What to do with 11 yo accused killer
Mke
Justice blurs when accused killer is 11
With plea deal likely soon, judge must ponder whether boy can be saved
Sunday, November 09, 2003
BY DORE CARROLL
Star-Ledger Staff
Like most 11-year-olds, Aaron Kean spends several hours a day in a brightly
lit classroom, studying fifth-grade math, reading and history.
When he's not studying, there are books to choose from a shelf on the back
wall -- among them, titles from the ghoulish Goosebumps series for
adolescents.
For exercise, Aaron plays basketball or runs laps in the gym, marking his
progress on a map of the Appalachian Trail.
When his day is done, Aaron returns to an 8-by-10 cinder-block room at the
Middlesex County Juvenile Detention Center.
An 80-pound blond boy with sullen eyes, Aaron is accused of fatally striking
3-year-old Amir Beeks in the head with a baseball bat after they left a
Woodbridge library on the afternoon of March 26. He could become the
youngest child convicted of murder in New Jersey.
Since his arrest, officials have adjusted the juvenile system to accommodate
him. He meets regularly with a child psychiatrist. When he behaves, a guard
unlocks a blue toy box stocked with plastic cars, dominoes and puzzles
purchased just for him.
But no one is quite sure what to do with him.
Because Aaron is under 14, he is too young to be prosecuted as an adult. The
crime, however, is too grave to be dismissed as the act of a troubled child.
The case is expected to end soon with a plea bargain, according to several
people involved. That would leave a Middlesex County family court judge,
Roger W. Daley, to decide whether Aaron should be treated as a vicious
killer or as a disturbed child. The judge would have to decide where Aaron
is sent for rehabilitation, and for how long.
Daley will be heading into uncharted territory. In the past decade, only
five children age 14 and under have been convicted of murder or manslaughter
in New Jersey. Three were 14, one was 13 and another was 12.
"I have no real precedent to follow," the judge said in a recent interview.
Daley, a devout Roman Catholic and father of three, will consider factors
such as Aaron's upbringing and mental health, reviewing reports of his
expulsions from Woodbridge schools and abuse at the hands of his father. He
also must weigh the devastation the brutal crime brought on Amir Beeks'
loved ones.
Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan argues Aaron must be held
accountable for his actions and serve a long time in custody.
The boy's defense attorney, Alice Domm, argues he needs therapy and should
be released in a few years.
The victim's adoptive mother, Rosalyn Singleton, 38, is torn over Aaron's
fate: She wants justice for her dead child, but she has mixed feelings about
what fate his alleged killer deserves.
"I pray for Aaron," said Singleton. "I'm not a hard person. I try to think
what if that was my kid and he did that to somebody else."
THE CRIME
Aaron and Amir lived about four blocks from each other on modest streets off
Inman Avenue in the Colonia section of Woodbridge, near the Garden State
Parkway. Many of the ranch and Cape Cod homes are decorated with American
flags, and school- age children play in the yards.
Inman Avenue Park and the Henry Inman Branch Library anchor the
neighborhood, which is dotted with mini-strip malls and small office
buildings. Aaron's block, on Amherst Avenue, is separated from the park and
library by a gas station.
On March 26, when the temperature reached 65 degrees, 3-year-old Amir got
fidgety. He wanted to play outside on the basketball courts instead of
sitting quietly in the library while his sister, Krystal Singleton, 17,
searched the Internet for a part- time job.
Aaron's daily tutoring session at the library had ended early that day
because he was acting up, his teacher later told police. The teacher,
Bernadette McGrath, dismissed him around 4:15 p.m., police said.
Aaron, then 10, was playing on a computer in the children's area when Amir
wandered over to him. The two boys left a few minutes later and headed
around the corner to Aaron's house, witnesses told police.
There, authorities say, Aaron struck the 33-pound boy in the head with a
wooden baseball bat and dragged him to a plastic playhouse in the back yard
where he sexually assaulted him with an object police have not identified.
Aaron then allegedly dumped Amir's body in a drainage ditch that runs
alongside his house.
When Krystal noticed Amir was missing, she frantically searched the library,
shouting his name. Someone called 9-1-1 at 4:26 p.m., and when police
arrived, a neighbor pointed them toward Aaron's house.
Police found Amir face-down in the shallow stream, unconscious, with his
pants down. Aaron was inside his house, and his father, Kurt Kean, was
getting ready to make supper when police pounded on the front door about 5
p.m.
While Aaron was being questioned at Woodbridge police headquarters that
night, Rosalyn and Krystal Singleton were at Amir's bedside at JFK Hospital
in Edison. He never regained consciousness and died the next morning of
blunt force trauma to the head, hypothermia and drowning, according to
Assistant Middlesex County Medical Examiner Andrew Falzon.
Nurses wrapped the lifeless 3-year-old in a blanket and handed him to
Rosalyn Singleton, who rocked him for an hour, thinking about what a miracle
his short life had been.
Within hours of Amir's death, Woodbridge police charged Aaron with murder,
kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and weapons offenses. At the time,
Middlesex County Prosecutor Kaplan described the attack as "horrific" and
"senseless."
THE ACCUSED: AARON KEAN
When Aaron Kean was born on May 30, 1992, nurses as Rahway Hospital would
not let him go home until state counselors signed off on his parents'
fitness to care for him. Both his father and his mother were blind.
An aide went home with the new mother, Karen Lovich Kean, and helped her
navigate the baby's room and diaper changes.
Karen Kean was active and self- reliant, friends said. She insisted on
working for her state disability benefits and took a bus from Colonia to
Newark every morning to work at a newsstand run by the New Jersey Commission
for the Blind and Visually Impaired at the main post office on Broad Street.
After Aaron was born, Kurt Kean began working his wife's shifts at the
newsstand while she concentrated on the baby.
The new parents, both 32, had been married for six months and were living in
the modest home on Amherst Avenue in Colonia, where Karen Kean had grown up.
Karen Kean had been born blind and her blue eyes were often squeezed shut.
When she met Kurt Kean at a friend's party in South Jersey a few years
earlier, the two bonded over a shared disability: Kurt Kean suffered from
retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that took his sight gradually as a young
adult.
Karen Kean's oldest friend, Sue Ginter of Rahway, said Karen steadily got
the hang of motherhood. She called friends and relatives with questions
about Aaron's first fever and diaper rash, and labeled Aaron's clothes with
Braille tags so his outfits would match.
As Aaron grew older, Karen Kean played hide and seek with him by listening
for his muffled laughter. She sat on the stoop in the mornings with him
waiting for the school bus and danced around the living room with him after
school.
When Aaron was 5, Karen Kean fell ill with breast cancer. By the time it was
detected, the cancer had spread to her bones. She grew frail and needed a
wheelchair. Aaron still crawled into her lap, Ginter recalled, but he didn't
understand why she couldn't play with him anymore.
Karen Kean was hospitalized in the summer of 1998, shortly after Aaron's 6th
birthday. She died a few weeks later at Rahway Hospital after kissing her
son and husband good night from her bed. She was 38.
"After Karen got sick, Kurt became very bitter," said Ron Berreman, a family
friend who had a falling out with Kean a few years after his wife's death.
"He didn't handle it well. He seemed angry about it."
Father and son both grew depressed, Berreman and Ginter said. Aaron's father
caught him shoplifting a few times from the local dollar store, and Aaron
would constantly talk back to him, according to Berreman.
"I could tell Aaron was a handful, a lot for someone to deal with alone,"
Berreman said. Being blind only made it harder for Kean to handle his son.
"He (Aaron) was running circles around the guy, getting away with things
just by being quiet," Berreman said.
Kurt Kean said Aaron stole rolls of coins from his room and broke things,
including an expensive guitar string, and tried to hide them. Kean would
react harshly when Aaron misbehaved.
"If your child's bad, you take a privilege away," he said in an interview.
"If they talk back to you, you smack them. I used to smack Aaron, yeah, when
he gave me that smart mouth. What child has not got smacked across the mouth
open-hand?"
In the summertime, when everyone's windows were open, neighbors said, they
could hear the father screaming at his son.
"Everyone gets pushed to a certain point with children. You can snap," said
Dawn Nugent, a neighbor who was hired to assist Kean with household chores.
"I had seen Kurt hit him. He would corner him. Sometimes he would directly
hit him, sometimes he would miss because he was blind. He would grab him by
the arm and say, 'Next time I'm going to break your arm off.'"
Nugent said she urged Kean to seek counseling.
In the summer of 1999, Nugent said, she saw what she believed were belt
marks on the boy's face. She reported Kean to the state Division of Youth
and Family Services, but DYFS could not substantiate that abuse claim.
Nugent and other neighbors also said Aaron and his father spent a lot of
time together, going to the Woodbridge community center, where they swam and
played computer games, or walking to the stores on Inman Avenue, Aaron
guiding his father, who tapped the sidewalk with an aluminum cane. They play
ed Uno with an oversized Braille deck.
Aaron tagged along to meetings of his father's disabled group. Anita
Clavering, who presided over many of those meetings, said Aaron was always a
good helper.
"He would help pour out the sodas, set out the Cheez Doodles and potato
chips," said Clavering. "He's absolutely a wonderful young man. He's a good
kid. He's been through some rough times. Losing a parent very young is
extremely difficult."
In May 2001, when Aaron was in third grade, he showed up at school with a
bandaged cut above his eye and told the school nurse his father hit him. The
nurse called DYFS, and when a caseworker arrived at the home later that day,
Kean said the boy had fallen that morning, scratching his eyebrow.
DYFS concluded Kean had physically abused Aaron, and opened the case for
supervision. Kean began working with a counselor from the Commission for the
Blind, and a new housekeeper was assigned to the household.
Woodbridge school psychologists tried to get Aaron to open up about his
mother's death and his relationship with his father, but he refused,
according to a copy of a school report provided by his father. One
psychologist concluded in a report dated Oct. 25, 2001, that Aaron's family
was a "source of sadness and conflict" for him and that he was "emotionally
vulnerable and needy."
Another recommended Ritalin to regulate Aaron's behavior, Kean said, but he
refused.
"I don't think any kid today should be put on a second-class stimulant,"
Kean said.
More trouble followed. Aaron's classmates picked on him and cursed at him,
and he sometimes yelled back, according to the report. In the spring of
2002 -- a year before the death of Amir Beeks -- he was expelled from his
fourth-grade class at Pennsylvania Avenue School for carrying a concealed
weapon. His father said Aaron threatened to use an Allen wrench he found at
a bus stop to poke a classmate's eye out.
Aaron was transferred to Indiana Avenue School. He went on to fifth grade
there, but began getting into more trouble, fighting with classmates and
cursing at a teacher's aide. He was suspended several times and finally
expelled. A school psychologist classified Aaron as having oppositional
defiance disorder, his father said, a condition marked by hostility,
aggression and resentment.
Woodbridge officials temporarily set him up with a home- study instructor.
Beginning last January, Aaron spent two hours each day at the Colonia branch
of the Woodbridge library with Bernadette McGrath, a high school teacher.
That's where he encountered Amir Beeks.
THE VICTIM: AMIR BEEKS
Rosalyn Singleton had volunteered to adopt Amir when his mother -- a
girlfriend of Singleton's younger brother, Shawn Beeks -- threatened to
abort him.
Beeks, Amir's father, had been in and out of prison, Singleton said, and his
girlfriend did not want any more children. Singleton begged the woman not to
have an abortion and promised to raise the baby herself.
Singleton, then 34, had seen her share of struggle growing up in Irvington.
Her mother was 14 when she gave birth to Singleton, and her father died when
she was 15. Still, she graduated high school and was close to her extended
family. She had two children of her own, and raised them just a block away
from her own childhood home.
At the time Beeks' girlfriend became pregnant, Singleton was working as a
home health aide in East Orange and living in Newark with her boyfriend and
two children, Krystal, then 13, and Robert, then 15.
During the pregnancy in 1999, Singleton gave the woman money and scolded her
for smoking and drinking.
"She called me from the hospital and said, 'You had a boy! What are you
gonna name him?'" Singleton recalled.
Amir had been exposed to drugs and remained in intensive care for a month
after birth with respiratory problems. Singleton stayed at his bedside every
day at University Hospital, like a proud new mother.
As a baby, Amir was slow to develop, and DYFS arranged for a therapist to
visit Singleton's home to work on his motor skills. When he was about 6
months old, Singleton legally adopted him.
"Amir brought so much joy to my life," Singleton said. He was a happy
toddler, she said, always polite and smiling.
After Singleton's mother died two years ago and her boyfriend moved out a
year later, she and the children moved into her paternal grandmother's house
in Colonia.
There, Amir's toys quickly filled the den. He often parked himself on the
sofa with a bowl of cereal to watch his favorite cartoon, "SpongeBob
SquarePants." He was mischievous, Singleton said, tossing banana peels
behind furniture and blaming Krystal for the mess.
The little boy loved basketball and would bounce a ball that seemed too big
for him. Singleton took him roller-skating, and last Christmas she bought
him a scooter that he tried to roll out in a snowstorm.
"We laughed at him out in the back yard," recalled Krystal Singleton.
Last November, Rosalyn Singleton said, she lost her job as a home health
aide after 16 years because she was suffering dizzy spells that landed her
in the hospital, forcing her to miss too many days of work.
In March, she and the children were planning to relocate to Georgia, where
Singleton's cousin lived, to get a fresh start. They were scheduled to leave
the week Amir was killed.
Two weeks after the boy's funeral, they went ahead with the move. In College
Park, an Atlanta suburb, Singleton said she cried all the time and was too
depressed to work. She said she tried to make friends but only wanted to
talk about Amir. She said people grew tired of hearing about the story.
Since Amir's death, Singleton said, she sleeps fitfully and her eyes have
grown puffy. She lost interest in maintaining her intricately braided hair.
She and Krystal were evicted from their new apartment and in August, they
packed up and boarded a Greyhound bus for New Jersey.
Singleton is back in her grandmother's home in Colonia with Krystal and has
begun attending church services.
THE DILEMMA
When Singleton gets her chance to address the court, she says she plans to
tell Judge Daley how much she misses Amir. But she also wants to make sure
Aaron won't be locked away for years and forgotten.
"He's already so angry, he needs help," said Singleton.
The judge will have wide discretion in deciding Aaron's case because there
are no juries in juvenile court. No formal sentencing rules exist, either.
"The judge is given alternatives, recommendations from the defense and the
state," said Daley. "We're different from adult court. There is more
consideration here for rehabilitation."
The attorneys in his case have exchanged hundreds of pages of records from
Aaron's schools, his doctor, the police and medical examiner, and DYFS,
which had twice investigated claims that Aaron was abused.
A defense psychiatrist has examined Aaron and submitted a report to Daley,
and lawyers are now awaiting an evaluation from the state's psychiatrist.
None of those documents will ever become public.
Alice Domm, the public defender representing Aaron, has argued he is
incompetent to stand trial and should be treated for several years at a
juvenile psychiatric facility, according to Aaron's father. Domm has refused
to discuss the case, citing her client's confidentiality.
But Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan said punishment must be imposed
for serious crimes.
"He's facing 20 years and, preliminarily, we believe the maximum sentence
would be appropriate," said Kaplan.
Christopher Kuberiet, the assistant Middlesex County prosecutor handling
Aaron's case, said a long sentence can be reduced later if a judge decides
Aaron has made progress in custody.
"A short-term or probationary sentence can't be reversed," said Kuberiet,
the former longtime head of the county's juvenile unit. "There will come a
point when we can't legally keep him anymore."
In all likelihood, there will be a plea deal, according to Singleton and
Kean. Because of the physical evidence and Aaron's detailed confession,
sources involved with the case said there is no reason to proceed with a
lengthy and costly trial.
That only leaves the question of how long to incarcerate Aaron and where.
Juveniles convicted of serious violent crimes in New Jersey are sent to a
secure facility in either Bordentown or Monroe, where 16- and 17-year-olds
are a majority of the residents. Aaron is too young to be mixed in with
those teenagers, and the vocational training in carpentry and upholstery
would not suit a fifth- grader.
Aaron's attorney and his father argue that New Jersey's juvenile facilities
are not suited to meet Aaron's needs. They want him sent to a specialized
facility out of state with mental health programs tailored for children
between the ages of 2 and 12.
The state public defender, Yvonne Segars, said it is rare to have such a
young child in detention and rarer still to recommend an out-of-state
placement. She declined to speak specifically about Aaron's case but said it
is preferable to keep children close to their homes and communities for
treatment.
The facility proposed by the public defender focuses on education,
recreation and clinical treatment. The public defender has asked that the
facility's name and location be withheld.
"It is not at all punitive. Everything is treatment-geared," a director at
the facility said in a telephone interview. "The kids have pretty busy
schedules, with school, therapeutic groups and individual therapy. They are
monitored by psychiatrists and most are on ... medications."
New Jersey and other states often turn to private institutions to treat very
young offenders, said Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile
Law Center in Philadelphia. "State-run facilities are not equipped to deal
with kids that young."
In Massachusetts, for example, children under 13 are not even permitted in
secure state- run facilities, said Ned Loughran, executive director of the
Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators.
"It's a balancing act," said Loughran. "You have to balance the safety of
the community and the treatment needs these kids have."
Missouri is one of few states with a model program for treating juveniles,
according to experts.
"We try to create a dormitory setting, more homelike," said Mark Steward,
director of the state's youth services agency. Kids wear their own clothing,
and they tack photos, posters and their own artwork on the walls of their
open bunks.
A Missouri girl sentenced to 24 years as an accessory to murder when she was
14 earned her high school equivalency and associate's degree while in
custody, Steward said. After six years, she was on probation, and went on to
college.
Kurt Kean hopes the specialized treatment center will have the same effect
on Aaron. He hopes that one day Aaron will be able to live a normal life,
perhaps even returning to live with him in his new home, a duplex he bought
in Woodbury, Gloucester County.
Kean insists Amir's death was accidental and vehemently denies Aaron
sexually assaulted the boy.
"My son did not mean to hurt this child," said Kean. "He thought he was
scaring the kid to get the heck out of the yard."
Rosalyn Singleton said her biggest fear is that Aaron could hurt another
child if he is released too soon, and she wants him to be registered as a
sex offender under Megan's Law.
"I'm angry at him," Singleton said. "But if they just throw him in jail,
that's going to make him a hardened criminal. I think he needs psychiatric
help, wherever they put him."
tinydancer
"Mke" <Noa...@homail.com> wrote in message
news:bomq7a$cad$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1068359629242680.xml
>
> Justice blurs when accused killer is 11
>
> With plea deal likely soon, judge must ponder whether boy can be saved
>
Kean insists Amir's death was accidental and vehemently denies Aaron
sexually assaulted the boy.
"My son did not mean to hurt this child," said Kean. "He thought he was
scaring the kid to get the heck out of the yard."
I read all the way through this story only to find the fathers comments so
disturbing once again. I'm sure it must be hard for a parent to face the
fact that their child has done something so horrendous, but an attitude like
this only reinforces such atrocities.
Thanks for posting, this one reminds me of that boy some years ago, was it
upstate NY? The little boy who was walking to the park for the first time
alone, and was assaulted and murdered by that red-headed freckle-faced kid
with the big ears that stuck out. Anybody remember that one?
td
Was close to the birth Mom
I know that the system failed all the way around. When the lump was detected, Medicare/Medicaid dismissed it as part of regular labor changes. Many specialists turned their backs because the family was not able to afford out of pocket rates.
When the father tried to take over the business to help his wife during pregnancy, it was one battle after another with the NJ Commission of the Blind saying if she wasn't able to work, they would lose the business. Eventually, when she started chemotherapy, her family support could not help keep the business during her treatments and the State pulled the business from them.
A lot of things happened which contributed to Aaron acting out. It wasn't just one thing.
When Karen was in the final stages taking liquid morphine from the pain, Aaron would act out to get attention and the father would get the child out of the house to an activity. Often friends tried to pitch in as well. In the child's mind, if he acted out.. he was rewarded. When family and friends tried to intervene and correct the child giving discipline and guidelines, they were told to mind their own business. This chased many away.
Once the mother passed away, it is true. The father was depressed, and you know it affected the child. When the child was around age 3 in pre-school he was given an intervention because he set fire to his room. The police let him talk to the fire chief. This was a troubled child and the system failed him.
I know the father yelled... a lot and I would not be surprised with verbal abuse. I believe he made threats to the child about "breaking an arm", but I do not believe for a minute that he physically abused the child.
Realize the father was also in a lot of physical pain. The public bus always jumped the curb at the corner of Amhurst when it made a turn. It was a narrow intersection and depending on where traffic was positioned at the light on the main street, depended on whether the bus would jump that curb. The father was struck by a bus on more than one occasion and told it was he fault claiming he should have known the bus would jump the curb. The township failed because they refused to move the stop line back at the traffic light to ensure larger vehicles could make the turn safely without jumping the curb.
Did the child do everything the township claimed? Having known the ongoing problems that frustrated the family because of their disability, I have to wonder if it was retribution.
The child needed psychological help,especially after the mother passed. The tutor let the child leave early because he was acting up, knowing this was a problem child, without a legal adult or guardian taking over supervision. There is a legal liability there that seems to be white-washed.
It is obvious he hit the child, but the sexual assault... I have a hard time with that one.
Lots of thoughts, all I know is if the system had not failed in the detection and treatment of breast cancer, rather than pass the buck. A lot of the problems would have never arose leading to the death of the child.
