'Since you're not going to get up, I'm not going to feed you,' Nicole Finn told daughter too weak to stand, son testifies
LEE ROOD | The Des Moines Register
Three or four days before she died, Natalie Finn became too weak to get up to eat, her brother told a rapt Polk County jury Wednesday in the murder trial of their adoptive mother, Nicole Finn.
“What did your mother do?” prosecutor Nan Horvat asked Jaden Finn, 16.
"She said, ‘Since you’re not going to get up, I’m not going to feed you,'" Jaden responded.
Nicole Finn, 43, has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and murder in connection with Natalie’s Oct. 24 starvation death and the abuse of Jaden and Mikayla, who were severely malnourished as well.
A conviction on any of the charges could earn her life in prison.
In haunting testimony on the trial’s fourth day, Jaden told jurors that his mother directed his then-14-year-old sister, Mikayla, to give Natalie a sponge bath on Oct. 23.
Until then, three adopted siblings living in Nicole Finn’s West Des Moines home — Natalie, Jaden and Mikayla — had slept on the floor of the same bedroom in their own waste for months.
A fourth sibling who was adopted earlier, Nathaniel, 16, testified earlier Wednesday that he enjoyed more privileges than the other children.
Nicole, Jaden testified, required the other three children to ask permission to eat, bathe or leave their room. But, he said, she was often “not available or not willing” when they did ask.
Jaden said he spent most of the summer of 2016 in that bedroom, leaving only once or twice. He also testified he went as long as two weeks without food.
He said he, Natalie and Mikayla used to sneak out their window to beg for money for food. But he said his mother discovered pizza boxes and other waste outside that window, so she and her ex-husband, Joe, boarded it up.
Joe Finn is also charged in the case but will stand trial separately.
Nicole Finn also installed an alarm on the three siblings' door to alert her when they tried to leave.
Jaden said he and his siblings feared what she would do if they tried to run away.
“Jaden, were you brave enough to say to your mom, ‘You’ve got to do something?'” Horvat asked, referring to Natalie’s deteriorating condition last October.
“No,” he answered.
Was Mikayla? Horvat asked.
“No.”
Natalie's last night alive
On Oct. 24, Nicole Finn sent Nathan, then 15, to school and kept Jaden at home with Mikayla, who hadn't been enrolled in school for months.
Jaden said Nicole had Jaden and Mikayla take showers, and gave them breakfast outside on the patio.
“Why outside?” Horvat asked.
“I don’t know,” Jaden answered.
At some point, Nicole gave the teens blankets and set up a space heater in their bedroom because “Natalie was very cold,” Jaden said.