Couple Gets Custody of 'Sold' Baby
Scott Minerbrook
Melville Newsday
October 4, 1985
In a bittersweet end to a peculiar saga, a Texas state District Court judge yesterday allowed a Huntington couple to keep the 10-month-old baby girl whom they allegedly bought in June from a Dallas attorney for $14,000.
Acting in state District Court in Dallas, Judge Craig Penfold awarded physical custody of Rachel Marie Hagge to Virginia and Neil Dauler-Phinney of Huntington after the infant's poverty-stricken biological mother agreed not to contest a legal adoption by the Huntington couple.
Mary McKnight, the court-appointed attorney for the child's mother, Tammy Hagge, 20, said the agreement came after she and her client met with the Dauler-Phinneys and their lawyer in Dallas late Wednesday and decided to sign away legal custody of the baby. Yesterday, the Dauler-Phinneys filed a formal petition for adoption. "I can see no real obstacles to a successful outcome," McKnight said.
"We had to decide whether we wanted to carry on a fight that would certainly have put the child's legal status in limbo while Texas welfare people cared for her," McKnight said. "We could have kept them from adopting her. But they could have kept us from getting the baby back . . .
"After all, it was clear that they could take better care of the baby than Tammy," who lives with her parents in Grand Prairie and who, McKnight said, has an IQ of "about 58."
Until last week, Texas authorities did not know the whereabouts of the child, and were acting to comply with the mother's wish to regain possession of the infant. During legal proceedings, authorities said, they learned that the child's mother had entrusted care of the baby to friends, Larry and Donna Blanton, who sold the blue-eyed, blonde girl to Dallas attorney Robert I. Kingsley for about $1,210. Kingsley, they said, set the $14,000 price paid by the Huntington couple. The Blantons were indicted in August along with Kingsley and his wife, Mary Zoe, on felony charges of purchasing and selling the child. Kingsley is under inves tigation by Texas authorities for involvement in as many as 20 other such illegal placements, authorities say.
During the hearing yesterday, Virginia Dauler-Phinney, 30, testified that she and her husband, Neil, 53, had been trying for six years to adopt a child through public sources when they received their first unsolicited contact from Kingsley in August, 1984. She said she later learned that Kingsley had found out about their adoption attempts through personal friends in Huntington who were making arrangements for a private adoption with Kingsley's aid.
On June 20, Kingsley's wife called to say that a 6 V -month-old baby was available for adoption.
"He gave us two hours to decide if we wanted it," she said, and named a new price: $14,000, of which $9,000 was to go for the baby's medical expenses and $5,000 for legal expenses.
After deciding to dip into a recent $9,500 inheritance from a relative, the couple drove to Dallas and arrived at Kingsley's doorstep.
"Enough with the formalities," Kingsley said, according to Virginia Dauler-Phinney. " Go meet your daughter." She said the baby "was in a crib on the living room couch."
The Dauler-Phinneys took the baby home on June 23. Despite their demands, she said, Kingsley has never provided them with an accounting of his fees.
Tammy Hagge's attorney, McKnight, said in an interview that the $9,000 Kingsley was to pay for medical fees represented a "vast overstatement" of the $1,326 that was owed. "It is still unpaid," she said.