Natalie Finn's family waited 15 minutes before 911 call, dispatcher testifies

LEE ROOD   | The Des Moines Register

Nicole Finn performed chest compressions for roughly 15 minutes on her daughter Natalie before one of her teenage sons called 911 the night Natalie died from starvation last fall in West Des Moines.

A paramedic said he could detect only a faint whisper of a pulse in Natalie's neck by the time he arrived at the scene on Oct. 24, 2016. She was on the floor in an adult diaper, her jeans pulled to her knees. Her pale skin was cold.

The first day of Nicole Finn's trial on murder and kidnapping charges included searing images and testimony for the Polk County jury of five women and nine men.

Nicole Finn is accused with her ex-husband of severely abusing her adopted children, denying them food and water without her approval and keeping them virtual prisoners in their West Des Moines home.

A series of medical professionals testified for the prosecution, including three nurses who treated Natalie's emaciated younger siblings during their long stay at Blank Children's Hospital.

Defense attorney Jennifer Larson urged jurors not to judge how the 43-year-old single mother parented compared with their own families or those of their neighbors.

Instead, she asked them to consider how Finn's judgment might have become foggy as she struggled with health issues, little support and the behavioral problems of four adopted children with mental health issues that worsened as they grew.

"It's not a time to say, 'I wouldn't do that,'" Larson said.

But Polk County prosecutor Bret Lucas painted a picture of a hellish atmosphere in the divorced mother's home — one that grew increasingly life-threatening over the course of 2016.

Nicole, he said, required her children to ask permission to eat or drink anything or go to the bathroom.

She insisted Natalie switch from public school to an alternative high school over school officials' objections, and eventually pulled Natalie and her sister Mikayla from school altogether.

The mother, Lucas said, took punishment to extremes.

"Even to this day, it's not clear to (the children) what they could have done right in the defendant's eyes," Lucas said. 

Natalie Finn had no fat and almost no muscle when police and emergency responders arrived the night of Oct. 24, Lucas said.

When one of Natalie's brothers called 911, she lay dying, choking on her own vomit.

Emergency dispatcher Bryant Voss testified that he questioned why someone would wait so long before calling 911.

But Voss also acknowledged upon cross-examination that the time that passed as described by the teen might not have been accurate, given the emergency.

And he said Nicole Finn appeared to be doing her best to follow his over-the-phone CPR instructions.

Nicole Finn told rescue workers that night that Natalie was anorexic, according to witnesses.

At her trial, Nicole Finn sat largely expressionless while listening to testimony, frequently whispering in the ear of her defense lawyer.

Dr. Lydia Holm, a pediatrician at Blank, testified she was shocked at Natalie’s appearance when the teen arrived at the hospital in cardiac arrest. She was filthy and her smell was "almost intolerable."

Natalie’s body looked “like skin stretched over bones and almost white in appearance,” Holm said. “Her hair was soaking wet, smelling like urine.”

“She was so emaciated that I thought she must have had some horrible, underlying condition like cancer,” Holm testified.

Holm said she thought Natalie was dead. But after chest compressions were performed again, she had a faint pulse again.

Holm gave Natalie three drugs to jumpstart her heart. Natalie was moved to intensive care just after midnight.

“We basically tried everything that we could to save her, but she was not able to be saved,” she said.

Holm said Natalie’s adult diaper was soiled when she got to the hospital, but the paramedic testified it was dry when he arrived at the house.

When the defense asked about that discrepancy, Holm said: “It’s not uncommon for someone to expel feces at the time of death.”

Nurse tears up at sibling’s condition

Adopted siblings Jaden, 15, and Mikayla, 14, were admitted Oct. 24 looking pale, emaciated and listless, nurses who treated the teens testified.

Both were incontinent, had swollen lower legs and feet, and had infected wounds on their hips and elsewhere.

The teens were so thin that nurses could see the outlines of their spines.

Shift nurse Heather Halaska said Mikayla walked with a hunch and had bed sores. Her blood pressure fluctuated when she stood because of poor blood flow, she said.

“I kind of had to steady her and hold her up,” Halaska said.

Pediatric nurse Emily Henkenius testified that Jaden seemed "almost used to being in his own urine." The nurse began crying when describing how ravenous he was at the hospital.

“He and his sister would make hot cocoa with whip cream in the middle of the night. He was just hungry all the time.”

Henkenius testified that when she told Nicole Finn that Jaden behaved well, Finn responded: “That’s not what he’s like at home.”

Mikayla and Jaden still have scars more than 13 months after the night Natalie died, Lucas said.

Nicole Finn's trial is expected to continue through next week. The trial of the girl's adoptive father, Joseph Finn, has been postponed until Jan. 8.

He and Nicole Finn divorced in 2011.