserve Christina's body so defense experts could conduct another autopsy. Rapp also ordered the Ziles to give hair samples to investigators.

The Ziles remain in custody at the Palm Beach County Jail, segregated from other inmates who frequently heckle the couple with threats.

AT A GLANCE

Aggravating circumstances used to persuade a jury to impose the death penalty:

The murder was heinous, atrocious and cruel. Heinous means `extremely wicked and shockingly evil.' Atrocious means `outrageously wicked and vile.' Cruel means `designed to inflict a high degree of pain, with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others.'

The murder was cold, calculated and premeditated without `any moral or legal justification.'

Mitigating circumstances used to persuade a jury to impose a life sentence:

The murderer has no significant criminal record.

The murderer was suffering from an `extreme mental or emotional disturbance.'

The murderer was an accomplice whose role was minor.

The murderer was under `the domination of another.'

STATE WILL SEEK DEATH FOR ZILES
DECISION MADE BY PROSECUTION PANEL
Sun-Sentinel
November 19, 1994
Author: MIKE FOLKS Staff Writer

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for John and Pauline Zile if they are convicted in the killing of Pauline's 7-year-old daughter, Christina Holt, the State Attorney's Office said on Friday.

Public outrage over the case did not play a role in the decision to seek the maximum penalty for first-degree murder, said Mike Edmondson, spokesman for Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer.

"The only discussion focused around the mitigating and aggravating factors and the legal basis for our office to seek the death penalty," Edmondson said.

Edmondson said the Capital Felony Review Committee, composed of 10 experienced prosecutors in Krischer's office, voted to seek the death penalty.

Prosecutors have said they will seek convictions under the state's felony murder statute, which allows the state to ask for the electric chair in a killing if the death occurs during a felony.

In this case, prosecutors say Christina was killed as a result of felony child abuse when John Zile beat the 44-pound girl and tried to muffle her screams as Pauline Zile watched.

John and Pauline Zile each face charges of first-degree murder and four counts of aggravated child abuse. John Zile, 32, has confessed that on Sept. 16, he beat Christina, and she fell into convulsions and died. Pauline Zile, 24, told police she watched but did nothing to help her daughter.

The Ziles were seated at opposite ends of a jury box in the West Palm Beach courtroom when the announcement was made to seek the death penalty against them.

Pauline Zile glared at her husband. John Zile simply looked down at the floor.

After hearing that Pauline Zile faced the electric chair, defense attorney Ellis Rubin said: "It doesn't surprise me. It shocks my sense of justice."

John Zile's public defenders said nothing as they left the courtroom.

The death penalty announcement came during Pauline Zile's arraignment. A plea of not guilty was entered for her.

Before she was arraigned, her defense attorney argued to Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp that the indictments against her should be dismissed, based on statements Krischer made to the media before the Ziles were indicted on Nov. 10.

Then, in a surprise move, Rubin withdrew a motion he filed on Wednesday that accused Krischer of prosecutorial misconduct, saying it was filed mistakenly.

In the motion, Rubin maintained that Krischer was present when the Ziles gave statements to police on Oct. 27 and should be removed from the case because he could be called as a witness. Rubin also argued that Krischer had used the grand jury as an investigative tool to obtain indictments against Pauline Zile.

"I can understand why he'd want to withdraw it," Cupp said, calling the motion "bogus and a sham."

Rubin cut Cupp short, saying, "Now, he wants to get in more insults."

Cupp angrily chastised Rubin for creating even more news coverage by making such allegations in court filings. "Now with his tail between his legs, he's withdrawing the motion," Cupp said.

Judge Rapp cut off the arguing between Cupp and Rubin, then denied the motion to dismiss the indictments and ruled there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct.

Rapp then asked if the Ziles would be tried together. Rubin responded: "Not if I can help it."

But Cupp said the state intended to try them both at the same time. Rapp set a March 27 trial date and scheduled a bail hearing for Pauline Zile for Nov. 29.

At the end of Friday's hearing, Rapp stopped short of issuing a gag order, but he cautioned attorneys on both sides to refrain from talking to reporters about the case.

Also in Friday's hearing, defense attorneys requested that Christina's decomposing body, and any evidence taken from it, be preserved to allow for a defense pediatric pathologist from Minnesota to conduct tests.

As the request was made, the Ziles hung their heads and shifted nervously in their seats.

The child's body remains at the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office and has yet to be released to relatives in Maryland for burial. The judge ruled the tests must be conducted within the next 10 days.

RUBIN WANTS COUNTY TO PAY TAB FOR PAULINE ZILE
Sun-Sentinel
November 19, 1994
Author: MIKE FOLKS and STEPHANIE SMITH Staff Writers

Miami lawyer Ellis Rubin wants Palm Beach County taxpayers to foot the bill for his legal work defending a woman accused of killing her daughter.

Rubin on Friday asked a judge to declare Pauline Zile indigent so her legal defense could be covered by the county.
Zile, 24, and her husband each face charges of first-degree murder and four counts of aggravated child abuse in connection with the death of her daughter, Christina Holt, 7.

Rubin took the case late last month. At the time, Rubin said he was being paid a flat fee by Paula Yingling of Jensen Beach, Pauline Zile's mother. He declined to say what the fee was.

On Friday, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp delayed ruling on Pauline Zile's indigency. He scheduled a hearing for Nov. 29, when the Palm Beach County Attorney's Office is expected to oppose paying for Zile's defense.

Assistant County Attorney Cory Ciklin has said he would oppose Rubin's appointment at county taxpayers' expense because the job should go to the next local lawyer on the court-appointment rotation.

Normally, an indigent defendant would be represented by the Public Defender's Office. In this case, public defenders have been appointed for John Zile.

Because John Zile and his wife may have competing interests in the outcome of the case, the same office cannot also defend Pauline Zile.

When the Public Defender's Office cannot represent an indigent defendant because of conflicts of interest, the legal work goes to the next lawyer on the rotation for court appointments.

The pay for court appointments in capital cases is $100 an hour. Death penalty cases, such as the Ziles' case, usually require extensive work and typically run up bills of about $100,000.

STATE TO SEEK ELECTRIC CHAIR IN CHRISTINA'S DEATH
Miami Herald, The (FL)
November 19, 1994
Author: JUDY PLUNKETT EVANS Herald Staff Writer

The Palm Beach County state attorney will seek the death penalty in the trial of the mother and stepfather of 7-year-old Christina Holt, who are charged with killing the little girl, prosecutors announced Friday.
The Ziles are each charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in Christina's death Sept. 16. A panel of 10 prosecutors routinely reviews first-degree murder cases and makes a decision about whether to pursue the death penalty. That panel decided on Wednesday to seek the most severe punishment for the Ziles, State Attorney spokesman Mike Edmondson said Friday.

Edmondson said the panel made its decision based on legal reasons, which he would not discuss. He said public pressure did not influence the decision.

Attorneys for the Ziles had no comment on the decision.

During Friday's hearing, Palm Beach Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp, who will hear the case next spring, asked attorneys to stop talking to the media. Prosecutors suggested that Rapp issue a gag order, and defense attorneys agreed. Rapp said he will consider a gag order at a later hearing.

"I certainly think it would be helpful in this case if the lawyers did less talking to the press," Rapp said.

The judge's comments came after Ellis Rubin, attorney for Pauline Zile, tried to get the state attorney disqualified
because of comments he made to the media. Rubin argued that when Barry Krischer told the media that Pauline Zile failed a lie detector test and that people had called his office to thank him for having her arrested, he prejudiced the public against his client and influenced the grand jury to return indictments last week. Rubin asked Rapp to throw out the indictments.

Rapp said he doesn't believe Krischer's comments influenced the grand jury, and he denied Rubin's request. Rapp agreed to let an expert working for John Zile's defense team examine Christina's body at the medical examiner's office. Defense attorneys are hoping to find evidence that something other than the beating, such as a seizure, led to Christina's death.

John Zile has told police he beat Christina until she
went into convulsions and died. He then hid her body in a closet for four days and buried her behind a Tequesta Kmart before concocting an abduction tale to cover up the death. When attorneys discussed the condition of Christina's body in court on Friday, Zile looked at the floor and grimaced.

After the hearing, when asked if hearing about Christina's body upset him, John Zile replied: "Yes, it does."

Rapp set the Ziles' trial for March 27. Assistant State Attorney Scott Cupp said he plans to prosecute the husband and wife together, but Rubin said he wants the Ziles tried separately. Attorneys for John Zile also have said they might seek to separate the trials. Rapp said he will rule on that issue later.

Rapp also set a hearing for Nov. 28, when he will take up the issue of whether Pauline Zile should be released from jail on bond. Both Ziles have been held without bond since their arrests.

Rapp also said he will consider whether Pauline Zile is indigent and entitled to have taxpayers pay for Rubin's services. John Zile is being represented by the public defender's office.

SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION
The Palm Beach Post
November 20, 1994
Author: CANDY HATCHER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Someday, someone will say a prayer over Christina Holt's little coffin. Her body will be put to rest. Seven years of discord over a brown-eyed bundle of energy - where she should live, and now, how she should be buried - will finally be ended.

But the funeral for this 7-year-old, who was beaten and then suffocated two months ago in a Singer Island apartment, isn't likely to end the divisiveness, abuse and irresponsibility that have distinguished many of her relatives - on every side, in Maryland and Florida - for generations.
Christina's father is angry with his mother, Christina's grandmother, for bringing the child to Florida. Her grandmother and great-grandmother no longer speak. Her mother's family is a shambles of broken homes and battered women. Her stepfather's parents haven't wanted anything to do with their alcoholic, job-hopping, out-of-control son since he was a teenager.

Since their teenage years, Christina's father, Frankie Holt, and her mother, Pauline Yingling Zile, have led wanderlust lives marked by out-of-wedlock pregnancies and financial problems. Christina's short-tempered stepfather, John Zile, abused drugs and alcohol and bounced in and out of jail. They formed a wrenching human troika: Three people with disturbing family traits who produced, neglected, abused and, eventually, destroyed a little girl.

In hindsight, the fate of Christina Holt was sealed when her paternal grandmother, Judy Holt, brought the child to Florida in June. Holt had asked for custody of the girl two years earlier, saying she wanted to give the child things she couldn't provide her own children.

Suddenly in May, she decided to take Christina to Florida to live with the child's mother and stepfather. The decision, still unexplained, caused a rift in Holt's family that continues today.

Dorothy Money, Christina's great-grandmother and Holt's mother, had custody of Christina for the five years before Holt took the child. Money and her husband, Ray, say they wanted Christina back, that she should never have been sent to Florida, that even John Zile's mother warned against it.

``Do not allow Christina to go to Florida,'' the Moneys recalled Patricia Zile telling them just before Christina left. Zile didn't elaborate, the Moneys said. She simply warned that Christina ``would be going into a bad environment.''

Holt refused to listen, and Money no longer speaks to her daughter. ``When she took her down to Florida and dragged her off, I told her I didn't want no part of anybody who would give away a little girl,'' Money said. ``I told her she was a cold, cruel, heartless person. She didn't want no part of being a grandmother.''

The families, who disagreed over who should raise Christina, now disagree over her funeral arrangements, still incomplete because her body remains at the Palm Beach County medical examiner's office.

Money would have liked a funeral at Poolesville Baptist Church, led by the minister there, a man Christina called ``Peach'' because she couldn't pronounce ``preach.'' Ray Money said the family planned to pay for her funeral and burial with a $10,000 life insurance policy they had on the child.

But Holt, who legally had custody of Christina when she died and therefore controls the girl's burial, wants the funeral at her church, Memorial United Methodist in Poolesville. A trust account has been set up to help with funeral expenses.

GOING FROM HOME TO HOME

\ Holt hasn't spoken publicly about Christina since the child's body was found in a grave behind a Tequesta Kmart Oct. 28. Palm Beach Post reporters went to her townhouse at least three times seeking comment in the past three weeks.

Holt's son, Frankie Jr., told another reporter that he doesn't know why his mother was adamant about taking Christina to Florida. He said he was never financially able to provide a stable home for his daughter, that he wanted to gain custody of Christina but didn't have the money to contest his mother in court.

Today, the Maryland sheet metal mechanic, who has moved at least four times in the past two years, has two children in West Virginia and a third on the way with his fiancee.

Frankie Holt gave Christina, his firstborn, to his grandmother when the baby was a few months old. Dorothy Money, now 70, and Ray, said they loved and cared for Christina for five years. Some say they spoiled her.

The child's mother, Pauline Zile, visited once a year. Things did not go smoothly. Ray Money recalled a visit when Christina was about 4.

``She came here, stayed 15 minutes and said, `You can have Christina. Keep her and maybe one day you can adopt her.' ''

Reluctantly in 1992, because Dorothy Money was having problems with arthritis and a fractured hip, and because Judy Holt had asked for custody, they relinquished the girl. They said they always hoped they would get her back.

When Judy Holt returned to Maryland in June, Dorothy Money called and asked for Christina's address and phone number in Florida. The Moneys wanted to tell Christina that she could come back and live with them if she wasn't happy, Ray Money said. Holt wouldn't tell.

Now, he said, they are haunted by what they know of Christina's last few months. Dorothy Money ``thinks about her all the time.'' A doctor has prescribed medicine to help her sleep. Ray Money misses taking Christina on errands in his white pickup. He misses hearing her yell from the monkey bars, ``Ray-Ray! Look at me!''

Not too long before Christina went to live with Judy Holt, the Moneys bought the child a rabbit. Christina named it Teddy, and it lived at the Moneys' house even after she moved.

In October, Ray Money said - the same month Christina's body was found - Teddy died.

Christina is but one of many victims in a long, documented history of abuse on her mother's side.

Maternal grandmother Paula Yingling married when she was 20 and pregnant. She had three children in five years. ``I was still a baby trying to raise babies,'' she said last month.

In 1974, the family bought a two-story, Cape-Cod style house in Kensington, Md., and everything seemed rosy, neighbors said. Less than two years later, Paula Yingling left her family.

She met Chip Howell, a construction worker and former Marine, in a Washington Laundromat, began dating him and eventually moved to Jensen Beach with him. They bought a house. She got a job waiting tables.

Early this year, Paula Yingling called the police. Howell had smacked her in the face, hit the back of her head, pushed her against the wall and held a knife to her throat, she told police. He'd had seven or eight six-packs of beer that day, she said.

Police found Howell's car resting on a tree stump in the front yard. Staggering around with a beer in his hands, Howell told police he was ready to die, but he was going to kill cops first. He said he planned to be the biggest killer in U.S. history. Howell, who Ying-ling said had been treated at a veterans hospital for drug, alcohol and psychological problems, was taken to a psychiatric hospital.

Yingling refused to pursue charges. But she called police again in September to report that Howell had threatened her. She said Howell had been off booze for eight months, but that he was drinking again. He had not taken his medication, she said.

Howell says he's a recovering alcoholic, and that the two incidents this year with police are isolated - in one case the result of combining alcohol and painkillers prescribed for colon cancer. ``The only thing dysfunctional about this family is my alcoholism,'' he said. ``Paula doesn't drink. She's basically taken care of me.''

The family she left behind 18 years earlier had fallen apart swiftly. Her husband, Noel David Ying-ling, had been devastated by his wife's desertion and couldn't hold his family together. Yingling, a former president of the Lions Club, neighbors said, lost his computer job and, eventually, the house.

Pauline, an outgoing child called ``Peaches'' who was 6 when her mother left, tried to be a little mother to her 4-year-old sister, neighbors said. But she had no role model, no discipline, no direction.

``They just had a terrible childhood with their mother leaving and their father,'' said Donna Bale who, with her husband, took the girls in when Pauline was 9. Their father ``just didn't have any concern at all for any of the children,'' she said. ``All of the kids had to make their own way. They had no mother and no father.''

Bale separated from her husband. Pauline stayed with him, and Dana went with Bale. Relatives and neighbors say Pauline was unmanageable by the time she was 14. She stayed out late, skipped school, drank, took drugs.

``There were a lot of really deep problems with the girls,'' Bale said. They were susceptible to ``anybody that would give them any love or attention.''

COMPLAINTS OF ABUSE

\ In 1986, when Pauline was 16, she got pregnant. She married Frankie Holt, dropped out of 10th grade, and on May 23, 1987, delivered Christina Diane Holt. By fall, she had moved to Florida, away from her husband and infant, and into her mother's Jensen Beach house. She began waitressing at night and going to the beach during the day. In November 1987, she moved into an apartment with a Maryland man she'd met at the beach, John Zile.

Zile, Pauline says now, controlled her, inflicting ``mental torture'' and psychological abuse.

Dana Yingling, Pauline's younger sister, also has complained of domestic abuse. She moved in with her boyfriend in 1991, when she was 19, and had a daughter the following year. Less than a year later, the boyfriend walked out. Dana Yingling filed court papers saying he had ``violently abused (her) . . . on many occasions,'' and that one morning he had hit her with a telephone and attacked her while she had the baby in her arms.

The man, who is unemployed and is on probation for a drug conviction, has been ordered to pay child support but is more than $5,000 behind, court records show.

Pauline and Dana's older brother, Matthew, 26, is a Martin County fire-medic. His superiors describe him as capable, hardworking and dependable.

At 15, Matt Yingling had come to Florida to live with his mother and Howell. Howell said he found the teenager a job working construction, and when the boy was 17 gave him a credit card with a $300 limit. At 18, Howell said, he required Matt to pay rent. Matt Yingling learned to be responsible.

The Yingling siblings don't get in touch often, but in June, Bale said, Pauline wrote Dana that Christina was with her in Florida. The letter said Christina was not happy to be there, and that the child was spoiled.

Noel Yingling, who still lives in Maryland but has kept in touch with Pauline by phone and through letters, said the Zile family had a tough adjustment when Christina arrived because the girl was used to being an only child.

Paula Yingling blamed Judy Holt for dropping Christina on the Ziles' doorstep unexpectedly, and putting stress and financial hardship on a family that already had its share of both.

Was Christina unhappy in Florida? Paula Yingling, who for the last three months of Christina's life lived less than an hour's drive away, couldn't say. She never met the child.

John Zile had met Christina before, on a visit to Maryland several years ago. He had a child of his own, by then, with his new wife, Pauline, and no idea that the spirited preschooler would live with him someday.

Zile hadn't been in trouble with the law for six years, and he was trying to provide for his family.

He'd had a rocky youth, had been estranged from his parents since he was a teenager. He'd been a delinquent kid, sentenced to shelter homes for months at a time. He'd dropped out of high school in Rockville, Md., in ninth grade and held a series of short-term jobs, mostly as a cook. Alcohol had been his constant companion. Friends? Only people like him, who enjoyed getting high, hanging out, ``being rowdy.''

In 1983, when he was 20, he was arrested with two others and charged with burglary. They stole a rifle, 51 pieces of silver flatware and a few other items they found in the house. And, according to Zile's public defender at the time, James Davitt, they took what they had come for: a gallon of booze. The trio, Davitt said, ``went down the street and got blitzed.''

Zile was placed on probation, ordered to attend drug and alcohol counseling and to pay $85 court costs. He didn't go to counseling, didn't report to his probation officer, moved several times without telling her, and paid only $10 in court costs, court records show. He couldn't hold a job ``because he was never sober long enough,'' Davitt said. After Zile was charged with drunken driving, he went to jail for violating his probation.

During the four years Davitt was involved in the case, he said he never met Zile's parents.

In an interview with corrections officials in 1986, Zile depicted himself as ``previously socially deviant in his thinking and as having poor impulse control . . . worsened by his drug and alcohol abuse and his association with peers.'' Zile didn't appear ``to see much need for change to avoid future arrests,'' the corrections report said.

But that's not what Zile told the judge. ``I have a problem with accepting responsibility for myself and my actions,'' he wrote just before being sentenced for violating probation. ``I know I am a much better person than I have shown to the court. . . . This is my first time being incarcerated as an adult and I have seen that this is not where I want to be. Being incarcerated has shown me some of the hardened people in this community, and I need the chance to show that I am not one of them. I really want to help myself and get on with my life.''

Zile served nine months in jail and was again placed on probation. In April 1987, he quit his job at an auto body shop without notice and moved to Florida, his eighth address since his arrest four years earlier.

By Thanksgiving, he was under arrest again, this time in Martin County for drinking beer at a park after hours. He'd just moved into an apartment with Pauline Yingling, a woman who had grown up a few miles from Rockville and who, like him, had a tough time of it.

PLEA FOR LENIENCY

\ Love at first sight, Pauline Yingling said at the time. She wrote Zile's judge in Maryland, asking for leniency when Zile was sentenced for violating probation a second time.

Zile was back in Florida by February 1988. The couple produced a child, then married and had another. And then Pauline got pregnant again.

A few months later, the family got another unexpected addition: 7-year-old Christina Holt.

Her arrival in Florida was earlier than anticipated. Everyone said so. Something must have happened, they said, and Judy Holt drove Christina down two months early. Holt's explanation, as the Moneys recall: ``She should be with her birth mother.''

Zile told The Miami Herald that Christina said she'd been sexually abused when she was living in Maryland. Police there say they're not investigating that claim, that they have no evidence that Christina was a victim in Maryland, and no interest in taking the word of an accused murderer.

But Zile said Christina knew far too much about sex. He told The Herald that she began playing sexual games with Zile's little boys, 5 and 3.

Zile got angry, and Christina kept soiling her pants, and that's when he beat her, he told police. He hit her in the face. She went into convulsions. He put a cloth over her mouth. She died.

He told police he put the body in a closet and buried the girl four days later. Pauline, Zile said, watched the beating, but did nothing. Two weeks later, she gave birth to her fourth child and gave it up for adoption.

Then she helped her husband concoct an elaborate hoax. Clutching a doll and crying, Pauline Zile told a shocked and sympathetic public on Oct. 22 how Christina had been abducted from a flea market. The couple's story fell apart within a week, and both have been charged with Christina's murder.

Ray Money gets mad every time he thinks about what happened to Christina. ``Them people are sick,'' he said. ``They should be put away. They should be put away the same way Christina was - beat to death. I would hang him in a tree and take a club and beat him. Slowly. The way they did her.

``I want to know the answer to one thing,'' Money said. ``Why? I want to know why them two people did that.''

CHRISTINA'S FAMILY TREE

* Pauline Yingling marries Frank Holt Dec. 27, 1986. Christina is born May 23, 1987.

* When she is 5 months old, Christina is sent to live wih Dorothy and Raymond Money, her great-grandparents on her father's side, in Poolesville, Md.

* Pauline and Frank divorce in July 1989.

* Christina starts living with Frank's mother, Judy Holt, in August 1992.

* In June, Judy Holt delivers Christina to Pauline, who is now married to Zile. The couple also has two yound boys, Chad, 3, and Daniel, 5.

Staff writers Alan Snel, Shannon Johnson and Carolyn Fretz and staff librarians Michelle Quigley and Fred Schmidt contributed to this report.

MOTHERS PERCEIVED DIFFERENTLY
ZILE SCORNED WHILE BOYKIN LARGELY IGNORED
Sun-Sentinel
November 20, 1994
Author: PHIL DAVIS Staff Writer

To some, the added attention in the Zile case stems from Pauline Zile's early image as a tearful, helpless mother hoping for the safe return of her kidnapped daughter.

At a cafe near the courthouse, faces pressed against a plate glass window as a crowd watched South Florida's most hated mother finish a quick breakfast.
"How can you eat?" a woman screamed at Pauline Zile, who is now in jail facing murder charges in the death of her daughter, Christina Holt, 7. A throng of television camera crews pushed in to capture the scene.

"Child killer," another person shouted.

By comparison, Clover Boykin, Zile's recreation-time companion in the Palm Beach County Jail, waits for her trial on murder charges in relative obscurity. Boykin, 19, is accused of choking two babies - including her son.

"The media has kept [Pauline) in the forefront and Clover sort of blended into the background," said Lt. Chris Kneisley, a Palm Beach County Jail official who is responsible for keeping both women safe - from themselves and from other inmates.

How is it that two women charged with similar crimes could be viewed so differently?

Dr. Sanford Jacobson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami, said the added attention in the Zile case stems from Pauline Zile's early image as a tearful, helpless mother hoping for the safe return of her kidnapped daughter. The reality, police said, is Zile did nothing while her husband, John, pounded Christina and said nothing while her daughter's corpse sat in a closet for four days.

Boykin is accused of choking her 5-month-old son as he lay on the bed next to her early on Oct. 27. She also admitted to sheriff's detectives that she wrapped a blanket around a 9-month-old girl's neck and choked her, too. When Boykin cried, it was only in front of family and friends.

By contrast, Pauline Zile's tears were visible to millions of people who were mesmerized by the little girl's smiling picture and sympathetic to the 24-year-old mother. Sympathy turned to outrage when police said Zile's tears were false. Christina had been dead and buried in a hidden, unmarked grave for a month.

"My own gut feeling is that it's the position they took," Jacobson said of the Ziles. "They said, `Look, woe is me, I'm suffering' and then there was a total reversal of that situation. That makes people angry."

Pauline Zile's flamboyant attorney, Ellis Rubin, famous for his "I'm a victim" defenses, is another reason the case has achieved such a high profile. He defended convicted prostitute-turned-stripper Kathy Willets and said she sold sex as a treatment for nymphomania.

So far, many people haven't bought his portrait of Pauline Zile as a woman abused and domineered by her husband.

Strangely enough, jail officials think it is safe to allow John Zile brief sojourns outside his cell into the common area where he can watch television and mingle with other inmates. Boykin and Pauline Zile don't get that luxury - it might not be safe, Kneisley said.

Most of the threats made at the jail were directed at Pauline Zile, Kneisley said. No one has threatened Clover Boykin. "They are viewed as low," Jacobson said of prisoners accused of harming children. "You can rob, you can steal and you can fight, but if you mess with children there is a lower level of acceptance with other inmates."

Boykin's case broke quietly on a Saturday night when she confessed to choking her son, Dayton Boykin, on Oct. 27, police said. She also admitted killing Kayla Basante, daughter of a family friend, in November 1993. That slaying, thought to be an accident, went unnoticed for almost a year.

The public never had a chance to hope those children were alive. The pictures of Dayton and Kayla were of children who were beyond help.

Boykin has maintained silence about the charges against her.

The media also shares blame.

"It's how they were profiled," Jacobson said. "The Zile case got a lot more attention, right? Obviously, if people don't know much about it they can't get too worked up about it."

Sun-Sentinel stories about the Ziles outnumber stories about Boykin 3-to-1 - and that includes coverage that mentioned both women in the same story. While the Zile case dominated television coverage and was front-page news from Stuart to Miami, Boykin's case remained only a local story.

Other South Florida newspapers gave the Boykin case even less coverage. The ratio of Zile-Boykin stories in The Miami Herald, for example, was more than 8-to-1, with 41 stories on the Zile case. The Palm Beach Post's play of Zile vs. Boykin stories was more than 4-to-1.

Even Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman accused of drowning her boys and making up an abduction story that caught national attention, has received more local media coverage than Boykin.

"These stories seem to drive everything else off the front page," said Dr. Paul Steinle, who runs the journalism department at the University of Miami's school of communication. "We're locking onto these personal tragedies and blowing them out of proportion. The kind of coverage we've got is totally disproportionate to what it's worth.

"I'm not saying it shouldn't be reported. We just need to put it in perspective."

ASSOCIATION FOSTERS CARE FOR CHILDREN
VOLUNTEER PARENTS NEED TO BE COMMITTED TO YOUNGSTERS, NOT PERFECT
Sun-Sentinel
November 20, 1994
Author: SHERRI WINSTON Staff Writer

On the weekend before Christmas, there was a knock at the door of Marilyn and Tony Ramos.

A placement counselor from the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services needed a favor. The counselor asked the couple, already fostering one child, if they would take in another.
"It will only be for the weekend," the counselor said.

Seven years later, the child is still with the family and the Ramoses' are preparing to adopt.

"It's really a funny story," said Marilyn Ramos, who has two biological children, one adopted child and one foster child.

But Ramos, state president of the Foster Parent Association, says the need for more homes is less than funny.

"It's real important," Ramos said. "This is a way for the community to make a difference."

Since the deaths of Christina Holt, 7, and Dayton Boykin, 5 months, service agencies such as the Center for Children In Crisis, have been beseiged by calls from people wanting to know what they can do to help.

Even though neither Christina nor Dayton were in foster care programs, they were in at-risk, possibly abusive homes.

HRS says many other children in Palm Beach County and throughout the state remain at risk of abuse. Finding more foster families could reduce that risk. "Christina Holt is an example of the tragedy of abuse," said Beth Owen, HRS spokesperson. "We have those precious lives out there that need those special homes. Unfortunately, our need continues to grow."

HRS officials say the agency needs 75 more homes in the county for foster children. Foster parents sign a contract stating they will provide a temporary home for children until a permanent home for them can be arranged. The agency's records indicate that:

-- On average, 35 children a month need sheltering. The majority of those children are either less than 1 year old or 12 and older.

-- At least 60 percent of the children who need placement live north of Southern Boulevard.

-- There are 383 children in foster care; there are 201 licensed foster homes in the county.

"I think really that people don't give themselves enough credit," said Mary Frances Jones, a foster parent for 23 years. "Just try to make the commitment. Nobody is saying you have to be the perfect parent."

HRS agreed that being perfect is not as important as being committed. Becoming a foster parent begins with a phone call - 1-800-37-ADOPT.

"We send you a package of information, talk to you by phone and encourage you to take one of our classes."Owen said. "We also start the licensing process."

The licensing process includes FBI fingerprint checks, police background checks using the PALMS computer system as well as checks with local police where applicants live.

Information packages include educational handouts, an application form, a financial statement form, law enforcement release form and medical release form.

The Foster Parent Association can help potential foster parents understand and survive the paperwork and the process.

"One of the things we're trying to do now is to pair some of the ones who've been around for a while with some of the new foster parents," said Shirley Fitzgerald, president of the FPA and a foster parent since 1988. "That way if they need a service, they will know where to go."

Foster parents are required to take 10 weeks of training that cover the types of children who are in need of fostering, the types of services available and the types of problems that occur.

Fitzgerald, who fosters children with special needs, understands the hardships of caring for chldren who have endured too much tragedy.

"When they first brought her to me, they said she would not live past 30 days," she said of her adopted daughter. "Now the doctors call her the `miracle baby.' She's 7 years old. She's HIV positive."

Fitzgerald also has two biological children and two foster children. One of the foster children is HIV positive. Two years ago, a boy Fitzgerald had fostered for more than four years died. He, too, was HIV positive.

"I never look at the children and see death. My whole thing is I want to provide the very best for them in the experiences that they have here," Fitzgerald said. "My priorities changed completely once I came in contact with the HIV kids."

Although special needs children have a tremendous need for foster care, HRS and the Foster Parent Association urge people to recognize that there are many types of children waiting to be placed.

"Prospective foster parents have input into the type of child they will receive," Jones said. "If a person does not feel comfortable with teens, or whatever, HRS is sensitive to that."

FRONT
Miami Herald, The (FL)
November 20, 1994
Author: Herald Staff

* Ellis Rubin, attorney for Pauline Zile, has asked a court to declare her indigent for the purposes of court and investigative costs in connection with the charges of murder and aggravated child abuse of her daughter, 7-year-old Christina Holt. Zile's family is paying for Rubin's services. The Herald stated otherwise in an article Saturday.

NO DISMISSAL OF JUSTICE
The Palm Beach Post
November 21, 1994

Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp ruled correctly Friday when he denied attorney Ellis Rubin's motion to dismiss the first-degree murder indictment against Pauline Zile.

Mr. Rubin had argued that publicity surrounding the death of 7-year-old Christina Holt had prejudiced the grand jury against his client, whose defense - that she was a victim of abuse by her husband, John Zile - Mr. Rubin had loudly proclaimed in news conferences even before Ms. Zile had been arrested. Hearing Ellis Rubin criticize publicity is like getting a lecture on marital relations from Roseanne Arnold.
Several developments took place last week. We learned that the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office will seek the death penalty. We learned that the trial is scheduled to begin March 27. And we learned that Pauline Zile will ask county taxpayers to pay much of Mr. Rubin's bill because she has no money. That last point should be challenged by the county attorney's office. (If the Ziles are tried together, as prosecutors say they want to do, ethics rules prevent the public defender from representing both.)

But the undercurrent of Friday's hearing before Judge Rapp was the issue of publicity. Though he ruled against Mr. Rubin, Judge Rapp said, ``I think it would be helpful if the lawyers (for both sides) would not discuss details.'' It seems likely that the judge will impose a gag order, which would prohibit both lawyers and law enforcement officials from talking about the case to reporters. A hearing would have to be held, but neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys for the Ziles objected.

Given the circumstances of Christina Holt's death, and the simultaneous confession by a South Carolina woman to covering up the murder of her two children with a fake story, publicity is inevitable. But if defense attorneys try to use publicity as a reason to move the trial, Judge Rapp should refuse.

Palm Beach is a large and diverse county. There are enough potential jurors to find 12 who may know the facts of the case but have not made up their minds. Moving a trial like this one is expensive, and it should be done only if there is conclusive proof that an impartial jury cannot be seated. Since officers Stephen Lee Rollins and Glen Thurlow were acquitted in the beating death of Robert Jewett and William Kennedy Smith was also found innocent, Palm Beach County can render fair justic e on well-publicized cases.

Judge Rapp set a good tone by treating publicity as a potential problem to a fair trial, not an accepted deterrent.