Posted on 11/16/2004 10:55:36 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Bradley Gene McGee was tortured and beaten to death 15 years ago. Thanks to our senseless courts, one of his callous killers is free to strike again.
Bradley died at the age of 2. It’s the age when a happy boy’s life is preoccupied with Teletubbies, choo-choo trains, Cheerios, sippy cups, and Velcro-strap sneakers with tiny red lights that blink when you stomp your feet. It is also the age for potty-training, when a little boy needs loving parents or guardians with patience, devotion and good humor.
Bradley’s murderers possessed none of these traits. On a summer day in 1989, they punished him for soiling his pants by plunging him headfirst in a toilet. Again and again and again. The man who rammed Bradley’s head repeatedly into the ceramic fixture was his stepfather, Thomas Coe. The woman who covered Bradley’s mouth to stop him from screaming -- the woman who then sat by the bathtub, lit a cigarette and watched the little boy’s torment -- was the woman who gave birth to Bradley, Sheryl Hardy.
Coe and Hardy then dragged Bradley into the living room of their mobile home, where they beat him over the head with couch cushions until he fell to the floor unconscious. Bradley died of massive brain hemorrhaging at a nearby hospital the next day.
To call Sheryl Hardy a "mother" would be an unforgivable desecration of the word. When Bradley was 4 months old, she and Coe took him to a local mall. They left baby Bradley with a pretzel vendor and walked away.
It was the best thing that happened in Bradley’s cruelly short life. Child welfare officials placed him in emergency foster care in Winter Haven, Fla. He was immediately embraced by Sandra "Kip" Liles and her husband. Mrs. Liles has nurtured some 200 abused and neglected children, showering each one with much-needed attention and gentle care. On a Web site dedicated to Bradley’s memory, she posted poignant photos of the cherubic-faced baby’s first smiles and first haircut.
He was, she said, a "heavenly angel." Taken from earth too soon.
When Sheryl Hardy learned that Bradley's foster parents wanted to adopt him, she petulantly petitioned for custody. Sixty-six days after being returned to Hardy and Coe -- the same heartless couple that had abandoned him as a newborn -- Bradley was dead.
At trial, Hardy revealed the horrific abuse she and Coe administered to Bradley. She had forced him to eat his own feces. Made him stand by her bed all night as she and Coe slept. And allowed Coe to punch the little boy’s genitals. The medical examiner reported more than 90 cuts and bruises on Bradley’s battered body.
On the stand, Hardy offered excuse after excuse for Bradley’s torture and murder. She said she was abused as a child and beaten by Coe. The shameless sob stories didn’t work with the jury. She was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years. Coe was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse and sentenced to life in prison.
Due largely to Kip Liles’ efforts, Bradley’s murder led to reform of Florida’s custody and child welfare laws. Parents across the country sent toys and teddy bears and childhood mementos that still adorn Bradley’s gravesite in Lakeland, Fla.
But justice has not yet been served. Sheryl Hardy was released after nine years due to prison overcrowding and moved back to her home state of Illinois. She gave birth to another little boy, now 3. Like Bradley, the child named Billy has been in foster care for most of his life. Like Bradley, Billy has now been put back in the custody of a woman who has no business being anywhere near children. Earlier this month, the Illinois Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court ruling that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that Hardy was a negligent or abusive parent.
Bradley's battered body and tot-sized coffin should have been proof enough.
The court put its faith in Sheryl Hardy's "rehabilitation" and completion of parenting classes. But the people most familiar with her crimes know best:
''She's an evil person, a murderess,'' Paul Schaill of the Fort Meade, Fla., police department, told the Associated Press. "[Billy] is going to end up dead, too.''
Kip Liles is doing all she can to warn the public: "There is no sound, no cry in all the world, that can be heard unless someone is listening."
Unless more concerned parents open their eyes, ears and hearts, another life may be in danger.
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at michellemalkin.com
BTTT...
Life is just getting uglier and uglier...
My blood is boiling. People like this need to be thrust into hell--immediately. The officials that enable repeated abuse shouldn't be far behind.
One of the issues that got overlooked in the presidential election is the death penalty.
In this case of torture, both the male and female should've been promptly executed.
Instead, we now have Coe sitting in prison somewhere while his woman has gone on to give birth to yet another child whose future is very dim indeed.
Republicans should revive the death penalty as a political issue. Appeals should be strictly limited, and the death penalty should be expanded to cover crimes that involve torture or attempted murder.
These people are evil. Simply evil. And one of the MONSTERS was let out. We tell children there are no monsters, nothing to be afraid of in the closet or under the bed. Yet some children, our new little people, are at the mercy of MONSTERS from the moment they draw breath, and probably were abused in the womb. It's not true that there are no monsters, they walk among us and enjoy all the freedoms and rights that this great country affords. Yet, they terrorize our most innocent and precious citizen. AND WE LET THEM WALK FREE????
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.. Kill them, if we are not going to kill them, sterilize them. I say don't waste the resources and just kill them. They could get out and get their hands on another child.
What they did to that child breaks my heart and I cry as I write this, yet I am filled with thoughts of torture and reckoning for what they destroyed.
I am royally pi$$ed.
Where's the liberal outcry over this....
"She was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years."
Further evidence that
A) there needs to be NO variation in punishment for degrees of murder. It's murder, no matter what your role.
B) there is discrimination against women--in the justice system, they don't get what they deserve. She should have fried like an egg.
I hope those jurors are happy for what they did to this woman's sons. Because her 3 year old will certainly suffer a similar fate.
The Illinois Supreme Court is an utterly corrupt cesspool of democrat party shysters for giving this "human" the obviously doomed child.
How anyone could let someone like this woman out of prison is beyond comprehension. There is no explanation for the ruling. The woman is evil but letting her free is just as evil. As Dean Koontz wrote in his excellent novel Intensity, there is no reason for evil, only excuses. Somewhere, Satan is laughing.
I'm not saying that it would be right for someone to take this judge and work him over with an aluminum baseball for a few hours, but I would understand where that person was coming from.
In this case "an eye for an eye" sounds reasonable.
I've met a couple and turned and ran as fast as I could. You could feel the presense of evil, a real palpitating sense of wrongness.
There is a special place in Hell awaiting such monsters.
And a special place in Heaven for Bradley Gene McGee.
I let them know there are people in this world who would do them harm.
I heard once as a child the maxim: Don't fear the dead, Fear the Living
I like what you're not saying. Might get their attention and provide a reference point for understanding some of the
agony these children go through who appear before them.
"I'm not saying that it would be right for someone to take this judge and work him over with an aluminum baseball for a few hours, but I would understand where that person was coming from."
Agreed.
Looked at some of your past posts, I like your style. :D So, if you can't grow hay, have you tried grapes? :D
Now, you're talking. In situations like this you would find me a willing student.
B) there is discrimination against women--in the justice system, they don't get what they deserve. She should have fried like an egg.
A) Absolutely Agree, you facilitate, you fry too.
B)People seem to think that women are not capable of great evil and destruction. This is nonsense. Women are perpetrators and facilitators of mind numbingly heinous crimes just as men are. We just don't hear about it as often because the deed is usually inflicted on their children and 'loved' ones. Often a man may be involved and we concentrate our wrath upon him, because how could a mother/women harm her child/husband/family members? She is the care taker and the hand that rocks the cradle, though sometimes it rocks from violence.
The liberals don't care about this little boy. They will, however, bleed from the heart over the 'poor woman' who was 'forced' to give birth to him. The 'poor woman' who was 'forced' to participate in the abuse and murder of this little one by her boyfriend.
And people wonder why God created hell.
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