| Subscribe Now |
![]() |
|
| Weather |
Bloomington-Normal, Illinois
|
| Home |
| NewsMonday, November 27, 2006 10:41 PM CST |
Massey denies withholding Hamm statement
DECATUR — Amanda Hamm told police her then-boyfriend held the door of her sinking car shut as her 3-year-old son struggled to escape, an officer testified Monday at Hamm’s murder trial. The revelation came as prosecutors spent the day highlighting what they said were her conflicting accounts of the day her three children drowned in Clinton Lake. At times she said it was an accident, and at others she blamed former boyfriend Maurice LaGrone Jr., police have said. In another development Monday, DeWitt County Sheriff Roger Massey denied withholding from the defense a handwritten statement Hamm made. The state also rested its case Monday. Hamm, 30, is on trial on nine counts of first-degree murder in the Sept. 2, 2003, drownings of Christopher Hamm, 6; Austin Brown, 3; and Kyleigh Hamm, 23 months. LaGrone, 31, was convicted of murder in April and sentenced to life in prison. State police officer Mark Murphy testified Monday that Hamm changed details of her account during the more than five hours he and two detectives spent with Hamm. That Sept. 22, 2003, interview, done while she was a psychiatric patient at St. Mary’s Hospital, was the final time Hamm spoke to police. In that statement, Hamm offered incriminating statements about LaGrone’s failure to help her save the children. At one point, she said, LaGrone prevented Austin from opening the car door. Murphy said that statement was personally troubling to him. “I lost my attention briefly. I thought of my own kids,” said Murphy. During the hospital session, Hamm recanted portions of her statement, a development Murphy admitted was frustrating to police. Hamm denied later in the interview that she knew LaGrone had a plan to kill the children. Murphy quoted Hamm as saying, “If I had known, I wouldn’t have gone to the lake.” Hamm voluntarily answered questions seven times for police beginning on Sept. 2 and ending on Sept. 22, 2003, when she was a patient at the Decatur hospital. In other testimony, Massey denied that he deliberately withheld a handwritten Hamm statement from the defense. In questioning by defense lawyer Steve Skelton, Massey acknowledged that Hamm had written a statement to police on Sept. 17, several hours after she finished a one-hour interview that was audiotaped by police. Massey read to the jury the one-page statement in which Hamm maintains LaGrone parked the car facing the water on a boat ramp. She said she told her boyfriend to “throw it in park or something” as the car went quickly down the ramp and into the water. Hamm wrote that LaGrone told her he couldn’t change the car’s gear. He then opened the drivers’ door and exited the rolling car, ignoring her repeated pleas for help in getting the children out of the back seat, she said in her statement. “He put his hand on the gearshift. I thought he was going to put it in park,” Hamm wrote in the statement. Skelton noted in his questions to Massey that LaGrone’s attorneys received the document during the pretrial discovery process when potential evidence is shared with opposing counsel. “Were you trying to hide it from me?” Skelton asked the sheriff. “Absolutely not. We wanted everyone to be on the same page,” said Massey. The state ended its case Monday afternoon after 11 days and 40 witnesses. A defense motion for a directed verdict was denied by DeWitt County Judge Stephen Peters. He said the jury must determine the credibility of conflicting statements from Hamm and other witnesses about what happened at the boat ramp. The defense will call two experts to the stand today. Texas psychologist Mark Cunningham will testify about Hamm’s ability to respond to the emergency situation and Richard Ofshe of California is expected to testify about involuntary statements people may give to authorities. Skelton said LaGrone will not testify until next week. |
|
||||||
|
![]() ![]() |
|
Top of Page | Home | News | Sports | Free Time | Life | Money | Nation/World | Opinion | Blogs/Columns | Archives | Site Map | RSS
Copyright © 2008, Pantagraph Publishing Co. and Lee Enterprises. All rights reserved. | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
|