Home --> Christina Holt's Story --> Christina Holt's Story: Newspaper Articles --> 1994 Page 4 Christina's Story
- Newspaper Articles PLEASE DO NOT COPY THE INFORMATION ON THIS SITE BEFORE ASKING. Thank you!
Christina Holt's
Hellish Last Hour (10/29/94) CHRISTINA HOLT'S
HELLISH LAST HOUR Christina Holt -- whose picture in the past week was distributed on 10,000 fliers and flashed countless times on television, whose mother had captivated South Florida with frantic pleas for her return -- has been dead and buried for more than a month. That's how long it took Zile, 32, and Christina's mother, Pauline Zile, 24, to concoct and carry out a scheme to cover the crime with an elaborate tale of child abduction from a restroom at the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop. They began telling their story last Saturday and finally gave up on it Thursday night when John Zile, charged with first- degree murder, led police to a vacant lot behind the Kmart in Tequesta and motioned to the little girl's grave. After more than 10 hours of interrogation, with Pauline already having confessed after failing a lie-detector test, John Zile caved in. "We had him in this room and he had decided not to say anything, to invoke his rights," said Lt. David Harris of the Riviera Beach police. "Then all the sudden he says, 'I think it's time to talk.' "He said he'd take us to the spot," Harris said. The parents' confessions were made public Friday. Even hardened homicide detectives were sickened by the details: Around midnight on Sept. 15, Zile was chastising Christina This further enraged Zile and he smacked her repeatedly on the buttocks and face. When the girl wouldn't stop crying, he covered her mouth with his hand and a towel. "The victim then looked at Mr. and Mrs. Zile, swayed back, started to go into a seizure and was choking," Riviera Beach Sgt. Ed Brochu wrote in his report. Zile then tried to revive the child, but she died within minutes. To revive her, Zile put her into a bathtub of cold water. It didn't work. "He stated that by looking at the situation their lives were over," the report said. Zile then hid the girl's body in the bedroom closet, covering her with a blanket and sheets. She lay there four days while he scouted for a place to bury her. Finally, Zile shrouded Christina in a colorful child's play tent, bags and a blue tarp. He taped up the bundle and buried her 5 1/2 feet deep behind Kmart. "He made a prayer and left," the report states. The girl's disappearance did not go unnoticed. Her second- grade teacher made repeated inquiries about her absences. And Judy Holt, the child's grandmother who had raised her the previous two years, kept calling for her. But the Ziles "had a few weeks to accept the fact the crime had taken place and concoct a plausible story," said Capt. Paul Lauria, supervisor of BSO's criminal investigations. So they concocted the kidnapping ruse, rehearsed it, and carried it out last Saturday, Harris said. The story rang hollow from the start. A witness had spotted Pauline Zile rehearsing her panic at the Swap Shop. Neither Pauline nor Christina showed up on security videotapes. And Broward Sheriff's Office investigators who went to their Singer Island motel apartment found blood on the girl's blue jeans, bed mattress, walls and floor. By 7 p.m. Thursday, after five hours of off-and-on interrogation and a lie detector test that indicated deception, Pauline caved in, tearfully laying out the whole story in exchange for limited immunity. "What the immunity means is that we cannot use any of the statements she made to us against her," said Barry Krischer, Palm Beach County state attorney. "If we can somehow establish a crime independent of her statements, she could still be charged." By 11:30 p.m. -- confronted with his wife's statements -- Zile broke down, admitted he beat the girl to death, and agreed to take detectives to her grave. Forensics investigators spent hours Friday sifting for evidence at the scene, while police used a backhoe to dig a trench around the grave. Around 11:15 a.m., a stretcher was lowered into the trench and a black body bag carrying Christina's remains was lifted out, loaded into a blue van and driven away for an autopsy at the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office. Matt Yingling, brother of Pauline Zile and a firefighter-emergency medical technician from Martin County, issued a statement at the Jensen Beach home where his mother had been staying: "I speak for the entire family. This is a tragedy and the whole family is affected." After her confession, his sister was allowed to leave the Riviera Beach police station at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday. John Zile was interviewed until 5 a.m. Friday before being booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on charges of first- degree murder and two counts of aggravated battery. Zile, who is being held without bond, will appear before a judge this morning to make a routine plea. Brochu, the lead detective, said Friday his team will continue investigating for weeks. They searched the couple's white Cadillac again Friday for a suicide note that Pauline told police John had written after he buried the child. "The note was supposed to describe where the body was in case he wasn't around to tell anyone," Harris said. "We haven't found any note. We're not sure it ever existed." And there's the shovel used to dig the grave. Zile told police he threw it into the Intracoastal Waterway on his way home. Police will dive for it. Krischer, the state attorney, said he has called a special session of the grand jury Monday. The panel will determine whether police have evidence to indict Pauline Zile for the death or abuse of Christina, Krischer said. Krischer said he plans to focus the grand jury hearing on felony murder, a form of first-degree murder. A person can be charged with felony murder if he or she was involved in a felony at the time the victim was killed. It does not matter who actually committed the murder. Child abuse is a felony and if Pauline Zile was involved in abusing Christina when the girl was killed, it is possible she could be charged with felony murder. To police, friends, and millions who watched the drama
unfold on TV, Pauline Zile was a consummate actress. Her grief seemed
genuine, even though her story began to unravel almost "She had all kinds of things to back it up," Broward sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal said. "We got her to go over it again and again and again." Details included: * The time Pauline and Christina left their apartment in Riviera Beach and when they arrived at the Swap Shop. * A half-empty juice bottle -- the reason for the dash to the bathroom after the hour-long drive. * An open, partially eaten bag of candy that Christina had been munching on during the trip. In her pleas, Pauline clutched her daughter's "favorite doll" and sobbed. "We learned from family members that her favorite doll, was not in fact, the one carried by Pauline," said Sgt. Dave Robshaw, Broward missing person detective. "We're not certain she even held it." But detectives noticed something odd about the way Zile talked about Christina. She kept using the past tense. "It concerned us," Robshaw said. "They had been cooperative. They had never missed an appointment. They did everything we asked them to do," Leljedal said. "There are a lot of people you might think are suspicious, but you can't interfere with their lives. You can't act until you have evidence." Christina, who was Pauline Zile's child by a previous marriage, had come to live with the Ziles in June. Police reports show that the girl attended school at Jupiter Farms Elementary School for only five days from Aug. 22 to the day of her death. The Sea Nymph apartments, the place Christina was killed, is an aging two-story white building with powder blue shutters not far from the Atlantic Ocean on Singer Island. The place attracts working-class couples looking to make ends meet, and to build a life in a home that's close to the water and relatively far from the high-crime stretch of Riviera Beach that's west of the Intracoastal Waterway. The Ziles' apartment remained sealed shut with red evidence tape Friday. It's a one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor, No. 3. Off-season, apartments at the Sea Nymph go for about $550 a month, neighbors said, though the rent skyrockets during the winter season. Posted outside the building Friday was a yellow sign. "Vacancy," it said. Herald staff writers Trish Power, Judy Plunkett Evans and Vicki Dowdy contributed to this report. WHY DID THIS HAPPEN? An unusual story, this, but the sketchy details known about Christina's seven years on this planet are not so unusual in America today. That makes Christina's individual tragedy part of America's larger, societal tragedy. Christina was the product of a teen pregnancy. Her paternal step great-grandmother took her in for five years, then sent Christina to her paternal grandmother. The grandmother then sent her off two years later -- this June -- to live with her mother. Meanwhile, the mother, living in poverty, had two other children and was pregnant with a fourth. There may have been good intentions along the way, but
who was thinking ahead, thinking of what would be best for this child
until maturity? Does not every child deserve foresight Those who survive Christina have themselves to answer to, and likely there is far more answering to be done than the public ever will know. Still, the raw outlines of this tragedy, and the many similar life histories involving other children, suggest that Americans are too unwilling to look at individual choices like adoption or community support of services for parents living on the edge. Adoption often is touted as the alternative to abortion. It's that, of course -- but it also should be viewed as a responsible choice when parents cannot care for a child. Christina's mother and stepfather reportedly made such a choice for their newborn. Millions of American families attempt to raise children in poverty. Little is offered in assistance from government, churches, and other institutions that would reduce the pressures that they face. Perhaps all of the help in the world wouldn't have saved Christina. Or perhaps some help would have. So now the courts may hold Walter John Zile or someone else responsible. Pauline Zile's responsibility may have been made murky by the limited immunity given to her. If she had a role and escapes full accountability, that would be a travesty. Responsibility and accountability here refer only to Christina's death. Sadly, no one will be held accountable or responsible for Christina's life.
The irony in Christina's death is this: In a state of transients and a region where many schools undergo a dizzying turnover of students each year, Jupiter Farms was an exceedingly stable and vigilant place -- a most unlikely cliff from which to fall and vanish forever. "We're a community school," said Principal David Horan. "We're the only building in this area that is not a single- family home. People who move here stay here." So when a student suddenly leaves, everyone takes notice. When Pauline Zile showed up to take her daughter off the school's rolls, the school's bureaucracy immediately cranked out an "Elementary School Transfer Form" -- including information on the child's attendance, immunizations, and academic progress in fine detail, right down to the last chapter and page Christina had completed in her math and reading books. The girl's departure was also recorded in the school's computer, part of an immense data base that links every Florida school district and has earned the state a national reputation as innovator in the science of tracking students. Even the girl's teacher, Lydia Johnson, tried keeping an eye on her former pupil, calling Christina's mother on several occasions to see what was happening with the child while she was out of school, each time getting a different story. Christina's case, of course, was extraordinary. Still, short of physically tailing a departed student, school administrators say they can only do so much when a legal guardian comes forward to take a child out of school. Florida's electronic tracking system will pick up the student again only when and if another school requests records from the original school. And there occasionally comes a point, especially if the family has left the state, that a kid will fall off the radar for good. "Once they leave, we've pretty much lost track of them until they light somewhere at another school," said Russ Wheatley, Dade's associate superintendent for special programs. "There's just no tracking system that can follow them from that point on. I can't think of any way we could follow up on every kid who leaves one of our schools." Administrators measure the ebb and flow of a student body with a confusing computation that reveals a so-called "mobility indicator." Various jurisdictions compute the figure differently. But basically the number indicates how many kids have passed in and out of a given school or district during a given year. Dade's average last year was 38 percent -- in other words, for every 100 students, 38 are coming or going. Some school's mobility rates run even higher. Last year, for instance, Naranja Lakes Elementary had a factor of 79. School officials say the turmoil represented by that figure can be attributed to the high number of migrant children at the school and the lingering effects of Hurricane Andrew. For the 1992-93 school year, the last year recorded and verified by the Florida Department of Education, the statewide elementary-school rate was 39. The corresponding figure for Broward was about 25 and for Palm Beach almost 33. Jupiter Farms Elementary, though, enjoyed a rate of less than 13 percent. That relatively low percentage affords the school a luxury that many South Florida schools don't have. At each year's end, the staff at Jupiter Farms still checks up on every student who withdrew during the school year to make sure they got where they were going. "We'll look at students who left but whose records were not requested by another school," said Horan. "If we don't at least try to find them, they'll be reported as dropouts, so we'll try to reach someone to find out where this child ended up. Usually we find out." SOARING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ALARMS
SOCIAL WORKERS Domestic violence counselors, social workers and academics cannot completely explain the growing brutality. They agree that more awareness and better reporting by police of domestic violence may contribute to the higher numbers. But more awareness, prevention programs and shelters should reduce the number of murders. "It's puzzling," said Bonnie Flynn, executive director of Women in Distress of Broward County. "I wish we could find out and understand." Counselors already understand
much about how people turn violent. Often, violence seems to erupt unexpectedly.
But that's Batterers follow well-established patterns. Abusers usually progress from verbal assaults to slapping, hitting, kicking and, finally, weapons, Flynn said. Families, however, fail to notice or don't want to acknowledge the warning signs, said Rita Smith, coordinator of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Denver. Last week, unemployed Hollywood truck driver Desiderio W. "Willie" Calderin killed his wife and adopted child, then shot himself. By all accounts, he was a loving husband and father. Police had never been called to his home to quiet an argument or break up a fight. "They never physically fought. He never touched her. They would just talk," said Calderin's stepdaughter, Jody Bushatz. But, counselors say, there had to be some clues. "You can't just be normal one minute and homicidal the next," said Christel Nichols, executive director of House of Ruth, a social service agency for women and children in Washington, D.C. "It may not be tied to the relationship. I don't believe things come out of the clear blue." Six months ago, Calderin lost his job. He grew depressed, his family said. When men experience failure in relationships or work, their self-worth plummets and their anger surges, said Robert Gallup, executive director of Abusive Men Exploring New Directions, a Denver-based organization. The abuser then tries to exert power over the only thing he or she perceives as controllable: a loved one. "The need to control is very much a part of why men batter," Smith said. "She's always the easiest part of his life to try to control." That control often leads to psychological ramifications for the victim. For one, even though they recognize they and their children are in grave danger, they often find that they are psychologically unable to break away. Christina Holt was beaten to death by her stepfather, police say. Her mother, Pauline Zile, confessed to helping him cover it up. Zile may have been abused and may have surrendered to her husband's authority out of fear, said Anne Rambo, an assistant professor and director of the master's degree program in family therapy at Nova Southeastern University's School of Social and Systemic Studies. Violence becomes the family's way of responding to any problem, Rambo said. "The husband abuses the wife. The wife abuses the child. The child kicks the dog," Rambo said. To check domestic violence, Americans must change their attitudes about what is acceptable within a family, said Nichols, of the House of Ruth. "It's one thing to have greater awareness. It's another thing to have a commitment to eliminating the things that reinforce domestic violence behavior. We don't have enough people saying it's intolerable. There is ambivalence." THE GRIM STATISTICS Here is a snapshot of those 29 victims -- 16 females and 13 males -- and how they were killed: Victim's sex, age Cause of death Female, 8 months Blunt head trauma by father Female, 15 years Shot in chest by boyfriend Female, 17 Multiple injuries from boyfriend Female, 23 Shot in head by ex-boyfriend Female, 24 Blunt head trauma by ex-boyfriend Female, 26 Shot by boyfriend Female, 27 Stabbed several times by boyfriend Female, 29 Stabbed by boyfriend Female, 30 Suffocated by brother-in-law Female, 37 Suffocated by boyfriend Female, 38 Shot by ex-boyfriend Female, 45 Stabbed in chest by ex-husband Female, 45 Blunt force trauma by husband Female, 50 Shot in head by boyfriend Female, 52 Shot in neck by boyfriend Female, 67 Trauma by son Male, newborn Blunt head trauma by father Male, 1 year Blunt head trauma by father Male, 3 Shot by mother's boyfriend Male, 20 Shot by girlfriend Male, 28 Shot several times by girlfriend's friend Male, 32 Shot in stomach by ex-girlfriend Male, 32 Shot by brother-in-law Male, 33 Stabbed in chest by girlfriend Male, 33 Stabbed in chest by girlfriend Male, 40 Shot several times by wife Male, 44 Shot by girlfriend's son Male, 48 Blunt head trauma by brother Male, 53 Stabbed in groin by wife. AND WHERE IS THE NEXT CHRISTINA? We've had a depressing run of stories about terrible
things done to and by children in Florida. A 10-year-old Lantana boy
was found dead in his pool. His stepmother will stand trial for murder;
she's already been convicted of child abuse. Some Broward County suburban
kids killed one of their friends because, well . . . because. A Miami
boy not old enough to drive shot a homeless man in the chest and killed
him. Last spring, a Palm Beach County middle-school teacher called me to complain about the paper's editorials. After several minutes, it became clear that she was much more frustrated than angry. So we began talking about her students, and it caused an emotional flash flood. ``You wouldn't BELIEVE the way some of them come to school!'' she seethed. ``They're angry. They haven't had a decent breakfast. They haven't done their work, and they don't care. They have an attitude that they hate me, they hate having to be in school, and they're going to let everyone else know.'' When we had finished, she actually apologized. As if she needed to. CORRECTING EFFECTS OF CARELESSNESS During this election year, we've heard a lot of politicians talk about what needs to be done with Florida's schools. We've heard Jeb Bush and his far-right Republican bomb-throwers talk about how schools just need ``competition,'' as if they were talking about McDonald's vs. Burger King. And we regularly hear teachers unions say teachers simply need to be paid more. The schools do need some more money, at least enough so every class will be small enough for teachers to do their work and well-equipped enough for all students to get the benefits of technology. The schools do need a few less rules, and that's happening, though it needs to happen faster. But most schools desperately need better parents. With better parents, we would have better children. With better children, we would have fewer criminals. If that sounds simplistic, it's a simple truth. A lot of the money Florida spends is an attempt to fix problems caused by parents who have babies when they're young and unmarried, parents who neglect or abuse their children, parents who let their children watch four hours of television instead of doing homework, parents who work when they don't have to and let their children spend too much time in empty homes, parents who get divorced because they think of themselves and not about the consequences divorce may hold for their children, a nd parents who give up on their children and expect government to raise them. According to the Florida Center for Children & Youth's 1993 Kids Count study, more than 200,000 schoolchildren statewide are home alone for more than two hours a day. Nearly 3,000 children a week are reported abused or neglected. (Jeb Bush and his running mate, state Rep. Tom Feeney, will fix this by abolishing the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, which investigates abuse.) Nearly 1,000 children run away from home each week. DAMAGED KIDS IN THE CLASSROOM All of which means that too many children come out of the school system too dumb or too violent - or both. We can yammer all we want about a ``value-neutral'' system of public education, whatever that term means, and we can complain that everything began to deteriorate when the Supreme Court found mandatory prayer unconstitutional in 1962. But even if every public school in Florida set out to turn every student into a Marx-loving atheist, it couldn't happen if the parents didn't let it happen.white, with rich kids and poor. The problem in many cases is the parents. But in our continuing effort to blame someone else for our problems, the schools - and, by extension, government - present an easy target. Christina Holt got our attention because she died. Most of us had never known her. But other Christinas are out there. Without some big changes, we'll hear about them, too. One of these days. Randy Schultz is editor of the editorial page of The Palm Beach Post. FLOWERS, TEDDY BEARS DECORATE
GRAVE Brightly colored carnations, a pink bunny rabbit, teddy
bears and balloons formed a makeshift monument behind the Kmart in Tequesta,
where police unearthed the girl's remains Friday. The horrific discovery
was made shortly after 7-year-old Christina's stepfather, John Zile,
confessed to beating her to death Sept. 16. Angela Dussia, 33, of Tequesta whispered a prayer and placed a bouquet of carnations on the ground. She said she could not sleep after hearing of Christina's death. ``It was Christina this week. It was Amanda last month,'' Dussia said, referring to 5-year-old Amanda Dougherty of North Lauderdale. Amanda's body was found in late September in a wooded area west of Boca Raton; her murder still is unsolved. ``They're killing the kids.'' Zile, 32, who faces one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated child abuse, is in protective custody without bond inside the mental health unit at the Palm Beach County Jail. ``Basically he has received threats from other inmates about what they would like to do to him,'' Assistant Public Defender Iola Mosley said after Zile appeared in court for the first time Saturday morning. ``The general public perception is that he's some kind of monster.'' Circuit Judge Richard Wennet appointed Mosley to the case after Zile, who worked as a restaurant cook, said he cannot afford to hire his own attorney. Mosley described Zile as ``devastated'' and ``very withdrawn.'' ``It's starting to hit him - all the things that have gone on the last week or so,'' she said. ``He's really a wreck right now.'' Christina's mother, Pauline Zile, initially claimed Christina had disappeared from the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop a week ago. Her claim, made Oct. 22, triggered an intensive search. But police began doubting her story after finding blood on Christina's clothing and inside the Ziles' Singer Island apartment. After failing a polygraph test Thursday, Pauline Zile told police Christina died after John Zile hit her in the face while disciplining her. She said her husband held a towel over the girl's mouth to muffle her cries, ``as they had (done) in the past.'' John Zile gave a statement the same day, saying Christina went into seizures and began spitting up blood after he struck her. He said she died while he was giving her first aid. Zile described his stepdaughter's death as ``an accident.'' He told police he hid Christina's body in a closet for three days while he looked for a place to bury her. Much of the public outrage over Christina's death has focused on her 24-year-old mother, Pauline Zile. ``I think she should rot in hell right along with him,'' sobbed Susan Ritz, 31, of Jupiter, who has visited Christina's grave site in Tequesta three times. ``I can't understand why, if they didn't want her, they just didn't give her to somebody. I would have taken her.'' Information from John Zile led police Saturday to the shovel they say he used to bury Christina. Divers with the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department's dive team found the shovel in the water near a bridge at the north end of Singer Island, where Zile said he threw it. ``Everything he's telling us is true,'' Riviera Beach Police Lt. Dave Harris said. ``The case is basically 80 percent done.'' Police will now prepare the case for prosecutors to take to a grand jury, which meets on the case this week. At the Ziles' home in the Sea Nymph apartment building on Singer Island, Riviera Beach police were standing guard around the clock to keep anyone from disturbing possible evidence. An air-conditioning unit jutting from the family's ground-floor apartment was decked with gifts from visitors: flowers, a statue of the Virgin Mary and a handwritten note on two pages of heart-shaped note paper. ``Dear one, May God hold and rest you in his arms,'' the note read. ``I pray for you to now find peace and love from us who deeply care for you. My guardian angle (sic), please protect the daughter I love most deeply.'' Landlord Steve Stogiannis, who has owned the building for 14 years, said the Ziles never caused trouble and paid their rent on time. ``They mostly stayed inside their apartment,'' Stogiannis said, adding he never had any inkling of the problems occurring inside. Asked about a police report saying a neighbor in an adjacent building heard a disturbance in the Zile apartment three to four weeks ago, Stogiannis said someone had reported hearing noise from the apartment but nothing more. Vendors working at the Swap Shop on Oct. 22, when Pauline Zile sounded the false alarm that her daughter had disappeared, said Saturday that her apparent agitation was completely convincing. ``She had us fooled,'' said Lorraine Bukowski, who operates Lorraine's Greenery at the flea market. ``I thought I was a better judge of character. She was shaking and crying. Your first instinct is to look for the child.'' At the time, Bukowski said, Pauline Zile clutched a scuffed baby doll she said had been sent to Christina from Maryland, where the child had lived with members of her natural father's family before moving to Florida to stay with her mother and stepfather. ``I would like to know how she is going to live with that little girl looking at her before going into convulsions and then dying,'' Bukowski said. Parents at Jupiter Farms Community Elementary School, where Christina briefly attended class this year, voiced similar feelings. ``They should really do something with her,'' parent Terri Shaw said about Pauline Zile. ``It just outrages me.'' Word of Christina's death passed quickly between her extensive family in Florida and in Maryland. Her great-grandfather, Pauline Zile's grandfather, said he'd never met the little girl, had never even received a picture. ``It's a terrible thing,'' John Yingling said. ``I have six children, 20 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.'' Then he paused. ``Seven, now.'' Staff writer Angela Hornsby contributed to this report. FOR CHRISTINA That she spent her life seemingly unwanted and, finally,
horribly abused, is not. Christina was the subject of an extensive search before her mother broke down on Thursday and told police the girl died after being slapped and smothered by her husband, Christina's stepfather, in the family's Singer Island apartment in Riviera Beach. The children like Christina whose lives are finally ended by abuse make headlines that shock us all. Walking quietly among us every day, though, are thousands more whose childhoods are also spent being shunted among relatives, neglected or beaten by adults ill-equipped financially and emotionally to be parents, experts say. "I have children here who have parents, but whose parents won't take them, won't [even) return their phone calls," said Anne Dichele, president of The Haven, a home for abused and neglected children west of Boca Raton. "If there's no relative, they end up in a foster home or with us." Christina's short life was rife with the factors often present in child abuse cases, said Leslie Terry, a psychology professor at Florida Atlantic University in Davie. Among them: Pauline Zile gave birth young, at 16. She left her first husband with the baby. He subsequently left the child with his parents. Christina spent most of her life with relatives before being driven in June to Florida to live with her mother, who by then had remarried. Pauline and John Zile both had histories of drug and alcohol abuse, although it is not known if they were using alcohol or drugs since Christina moved in. They were, by all accounts, struggling financially. John Zile was an itinerant cook, his wife a waitress, crowding with three children in a one-bedroom, low-rent apartment. "When you have financial stress on top of a lot of other problems, such as being a single mother, having kids young, not being able to consistently count on your family to support you, it adds to the potential for abuse," said Karen McCurdy of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. John Zile reportedly treated Christina more harshly than his own two boys. That, statistics indicate, is not unusual. Boyfriends or girlfriends are responsible for one out of five child abuse deaths in Florida, according to figures from the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. For stepparents like Zile, the children are often little more than an aggravation, said Jocelyn McBryan, dependency coordinator with the Broward Guardian Ad Litem program. "If the mother has a child in a previous relationship and gets remarried, then you often don't see a lot of commitment from the stepfather to the child," McBryan said. Police say Zile was berating Christina for playing "doctor" with other children, a game that would seem common among young children, before she was killed. But "the stepfather has never had a 7-year-old girl before. He's not prepared for a 7-year-old girl's behavior," said Karen Borchers, executive director of the Children's Home Society in West Palm Beach. Aside from the fact that Christina died, experts said, it is hard to say what sets John Zile apart from other abusive parents. "Some people do think that people who actually kill a child are just at the very end of a continuum, that there's something really different about them," McCurdy said. "There's no real good studies of people who murder their children." However, Terry said: "This is not something that happens in a vacuum where nobody knows about it. It's not like he's a nice guy who just one day kills his child." Child abuse reports have increased about 6 percent each year since 1988, according to the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. Part of that rise may be a result of more awareness and more reporting, McCurdy said. The nation considers child abuse more of a problem than ever. A U.S. Department of Justice study says that 75 percent of adults polled in 1993 think child abuse has gotten worse than it was when they were kids. Some statistics back that perception: Nationwide, at least three children a day are dying from abuse or neglect, compared to two a day in 1985, McCurdy said. Half of the fatal cases involve children under a year old; 90 percent are under 5, she said. In Florida, there were 63 abuseor neglect-related deaths of children last year, not a marked difference from the previous three years. But each case sends its own shock wave, and sometimes the stories become numbing. In June 1993, three Broward County children ages 2 and under were murdered in one day by their parents or caretakers. Examples of unwanted children are even more abundant. Since April, for example, three newborn babies have been abandoned in Broward County. Some people familiar with the problems of child abuse challenged the notion that murders like Christina's point to a trend toward more violent and abusive parents. "Is it any worse now than it was 30 years ago? Probably not," said Broward Circuit Judge Arthur Birken, who presides over dependency cases. Birken, however, acknowledged that there are problems in society today that were not as prevalent 30 years ago, including the increased use of drugs such as crack cocaine. Experts say drug and alcohol abuse often are a factor in child abuse cases. What shocked many about the Holt case is how nobody seemed to want to care for Christina as she grew up. "There's not that many cute little kids that nobody wants," Birken said. "It's the teen-ager that's not cute that nobody wants. That's where we suffer." Christina's death bore numerous similarities to another South Florida child tragedy, the murder of 2-month-old Amy Lynn Mitich. Amy was murdered by her mother's boyfriend, Richard Hamlin, who stuffed the body in a suitcase and threw it into a pond off Interstate 95. Like Pauline Zile, Amy's mother at first indicated to police her daughter had been kidnapped. She eventually confessed, and Hamlin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a 12-year prison sentence. The mother, Laurel Mitich, cut a deal with prosecutors in exchange for her testimony and received 18 months in prison as an accessory to murder after the fact. "What becomes apparent is that certain folks do not think ahead with regard to the rigors of child-raising and the time and effort it consumes," said Assistant Broward State Attorney Pete Magrino, who prosecuted the Mitich case. "And they get frustrated and sometimes they take drastic measures to rid themselves of the time and effort." High divorce rates, growing numbers of single parents and Florida's high rate of transience all create an environment where children all too often become expendable, said Barbara Weinstein, executive director of the Child Care Connection in Broward. "The family of the '50s and '60s is no longer there," Weinstein said. "It's real tough to get a job and make a living anymore, and children become the scapegoat." The Children's Home Society in West Palm Beach works with about 2,000 children a year who have been abused or are deemed at risk. Said Borchers, the home's executive director: "The earlier we can reach them, the better. Could we have helped [Christina) if we had been there? I can't say." "Many of those 2,000 children are at real high risk," Borchers said. "I can't say I'm sure we've saved every one of them." There are success stories. One may be an 8-year-old girl who was brought to The Haven west of Boca Raton after being abandoned. The girl's mother was usually away and high on drugs; the mother's boyfriend abused the child; the mother left Florida and her boyfriend also took off, leaving the 8-year-old to fend for herself and two younger siblings. Social workers stepped in and relatives were found for the younger children. But the girl was unwanted because of her age. In her time at The Haven, her personality came to life - she went from a girl who never opened her mouth to one who is rarely quiet, said Dichele, The Haven's president. The children who come to the program come from broken, often abusive homes, but Dichele tells them they are among the fortunate. "You're lucky because you get a break other kids don't get," Dichele said. For Christina Holt, "It was a lot worse." Staff Writers Larry Barszewski, Robert Nolin and Barbara Walsh contributed to this report. BURIAL SITE BECOMES A SHRINE Now the makeshift grave behind the Kmart in Tequesta
is a shrine built by strangers mourning the death of one little girl.
"Someone out there would have loved this little girl," said Amy West, her voice breaking as she stood by Christina Holt's grave with her 8-year-old daughter. "I would have loved her." Christina's stepfather, Walter John Zile, has been charged with her murder, accused of beating the 7-year-old to death in their Singer Island home on Sept. 16 while the child's pregnant mother looked on. John Zile, 32, told police he kept the child's body in their apartment for four days before he buried her behind the Kmart. Police dug up Christina's body on Friday. Palm Beach County medical examiners have not determined exactly how Christina died. On Saturday, police divers pulled a shovel from the Intracoastal Waterway in north Palm Beach County, the shovel they say John Zile bought at a Home Depot and used to dig his stepdaughter's grave. Riviera Beach police officers are keeping a 24-hour watch at the Ziles' Singer Island apartment and pulling together evidence that will be presented to a Palm Beach County grand jury on Monday. Pauline Zile, staying with her mother in Jensen Beach, is under medical care, her mother, Paula Yingling, said on Saturday. She refused to elaborate. John Zile is under a suicide watch in the mental health unit at the Palm Beach County Jail. Earlier in the day at his first appearance in court, John Zile's court-appointed attorney asked that he be kept in protective custody because inmates have been threatening him. Child abusers rank at the bottom of the jailhouse pecking order. "It's starting to get to him, all that's gone in the past week. He's a wreck, mentally and physically," said Iola Mosley, the public defender assigned to John Zile's case. "The general public perception of him is he's some kind of monster. But he's just a human being and he is scared." Mosley said she has no plans to ask for bail at this point because she fears for John Zile's safety if he is let out of jail. She fears the anger of South Floridians who bought into a bogus kidnapping story spread by Christina's mother a week ago Saturday. A hysterical Pauline Zile said Christina disappeared from a bathroom in the Swap Shop west of Fort Lauderdale, leading police on a frantic search for the second-grader. Pauline Zile's story fell apart a few days later when police found bloodstains in the couple's apartment and interviewed witnesses who said they saw John Zile beat Christina in the past. On Thursday, the Ziles confessed to police, revealing that Christina had been dead for six weeks and that they concocted the kidnapping story to cover for her disappearance. The Ziles described the last moments of Christina's life: a midnight interrogation by an enraged stepfather who accused Christina of playing doctor with other children, the beating that followed, Christina's screams and cries and then the seizures that shook her 44-pound body until she died a few minutes later. "He should be given the chair or, better, beaten to death," said Kathleen Monaco, of Palm Beach Gardens, as she stood by the grave site on Saturday. "The anger I feel and so many people feel, we want to rip these people apart." Besides the first-degree murder charge, John Zile has been charged with two counts of child abuse in earlier incidents involving Christina. Pauline Zile, 24, was granted partial immunity by prosecutors for implicating her husband. She could be charged with the girl's death, though, when the case is reviewed by a Palm Beach County grand jury. Much of the public rage is directed not at her stepfather, the man who admitted he beat Christina to death, but at the mother who watched. "The mother just stood there while the father beat the hell out of this child and killed her," said Hollywood parent Karen Shaler. "The mother never said a word and helped hide the child in the closet for four days? That poor little girl. She was so defenseless. This woman should be severely punished." The police, too, took the case to heart. "Right now, we're pretty disgusted and discouraged," said Jim Leljedal, Broward County Sheriff's Office spokesman. "I don't want to pass judgment, but we don't hold [Pauline Zile) in high regard." Almost 1,000 miles away in Maryland, where Christina lived with various relatives for most of her life, friends and neighbors were reeling. "Thank God you Florida people have a death penalty," said Brendan Murphy, 36, a neighbor of Christina's grandmother, Judy Holt. "I'm just so upset about this." In June, Christina was moved to Florida to live with her mother. A Maryland acquaintance said Christina wanted to live with her mother because she was happy about the pending birth of Pauline Zile's latest child. That child, a boy, was born on Oct. 4, 18 days after Christina was killed. Pauline Zile gave the infant up for adoption, telling friends they couldn't afford to keep the child. Police and social service officials said on Saturday the child has been adopted and is safe in his new home. Staff Writers Mike Folks, Jill Young Miller, Marego Athans, Jim Di Paola and Dawn McMullan contributed to this report. ZILES' BABY BOY REPORTED SAFE,
IN ADOPTIVE HOME The boy was born 18 days after John Zile beat his stepdaughter,
Christina Holt, to death, police say. Prosecutors granted Pauline Zile partial immunity for implicating her husband in the killing. She still could be charged with the girl's death, though, when the case is reviewed this week by a Palm Beach County grand jury. The couple has two other children, boys ages 3 and 5. In a dependency hearing on Friday, a Palm Beach Circuit Court judge placed the boys in foster care. The Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services is seeking the permanent removal of the boys, spokeswoman Beth Owen said. The Ziles' third child, born on Oct. 4 at St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach, was legally adopted through a social service agency and adoption attorney, said Sgt. David Robshaw, a supervisor with the Broward Sheriff's Office missing persons unit. "There's nothing amiss," he said. "I hope that whatever bonding takes place between an infant and the adoptive set of parents has already occurred regardless of what the current case facts are." Robshaw said when investigators found blood in the Ziles' apartment last week - on the walls, carpeting, bed and a pair of blue jeans thought to have belonged to Christina - they became concerned not only about the fate of the 7-year-old but also about the newborn. "We were looking at every possibility," Robshaw said. "Maybe she gave birth at home and maybe they disposed of the infant when it was born. We had a lot of concerns, and we couldn't rule out anything. But now we know the adoption was thoroughly and completely and properly arranged." OUR REACTIONS TO A SAVAGE ACT,
A CHILD BETRAYED Watching the mother's tearful televised plea for her daughter's safe return, a calculated sham as it turned out, every parent shared her dread. In the smiling face on the missing-child posters, parents saw their own sons and daughters. Yet somehow there was an odd sort of comfort in knowing the girl's disappearance was the random act of a stranger. Our sensibilities remained intact - bad people prey on innocent children despite parents' best efforts. But from the start a troubling subtext surrounded the young mother's story, and soon enough the police were confirming what many suspected but did not want to believe. Christina's monster was no stranger, but her own parents. A trust betrayed And now the questions have changed. We ask ourselves, what kind of a man could beat a 44-pound sapling of a child so relentlessly as to splatter her blood across the floor and walls? What kind of a mother could watch without intervening as the child she had carried in her womb convulsed and stopped breathing? We want to believe parental abuse is an aberration. Yet the headlines come with numbing regularity: Bradley McGee, 2, plunged head-first into a toilet by his stepfather and killed; A.J. Schwarz, 10, found floating face down in the family pool in Lantana, his stepmother charged with his murder; Amy Mitich, 2 months, smothered, stuffed in a suitcase and heaved by her mother and the mother's boyfriend into a pond near Deerfield Beach; newborns tossed into trash bins. And now Christina. What began as every parent's worst nightmare - a child abducted from a public restroom - has become a public mirror to hold up to ourselves. We see in it our own tempers, our own capacity to lose control, and we find a lesson in the virtue of patience with our children. We learn that once you cross that line, you can never take it back. A primitive call We glimpse our ugly side. We hate the feeling, but we want vengeance; we want Christina's killer to feel her pain and terror. As embarrassed as we are to admit it, we want to kick his sorry ass. We see our community for what it is: a place so numb to the tragedy du jour that John and Pauline Zile thought no one would linger on their missing daughter. Their cynical assumption speaks to what we have become. You find yourself wondering if the Armageddon crowd might be right and society is entering its final plunge into darkness. In a simpler time, my parents were fond of saying, "To become a parent is a matter of mere biology; to be one is a lot of hard work." What kind of a mother was Pauline Zile? Reluctantly, you must conclude she was no mother at all. Pregnant at 16, hurriedly married, divorced a year later, her brush with parenthood was, in the words of one relative, a case of "babies having babies." Christina suffered the consequences. Bounced from relative to relative, she finally landed, for want of anywhere else to go, in a motel-apartment with two virtual strangers she was told to call Mom and Dad. She survived three months. Our assumptions are gone. All that remains is to hold your kids a little tighter, forgive them their trespasses and love them for what they are. None deserves what Christina Holt got. John Grogan is the local columnist for the Sun-Sentinel's Palm Beach County editions. |