Mother indicted in girl's death
Benjamin Niolet - Staff Writer
The doctor who filled out the death certificate for Melissa Wilkins didn't see anything suspicious.
The girl, 9, had lived at Hilltop Home in Raleigh, a facility for children with severe brain damage, for eight years. When she died of pneumonia at WakeMed in June 2003, no one thought to notify investigators. The child's body was cremated.
Almost exactly a year later, a team that routinely reviews child death certificates in Wake County contacted the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill and said it should look again at Melissa's death.
This time, a medical examiner reviewed records showing Melissa had gone to Hilltop in 1995 after suffering a fractured skull and other catastrophic injuries that her adoptive mother pleaded guilty to causing.
The medical examiner, Dr. Deborah Radisch, didn't dispute that the girl died of pneumonia but ruled the death a homicide.
A Durham grand jury this week indicted the girl's adoptive mother, Melinda Wilkins, on a charge of murder. Wilkins, 40, already served a sentence of two years and 10 months after she pleaded guilty in 1996 to felony child abuse, although she has said the injuries came from an accident, not an attack.
The death, even from pneumonia, is a whole new crime, Assistant District Attorney Mitch Garrell said this week. At Hilltop, the child lived in a "persistent vegetative state -- terminal and incurable," according to the medical examiner's report.
"I would expect there would be medical testimony that a child who was in the condition this child was in was more susceptible," Garrell said. "I think it is black-letter law without any dispute that once you commit a criminal act that results in serious injury, then you are criminally liable for things that you could reasonably foresee happening as a consequence of that."
Wilkins' defense attorney, Jay Ferguson, said Tuesday that he had not yet reviewed the medical examiner's report of Melissa's death.
"I'm not sure how the state's going to get from any alleged conduct by my client to death by pneumonia," Ferguson said.
On Aug. 16, 1995, Wilkins was working as a nanny at a couple's home in Durham. Sometime that day, paramedics were called to the home and found Melissa with severe injuries. Wilkins said the girl had fallen off the couch. She would later say that she was playing with her daughter and had tossed her up in the air but became dizzy and could not grab the child before she hit the floor.
State medical experts concluded the injuries were too severe to be accidental. They also found scars and marks on the child that suggested someone had squeezed her until her ribs fractured. After Wilkins pleaded guilty, Melissa became a ward of the Durham County Department of Social Services and had lived at Hilltop since 1996, according to the medical examiner's report.
Melissa died June 2, 2003, at WakeMed. Hospital policy leaves it to the discretion of doctors to fill out death certificates, and in this case, the doctor didn't refer it to authorities.
But every health department in the state is required to review child deaths periodically to identify ways they might have been prevented, said Dr. Peter Morris, the medical director of Wake County Human Services and chairman of the prevention team.
Morris said he does not remember Melissa's case specifically, but the circumstances of the case were unusual. Children should rarely die of pneumonia, said Morris, who is a pediatrician. But people without higher brain function may be unable to react to saliva or food that makes its way down the airway, which might lead to pneumonia, he said.
"One of the reasons you and I don't get pneumonia is we can swallow and we cough," Morris said.
With no remains to examine, Radisch based her conclusion on medical records. Wilkins found out about her adopted daughter's death when Durham police arrested her Sept. 7. She has been released on bail. No trial date has been set.