Girl's Death Divides Doctors, Investigators

Author: Penny Owen; Staff Writer

The Daily Oklahoman

August 2, 1998

It seemed Vicky Dawn Louise Rinkel had finally gotten some peace.

After years of abuse, the former foster child was adopted by a religious family in the rural Panhandle town of Hooker. The Rinkels also took in her mentally retarded brother and home- schooled their children in a quiet community where everyone knows everyone.

Several months later, the 9-year-old's body was on a slab in the state medical examiner's office with more than 100 bruises and a head injury so massive it killed her.

The state Department of Human Services listed her death among its 1994 child abuse statistics. The Kansas coroner, at the urging of the Oklahoma medical examiner, finally put "homicide" on the girl's death certificate last year.

Three physicians stand ready to testify that the head blow is consistent with child abuse - they call the 1993 death a homicide. After nearly five years of investigations on both sides, the doctors and agents from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation met again in March to hash out their findings; the physicians expected District Attorney Richard Dugger of Elk City to file criminal charges soon after.

Yet no one has been held responsible for Vicky's death. And that has the state Child Death Review Board enraged.

"We can't figure out why on God's green earth the OSBI is so reluctant to press this," said Dr. John Stuemky, head of the child protection team at Children's Hospital and a member of the review board.

"The fact is, in our minds, this child was murdered," said Dr. Robert Block, another board member who heads the pediatric department at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Tulsa.

Dr. Fred Jordan, the state's chief medical examiner, also shares the opinion that Vicky's death was no accident.

"I think the injuries are homicidal. Always have," Jordan said Friday.

So why hasn't anyone been arrested?

Vicky's death is clouded with missed opportunities, a peculiar blood disease and jurisdictions that cross state borders. There are also doubts in some investigators' minds about who could have done it.

And, some say, there is no political pressure.

"Everybody in the state has looked at Ryan Luke and everybody in the state has looked at Shane Coffman very officially and through the governor's office," Block said during an open session at the board's July meeting. He was referring to two high-profile child abuse deaths that have occurred recently in this state.

"This particular case just didn't strike the right button - the fact that you have to be politically appropriate (in your) timing in order to have your death investigated with some intensity is rather appalling, if so."

The board has asked the state Commission on Children and Youth to write a letter to Gov. Frank Keating, requesting his intervention. The commission has agreed to do so. Meanwhile, Jordan stresses, this is not a case that has waned from neglect. It's just a tough one to figure out.

Years to Get Through

Nobody has said with any certainty what happened Oct. 15, 1993, when Vicky's parents rushed their injured daughter to a hospital in Liberal, Kan., about five miles across the Oklahoma border.

She was immediately flown from there to a hospital in Wichita, where an emergency room physician drilled her head open, only to close it right back up to keep the blood from spilling out.

Vicky died later that day.

Coroners also found an old injury on Vicky's head.

Mike Boring, a Guymon attorney who represents Stanley and Nellie Rinkel, the girl's adoptive parents, said Vicky may have fallen while playing football with other children. She had also once fallen from a tree house or fort and perhaps in the basement of her home.

Vicky's siblings were removed from the Rinkel home after her death, but returned within a few days. Police in Hooker and Liberal initially investigated the death, then turned it over to the OSBI four days later.

Thus, another problem.

"There was no crime scene and no crime scene processed," OSBI spokeswoman Kym Koch said. "When we don't have a chance to look at a scene, that's going to hurt the case.... They can't look at it, they can't determine if the story's falling into place. It makes it very, very difficult."

Koch also said agents have no evidence pointing to any one suspect. There is concern, she said, that a mentally retarded sibling caused the injury. But they just don't know.

"Quite frankly, at this point I'm not sure anybody needs to be prosecuted, because we don't know if it's a homicide or an accident," Koch said. "There's so many factors in this case. It's really all about evidence, if we're talking a criminal prosecution, and we have none."

Dr. Block, however, said the blow to Vicky's head would have immediately knocked her unconscious, thus narrowing the time it could have happened.

"This could not have happened at some point, a day or hour before, and then she wanders around," Block said. "This is a child who, like a boxer who gets hit in the head, crumples and falls to the floor... that's a real critical element."

The physicians also question whether another child could have delivered that harsh a blow.

"We also explained that it would have been a medical impossibility for that sibling to have done it," Stuemky said. "Either the person was too young or not in the right place."

There are claims, too, that Vicky suffered from von Willebrand disease, an inherited bleeding disorder similar to hemophilia, which prevents normal clotting of the blood - Boring said that was why Vicky had bruises all over her body.

"If you just touched her, she bruised," said Boring, who added that Vicky's biological brother has the same problem.

This disease prompted Kansas authorities to initially list Vicky's death as an intercranial hemorrhage due to trauma/von Willebrand disease.

But doctors investigating the death argue that Vicky was never officially diagnosed with that disease.

"That was placed, in my opinion, in error on a death certificate by a local physician who knew the family, but had not cared for the child while she was alive," Block said.

Jordan says there is no way to diagnose the disease with certainty once someone is dead.

Besides, Jordan said, whether she bled easily, or was more susceptible to injury, is irrelevant.

"Everyone starts waving the von Willebrand flag, but I don't think that has much to do with it," Jordan said. "The question is, was it accidental or did someone do it to her?"

Kansas eventually amended Vicky's death certificate - twice. In 1994, the manner of death was changed to unknown. In December 1997, it was changed to homicide. Among the doctors willing to testify that Vicky's death was a homicide is Kathy Melhorn, a Kansas pediatrician.

Koch, of the OSBI, also said evidence was destroyed when the Kansas physician drilled the hole in the injured area on Vicky's head. Now investigators can't tell with certainty what caused the blow. The medical examiner said such damage could hinder the investigation, but not necessarily.

"What the OSBI agent is saying is potentially correct, but not absolutely correct," Jordan said. "If it were my jurisdiction, I would try to get answers from the surgeon."

Boring said the evidence certainly doesn't point to the parents, who have since moved to Moscow, Kan., and have only begun to get over their loss.

"The facts just don't bear out that this is an abusive couple," Boring said. "This like to killed these people."

Boring blamed a former Hooker police officer, David Hansen, for fueling suspicion where there was none. The Oklahoman could not locate Hansen for comment. The attorney also accused the Child Death Review Board of "taking some cold paper facts and trying to stretch it into something.

"Making something out of nothing concerns me a great deal and I sure hope it doesn't have any negative impact on the family," Boring said. "The Rinkels had just adopted this girl and her brother, who was a special child, just months before this happened.... This is something that has just taken them years to get over."

Doing Something About It

In those years, the other Rinkel children have grown up. One is now a sophomore in college.

District Attorney Don Wood of Guymon recused himself from the case long ago and Dugger has taken over.

"I'm reasonably satisfied with the investigation that has been completed," Wood said last week. Dugger was out of state and not available for comment.

Initially, the case was hindered by having too many jurisdictions involved: two in Kansas and one in Oklahoma. Both figured the other would do something about it.

Now the case is hindered by time. The five-year statute for filing child abuse charges runs out in October.

And it appears Kansas is looking to Oklahoma for action since the alleged crime occurred in Hooker.

Stuemky said the Kansas doctors he's spoken to are "perplexed and flabbergasted by the lack of action in Oklahoma."

At the July board meeting, administrator Sheila Crow said she recently told authorities here that "if Oklahoma chooses not to do anything with this case, then Oklahoma should be ashamed."

Crow and others also said this case will set a precedent on how to - and not to - handle the deaths of Oklahoma children in the future. They also hope to establish better procedures and communication with law enforcement.

"It is unfortunate that this girl is dead," Koch said. "It may look bad to members of the Child Death Review Board and to the public (but) looking bad obviously doesn't stand up in court."

Dr. Stuemky disagrees.

"Both Dr. Block and myself have testified in a lot of these cases and the medical data is there to clearly suggest who the perpetrator was," Stuemky said. "Cases have gone to court with less."