Posted on 01/09/2003 7:15:23 AM PST by Hillary's Lovely Legs
TRENTON, N.J. (Jan. 9) - The woman who was supposed to be taking care of the three brothers in a torture and abuse case, including a 7-year-old boy whose body was found stuffed in a plastic storage bin, was captured early Thursday in a Newark apartment.
Sherry Murphy was found sleeping in the apartment around 2 a.m., police Lt. Derek Glenn said. Police said it was not her apartment, but offered no further details.
Murphy had been sought since the body of Faheem Williams was found Sunday, a day after his two brothers were found starving in a locked room.
Murphy, who was wanted on child endangerment charges, had been caring for the boys since their mother, Melinda Williams, was jailed on assault charges in March.
The FBI has also been preparing a warrant charging Murphy, a go-go dancer who is Williams' cousin, with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Newark police had been flooded with tips that Murphy left New Jersey.
Faheem Williams' twin brother, Raheem, 7, and another brother, Tyrone Hill, 4, remained hospitalized Wednesday in fair condition. When they were found, they were cowering under a bed soaked with urine, feces and vomit in the basement of a Newark rowhouse. They were using a jar for a toilet and their hair was infested with lice. They had not eaten in days.
Authorities did not know Faheem existed until Raheem said at the hospital that he hadn't seen his twin for a long time. They went back the next day and discovered Faheem's mummified remains in the purple storage box. He had been dead for more than a month.
No one has been charged in the death, but authorities have been looking for Murphy, 41, who took the children after Williams was jailed for child abuse.
Williams, 31, was hit by a car while rushing to see her children Saturday and is in critical condition at a New York hospital. Before Faheem's death, she told authorities she could not find Murphy or the children after she got out of jail months ago.
New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services had received 10 complaints about the family over the past 10 years, including one in October 2001 that Williams was beating and burning her children.
Three of the complaints were substantiated: Williams left the children alone in 1996 and 1999, and she failed to get medical attention for another child, 7-year-old Fuquan, after he cut his hand in 1998. The boy, now 11, is in a treatment center in New York.
Authorities say at least one of the boys also was molested. A friend of Williams was arrested Wednesday and charged with sexual abuse.
Yet the state agency closed the case in February 2002, saying it could not find the boys. That month, Williams was jailed for child endangerment stemming from a 1996 incident and she entrusted the boys to Murphy, who was dancing in bars under the stage name ''Ebony.''
Police said Murphy has a crack habit but no criminal record.
When Raheem and Tyrone were rushed to the emergency room, they were weak and undernourished. Tyrone, who showed evidence of scars and burn marks, was put on a liquid diet because he could not handle solid food.
A cat in the apartment was immaculately clean and well-fed.
''The mere fact that he had food means he was better off than those kids,'' police Lt. Derek Glenn said.
Much of the mistreatment of the boys appeared to have happen while they were supposedly under the protection of the state child welfare agency. Investigators say they were subjected to nearly continuous abuse that included beatings and burnings with cigarettes and hot liquids.
''This is the most horrible story I have ever heard,'' said Mayor Sharpe James. ''There's enough blame here to go around for a lot of people.''
The ghastly case is just the latest around the country to highlight the difficulties caseworkers have in protecting some of the nation's most vulnerable children from abuse or even death.
In Florida, the state's child-welfare agency went through a shake-up last year after caseworkers lost track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson for 15 months before realizing she was missing. In Missouri, a caseworker resigned last week after a 2-year-old boy who had been sent back to a foster home was shaken to death.
In New Jersey, Gov. James E. McGreevey ordered an investigation of the agency and new procedures for investigating allegations of abuse. The supervisor in charge of the Williams case was suspended with pay Wednesday.
''It appears that's where mistakes were made in this case,'' said Micah Rasmussen, a spokesman for the governor. Neither the supervisor nor the caseworker has been identified.
New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services has 1,400 people to supervise some 47,000 children; the average caseload is 35. National advocates recommend that a caseworker handle no more than 25.
Union officials say the caseworker assigned to the Williamses was juggling 107 cases, but state officials claim the number was far less. They say the unidentified worker was responsible for 53 children in 27 families.
AP-NY-01-09-03 0723EST
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Sick and evil
"She was getting money to take care of the kids," Lynella Gaddie said of Sherry Murphy, the exotic dancer entrusted with taking care of three boys by their mother, Melinda Williams.
Gaddie said she didn't know how much money was involved, but a state official said welfare payments for three children would total $424 a month. Add in an additional stipend to cover expenses, and Murphy could have gotten $488 monthly.
"She was getting government money, and all she had to do was take care of the kids," said Gaddie, a cousin of both Williams and Murphy.
She's lucky that I wasn't the one who caught her.
Amen to that particular thought.
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