perp
Posted on 11/23/2004 11:57:32 AM PST by Jersey Republican Biker Chick
PLANO, Texas (AP) — With a calm and dispassionate voice and a hymn playing in the background, Dena Schlosser confessed to the unthinkable, telling a 911 operator she'd cut off the arms of her baby girl.
The woman was sitting in her living room covered with blood when police arrived Monday. Her nearly 11-month-old daughter lay fatally injured in a crib in a bedroom of the family's apartment in Plano. The child died shortly afterward at a nearby hospital.
Police have charged the 35-year-old mother with capital murder, but declined to reveal where she is being held.
Schlosser, who had a history of postpartum depression, had been investigated on child neglect allegations earlier this year, but Texas Child Protective Services had recently closed a seven-month investigation, concluding that Schlosser did not pose a risk to her children. Neighbors said she seemed to be a loving, attentive mother.
"There were never any indications of violence with this family," agency spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales said. "The children had always been healthy, happy and cared for."
But, on Monday, authorities discovered a grisly scene at the family's apartment after the child's father called a day-care center, and asked them to check on his wife and daughter.
Day-care workers called 911 after talking to the mother; an operator then called Schlosser.
Asked if there was an emergency, Schlosser calmly responded "Yes," according to 911 tapes released by police.
"Exactly what happened?" the 911 operator asked.
"I cut her arms off," Schlosser replied, as the hymn "He Touched Me" played in the background.
"You cut her arms off?" he repeated.
"Uh huh," she answered.
It was not immediately clear what instrument was used to sever the baby's arms or why the child's father called a day-care center to check on his family.
Schlosser lived at the apartment with other family members, including her two older daughters. Authorities said the girls, ages 6 and 9, were at school when police arrived, and that their father was at work.
No one answered the door Monday night at the family's apartment in suburban Dallas. Children's bicycles rested near the entrance along with angel garden statues.
Neighbors said Schlosser took her children swimming in the summer, had picnics in the courtyard and walked her baby around the complex the same time each afternoon.
Dena Livingston, 43, said she saw Schlosser making her rounds with the stroller on Sunday. Two days earlier, she saw Schlosser waiting with the baby outside the elementary school where her two other daughters attend.
"She didn't give off like she was in a distant world or didn't care about the baby," Livingston said.
Livingston's husband, Brad, added: "To see her with the girls, you would just think she was a great mother."
Child-protective officials were interviewing Schlosser's daughters and would talk to the father before deciding whether to remove the girls from the home.
In January, the agency was called to the home after Schlosser was seen running down the street, with one of her daughters bicycling after her, authorities said. When officials arrived, the child told them her mother had left her 6-day-old sister alone in the apartment.
Schlosser appeared at the time to be suffering from postpartum depression and having a psychotic episode, Gonzales said.
Schlosser was hospitalized, and later agreed to seek counseling and saw a psychiatrist, Gonzales said.
"At the time we closed the case, we had been assured that Mom was stabilized and that she was not a risk to herself or her children," Geoff Wool, spokesman for the Family and Protective Services Department, said.
perp
A horror story...a mom doing the unthinkable to her own baby....
Yet had she had an MD and did this in a nice clinical setting with the blessings of the state
she could do this 20 times a day...and be highly regarded socially and quite well off financially.
imo
Schlosser appeared at the time to be suffering from postpartum depression and having a psychotic episode, Gonzales said.
Schlosser was hospitalized, and later agreed to seek counseling and saw a psychiatrist, Gonzales said.
Someone needs to find out what drugs the fine folks at the hospital prescribed. Most of these horror-job, nut cases have been on some of the newer 'designer' drugs that the good doctors are prescribing.
BUMP to that. We know she did it. We know she's crazy. We know there is a chance she could get out if she's sent to an asylum. We know people can't be reliably cured of this kind of crazy.
Where is Jack Ruby when you need him!?!?
Why were you expecting that?
I wish you had not posted this. It makes me ache everytime I scroll past it.
I was curious as to the dark sides take on this subject so I trolled over there. This is one response from "Garbage at DU" who seems to be arguing that this is somehow the government's, or the nations fault, because this could have been prevented with an abortion. Here is her post:
I was a child who would've been aborted if Roe had only occurred ten years sooner. My mother tried several times to get an abortion, but the damage the pregnancy was doing to her wasn't lethal (although it was permanent) and being raped by your husband wasn't rape in the sixties. She abused me for twenty years because she wanted to make me suffer for existing.
Abortion would've spared me. I wish the country had gotten a clue sooner.
Words fail me.
I posted it because of the outrage I had at this gruesome crime. I don't understand what this world is coming to when something like this happens.
That is typical of the DU. They would blame everyone except for the monster that dismembered her baby. And as for wishing that you had been aborted, I can't fathom the self hatred that one must have to think that way.
There have always been crazy people who do horrific things. This is not new. I am outraged too but I heard it on the radio, I saw it in the paper I don't want to think about it any more.
It's a matter of time before the NOW NAG's blame the dad. Then a girly-man psychologist will agree with that conclusion. Blame anyone but the psycho mother. The dad will be a convenient scapegoat.
Obviously Dad didn't dismember his child but I do question the judgement in leaving a woman diagnosed with PPD alone with a baby. Actions do have consequences.
Oh, like Andrea Yates did. < /sarcasm >
Well I was hoping. I think someone should help her along with dying.
Absolutely amazing how judgemental someone can be who hasn't been there. Caseworkers are not psychics. Caseworkers are bound by laws of evidence just like cops and prosecutors. If it doesn't walk like a duck and doesn't quack like a duck, and those who live around it don't believe it's a duck in most cases a caseworker/investigator is not likely to draw the conclusion that it is a duck.
Then you obviously have no clue what the all the job entails.
#52
I don't think the dad had a choice, I get the feeling that the dad and mom were/are not living together and that he did not get custody (due to the pass from DSS).
The baby was nearly a year old. Just how many years after the child's delivery can one claim postpartum depression? That is nonsense.
Texas Child Protective Services had recently closed a seven-month investigation, concluding that Schlosser did not pose a risk to her children. Neighbors said she seemed to be a loving, attentive mother.
"There were never any indications of violence with this family," agency spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales said. "The children had always been healthy, happy and cared for."
...authorities discovered a grisly scene at the family's apartment after the child's father called a day-care center, and asked them to check on his wife and daughter.
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Seems to me that you are just being 100% dead on in hindsight. Is one of the normal, foreseeable symptoms of postpartum depression CUTTING CHILDREN'S ARMS OFF?
This husband deserves all the support we can give him. God knows the NOW nags are going to be heaping blame on him for cruelly working to put food on the table and a roof over his kids' heads, instead of sucking his murdering wife's butt all day.
If his wife was so 'depressed' she killed her own kid, she needs to take it all the way and have her senses fatally depressed.
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