On tape, aunt recounts abuse

By Crocker Stephenson

It starts with the sound of handcuffs unlatching and the scraping of chairs on a police station floor: the three-hour recording of Crystal Keith's confession, which prosecutors played for a jury Tuesday in the Christopher Thomas reckless homicide trial.

Jurors winced, rubbed their faces and shook their heads as they followed along with the 117-page transcript of the interview with detectives.

Keith, 24, charged with beating 13-month-old Christopher to death and torturing his 2-year-old sister for months, sat at the defense table seemingly unable to lift her head as the recording recounted one horrific incident after another.

"So I couldn't feed him and he wouldn't shut up," Keith told Milwaukee police Detectives James Hutchinson and Jeremiah Jacks about the beating she said she gave Christopher on Nov. 10.

"It made me madder so I started punching him in the legs. And he got louder and then I start slapping him in the face. And I, um, put his legs, I grabbed him by the legs and I put him down on his - you know, how you put a body weight on his head? I did that. And then he was still going and then I slapped him again and that's when I saw his eyes turn over."

The police interview occurred the night of the beating. Christopher died at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin the next day.

Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Christopher Happy told jurors Tuesday that Christopher suffered more than 47 injuries. His arm was torn away from his shoulder. His other arm was broken. He had been punched in the face so hard his teeth bruised his inner lips. His brain had hemorrhaged and his eyes bled, a condition Happy said is seen only in car accidents, falls from great heights and child abuse.

Jacks: "Would it cause him to cry when you hit him?"

Keith: "Yeah."

Jacks: "How did you feel?"

Keith: "Relieved."

Later in the recorded interview, Jacks asks: "You felt relieved?"

Keith: "Like he wouldn't cry so much and I would pop him and stuff and when I knew he would shut up 'cause of the poppin', I felt like I could go on with my day. He shutted up."

Christopher and his sister were removed from their mother's home in March 2008 and placed with the Keiths, the children's aunt and uncle, by the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare in June.

The Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare was responsible for sending caseworkers to the Keiths' home at least once a month. At first, the Keiths also brought the children to an agency for weekly visits with their mother, though the Keiths stopped without explanation in October.

While a state Department of Children and Families report says that caseworkers noticed no physical abuse in the Keiths' home, Crystal Keith told the detectives she began to abuse Christopher's sister within weeks of her arrival.

Keith: "I started hitting her before that because she was, um, she like she don't understand why I was so frustrating with her. Like you tell her to do something she wouldn't understand and I would get mad."

She began by slapping the girl's hands. By July, she was slapping, pinching and punching her.

Jacks: "What about August?"

Keith: "That's when the hairbrush came."

Jacks: "And you used to hit her with a hairbrush where?"

Keith: "On her hands and feet."

Jacks: "From doing what?"

Keith: "Um, like if I tell her to sit down and she'll move."

Keith told the detectives she hit the child with the brush on her knuckles and feet. The skin on her hands began to peel away, and her toenails began to crumble. Keith said she stopped hitting the girl with the brush because it no longer seemed to hurt her.

Keith: "It got so bad with the feet that I wouldn't let my husband or anybody see her feet. So I left socks on her all the time. One morning . . . I had her in the kitchen on the pot (child's toilet) and she was turned wrong so it made me mad so I smacked her in the face so bad that her eyes were closed."

After the beating, Keith said, she wrapped the girl's head in a scarf, placed her facing backward on the toilet, made her put her head in her lap and left her in that position for the rest of the day.

Hutchinson: "How long that was it that she stayed like that?"

Keith: "Till the nighttime. Till I was ready to put her to bed. And I would go in there and feed her and everything."

In October, Keith said, when the girl seemed immune to punches, she began twisting and folding her limbs against their joints. Soon, the girl could not lift her left arm and Keith broke her leg.

At one point, Keith said, she was angry with the way the child had used the children's toilet. Keith placed the toilet in the bathtub, the girl on the toilet, then ran scalding water over her feet.

Jacks: "How hot did you think the water is?"

Keith: "I saw smoke."

On Nov. 10, after Keith beat Christopher, she sent her husband, Reginald, with Christopher's sister to a relative's house, then called police.

Milwaukee police Officer Monique Foster, an eight-year veteran, was the first to arrive. She wept Tuesday as she told the jury about placing her face near the child's face to check for breathing.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams said later that it was the first time he had seen a police officer cry at trial.