Emergency workers testify in trial of parents in death of adopted son, 5

Wendy Ruderman

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Five-year-old Jacob Lindorff was lying on his back in the living room. His pale, lifeless body was clothed in nothing more than diapers and a pair of socks. His parents were nowhere in sight, according to court testimony yesterday.

"I would expect any parent to be really nervous and scared and to be by the child," testified firefighter Jeff Wargo, the first emergency worker to arrive at the Lindorff home the night Jacob died, Dec. 14, 2001.

When questioned by the defense attorney representing Heather G. Lindorff - the Franklin Township mother accused of killing the son she adopted from Russia two months before his death - Wargo acknowledged that the Lindorffs may have been the people standing outside the home who frantically flagged him down when he accidentally drove past the house.

On the first day of witness testimony in the Lindorff trial, the prosecution weaved a picture of a callous mother who abused her child to the point of death, while the defense depicted a "soft-hearted" parent, one just as much a victim as her son.

"This is as big a tragedy for the Lindorffs as it is for anyone else," defense lawyer Stephen Patrick told jurors during his opening statement yesterday. "You have a child who was basically getting ready to celebrate his first Christmas in this country and never made it. That's terrible. That is horrendous."

The boy, Patrick argued, was beaten by his biological parents and later by other children at his Russian school.

The prosecution contends, however, that Heather Lindorff repeatedly abused Jacob in the two months after his adoption, including a fatal blow to his head, while the boy's father, James E. Lindorff, 54, did nothing to help his son.

"The bottom line, with all of these injuries . . . there was no medical treatment for this child - none whatsoever," Assistant Gloucester County Prosecutor Mary Pyffer said.

Heather Lindorff, 39, is charged with first-degree aggravated manslaughter and two second-degree crimes, aggravated manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child. She and her husband are charged with child abuse, a fourth-degree crime. They are being tried together.

Stephen Kernan, the lawyer representing James Lindorff, said Heather Lindorff took Jacob's older brother to the dentist on the day Jacob died. She asked the dentist to examine Jacob and his twin brother.

The dentist "found that they were normal, healthy 5-year-olds," Kernan told jurors.

The state's first witness, 911 dispatcher William Barnett, said he received the call from the Lindorff house saying Jacob had suddenly "stopped breathing." Barnett testified that Heather Lindorff's responses to his questions "just didn't sound right."

Heather Lindorff's voice sounded breathless but relatively composed on the 911 tape, which was played for jurors. She first told Barnett that Jacob's brother alerted her that the boy had a tantrum earlier in the evening. She later said Jacob threw a temper tantrum after she told him "no" and "he didn't get his way."

"She was talking in circles," Barnett testified, though he acknowledged under defense questioning that it would be normal for a 911 caller to be so upset that she couldn't think clearly.

Four emergency workers testified they noticed severe burns on the tops of Jacob's feet after his socks were removed. Three of them also noted several bruises on his body.

Paramedic Tom Widener said the blistered burns "looked like someone took a potato peeler to the top of his feet."

Widener said Heather Lindorff told him Jacob burned his feet when he stepped into a hot tub. Yet Ion Chuang, the emergency room doctor who pronounced Jacob dead at South Jersey Hospital Systems/Newcomb Division in Vineland, disputed Heather Lindorff's version.

Chuang testified the burn patterns were symmetrical on both feet, as if someone placed him in a hot tub. It was unlikely a child would jump into the tub with both feet, he said.

"If you place a child in the water, aren't there going to be burns on the soles?" Heather Lindorff's attorney questioned.

"Not quite," replied Chuang, who explained that if the child was dangled, his toes and then the tops of his feet would be burned. "The soles of the feet are extremely sensitive. You would try to protect them. You wouldn't go down into something hot flat-footed."

Throughout the day, Patrick suggested that the blisters on Jacob's feet could have been caused by ill-fitting shoes or even "severe sunburn," as one witness described the burn.

Chuang said Jacob, who was already dead when he arrived at the hospital, had "blood underneath the whites of his eyes."

"That tells there was some type of traumatic event," Chuang said. Under questioning from Patrick, Chuang acknowledged that the blood in Jacob's eyes could have been the result of a fall and not a direct blow to the head.

Chuang said he noted bruises that appeared to be a few days old on Jacob's scalp, face, back and abdomen.

Widener, the first paramedic to arrive at the Lindorff house, said he noted bruises around both of Jacob's eyes, injuries that caused broken blood vessels in his eyes.

Contact staff writer Wendy Ruderman at 856-779-3926 or wruderman@phillynews.com.