AZ mom kills 7 year old dtr. on directive from God
KAFKA
Apache Junction, AZ-- Seven year old Jessica (Downer, by newspaper
accounts) or (Helm, by TV accounts) was fatally shot & left in the
desert between Apache Junction & Superior Arizona by her 25 year old
mother, Barbara Downer. The mother initially said that her daughter had
disappeared & a massive air & ground search ensued. Her boyfriend
notified police after Barbara made some strange statements implicating
herself, & after he noticed that his gun was missing. The mother was
arrested by Apache Junction police and made statements that she had
killed her daughter because God told her to. She led police to the
body, which had been dumped in a 200 mile area of desert between the 2
towns. Later TV news interviews showed her denial of her initial
religious claims. Her 4 year old son was turned over to grandparents
for care. Her boyfriend has not been interviewed, but news reports
claim that he is distraught. It is not clear whether he is the
biological father of the slain girl.
Malificynt
Broken bond
What makes a mother kill her child?
By Jim Walsh and Judi
Villa
The Arizona Republic
May 14, 1998
In one week, Barbara Downey gave up smoking, quit drinking, started reading the
Bible and then, police said, killed her 7-year old daughter.
Downey shot Jessica Helms, a first-grader, on Tuesday afternoon, wrapped the
girl's body in a white tarp and dumped it in a desert wash in foothills of the
Superstition Mountains near Apache Junction, police said.
After reading the Bible for about a week, "in her mind, it wasn't right to have
a child out of wedlock," said Lt. Brian Duncan, an Apache Junction police
spokesman.
"She indicated that God spoke to her and this was something she had to do," he
said.
But Downey, 25, disputed the police's version of her motive, which was based
upon police interviews with David Ladd, her live-in boyfriend.
"God is coming," Downey said after she left Apache Junction Justice Court,
following her initial appearance on first-degree murder charges before Judge
Corwin Brundrett on Wednesday afternoon.
"I did this for myself," said Downey, who clutched a red Bible moments earlier
during the brief court proceedings. "God didn't tell me to do it."
When asked to cite the Biblical passage that inspired the killing, she replied,
"None."
On Wednesday morning, Downey, also the mother of a 4-year-old boy, calmly led
police to her daughter's body.
Downey admitted killing Jessica, Duncan said, and displayed no emotion about
her daughter's death after her arrest Tuesday night.
"She feels comfortable that this is what she was led to do by the word of
God," Duncan said. "She wasn't upset at all."
Michael Brad Bayless, a criminal psychologist, said most women who kill their
children fall into three categories: They have severe personality disorders and
become so concerned with themselves that the children get in the way; they are
psychotic; or they have lives clouded by drugs and getting high again becomes
their main focus.
Murders by mothers, he said, still are not commonplace.
"Rarely do you come into a situation where the mother is wanting to kill her
child," Bayless said. "Normally, they will give it away or say they're coming
back for it and they don't."
But the Valley has a growing list of mothers who have taken their
children to horrific deaths.
In the past decade, according to authorities, children have been strangled,
stabbed, executed, thrown off a 20-story building and
burned to death by their mothers.
"We think mothers won't do such things, but they do do that," Bayless said.
Bayless said such killings tend to draw particularly angry reactions from
society, which can't fathom how an innocent child could be deserving of such a
brutal death.
"It breaks a basic trust that you're supposed to be a caretaker. You're
supposed to be the insulator for this child, and you end up killing them,"
Bayless said. "It angers people."
When men kill children, society tends to think of them as mean, but when women
"break that sacred bond" between mother and child, an insanity defense is often
considered, Bayless said.
"You tend to viscerally associate how you feel about your children and assume
that's how other people feel about their children," he said. "And they don't."
Downey's boyfriend became suspicious about her after she started reading the
Bible about a week ago and then began making statements about killing Jessica,
Duncan said.
Ladd became concerned Tuesday afternoon when he discovered that Downey had
left their small house and that his handgun was missing, Duncan said. He then
learned that Downey
had checked Jessica out of Four Peaks Elementary School early, at 1:15 p.m.,
for no logical reason.
After searching in vain for Downey and Jessica, Ladd called police shortly
before 3 p.m. Jessica was last seen alive, in her mother's car, shortly after 3
p.m. by a family friend.
Downey was arrested by police at 5:30 p.m., when she returned to her house in
the 1800 block of East 18th Avenue.
But Duncan had no explanation for why Ladd did not call police earlier to
report his girlfriend's ominous statements about killing her daughter.
"It would have been nice," he said. "Someone could have gotten her some help."
But Duncan added that he does not want to second-guess Ladd.
"He knew her better than we did," Duncan said. "Maybe he just thought
everything would be OK."
Jessica's violent death and Downey's arrest shocked Jerry Stevens, a neighbor
who knows the family.
"I've never seen her have a mean bone in her body," Stevens said. "To have
something pop up like that, it's very shocking."
Stevens said Downey seemed like a loving mother who was very devoted to her
children.
"She never seemed liked that kind of person" who could murder someone, he said.
"I've never seen Barbara raise a hand at those kids. Never."
Stevens, who owns a minifarm, said Jessica often would play at his house -- she
loved watching his horses, chickens, goats and pot-bellied pig.
"She was a sweetheart, very outgoing, very friendly," he said. "She rode a bike
a lot."
Jessica, a blonde, seemed like a very happy child, Stevens said.
Tom, another neighbor who declined to give his last name, described Downey as a
"good person and a good mother" and said he was flabbergasted by the murder.
"She quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol last week," he said. "She
wanted to improve her life."
Court records indicate that Downey was arrested in February 1996 on a warrant
for possessing less than 2 pounds of marijuana in Mesa in July 1993. The case
was dismissed in July 1996 after Downey successfully completed a court-ordered
drug diversion program. She does not have a felony record.
Duncan said Downey was never arrested in Apache Junction on drug charges and
that there is no suspicion that Jessica's murder was influenced by drug use.
Police also learned from Downey's relatives and friends that she has no known
history of mental problems.
Jessica's death even upset police officers conditioned to dealing with the
worst that society has to offer.
"Anytime you have to deal with a child's death, you can't get used to these
things," Duncan said. "It's pathetic that someone in that frame of mind would
do something to an innocent child like this."
A picture of Barbara Downey and one of her daughter, Jessica Helms, can be
viewed at:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/0514mom.shtml
glas
I guess she missed the part of the Bible where it says "Thou shalt not
kill"....
glas
KAFKA wrote in message <355A7EC6...@kooltie.com>...
Firefly192
Did this remind anybody else of the film "The Rapture" ?
--Steph
