INVESTIGATION: 1992

After Amber was pronounced dead, officers took Christina to the police station, directly from the hospital. Christina saw David in another room as she entered. The officers kept Christina and David separate from one another, but Christina recalled the officers continually moving between the two rooms as the questioning progressed.

Questioning

Around 10 pm on April 14, 1992, a detective assigned to the case sat down with Christina. The detective interviewed Christina for over 11 hours. Her interview was not recorded and the detective took notes by hand. “I was never taped or recorded,” Christina explained. “[Y]ears later . . . they would claim I said this or that but they ‘conveniently’ don’t have a taped recording of that entire night with me.” According to the notes, the detective asked Christina about Amber’s bruising, which appeared significant in the autopsy photos. Christina explained that Amber had fallen several times in the days leading up to her death.

According to Christina, the officers also asked seemingly unrelated questions about her personal life, including if she and David had engaged in anal sex. They asked if David was sexually abusive towards Amber, or if Christina had ever allowed him to molest Amber. Christina denied that David had ever assaulted her or Amber. 

The police continued to reassure Christina that she did not need an attorney, despite Christina’s repeated queries as to whether she needed one.  Police told her that they believed David had murdered Amber. At several points, they told Christina that they believed she was protecting David by refusing to acknowledge David killed her daughter. 

Later that night, officers accompanied Christina back to her apartment to investigate further. Christina changed her clothes and the police brought her back to the station, and it was only then that they read Christina her Miranda rights and asked her to “sign papers.” Christina asked whether she was in trouble or needed a lawyer and the police assured her it was “part of the procedure” and that they needed her to sign these papers to let them go back to her house.

Meanwhile, in a different room, three detectives and a social worker from the Department of Children and Family Services (DFACS) questioned David. David’s interview was taped and transcribed. At times, the detectives seemed to indicate that they were “on David’s side,” telling David that they thought David was the “type of person” who would have helped a child in distress, reassuring him that they understood his fear over taking Amber to the doctor, and that they would “get him some help.” 

Throughout the interview, however, the detectives also repeatedly insisted that Amber had been sodomized, based on word of mouth from hospital staff. Eventually, they coerced a confession out of David that he had sexually abused Amber, despite the fact that Amber’s autopsy later demonstrated no evidence of sexual abuse. They strongly implied that David would likely face a more lenient sentence if he confessed to sexual abuse, while Christina would be stuck with the more serious murder charge.

As in Christina’s interview, the detectives asked many unrelated questions about both David and Christina’s sexual behaviors, including whether or not the pair had had anal sex, insinuating that sexual “deviancy” must have been connected somehow to Amber’s death.

David reiterated multiple times that he and Christina were the only two adults with Amber from April 10th to April 14th.  David openly admitted that many of the bruises to Amber’s face and forehead occurred while she was under his care. However, he insisted that he never hit Amber, aside from a very rare spanking on her bottom. He said that Christina spanked Amber as well, though more regularly, and that she became frustrated with Amber. He did not see Christina hit or spank Amber in the four days leading up to Amber’s death.

In direct contradiction to Christina, David insisted that it was he, not Christina, who initiated their conversation regarding whether or not to take Amber to the doctor as Amber accumulated more bruises. David told police Christina, not David, had been the one to worry aloud that the hospital would call the Department of Family and Children Services (DFACS), who would in turn take Amber away.

Susan Souligny, the DFACS social worker who assisted Christina with her transition from Ohio to Carrollton, noted in David’s interview that she thought it was out of character for Christina to express a fear of DFACS. She told David and the detectives during the interview, “I have trouble believing Christina felt like we’d take the baby away from her . . . we’ve never indicated that . . . DFACS has been helpful and a good resource for her in the past.”

Eventually, despite having briefly agreed to the unfounded “you admit to sodomy and she’ll be charged with the murder” narrative, David ended the interview by insisting that he had neither sodomized nor murdered Amber. The sodomy allegations were never raised again, especially once refuted by the autopsy report.

Evidence 

The detectives’ investigation included searching both Christina’s apartment and David’s trailer, where Amber died. In Christina’s apartment, police found a belt they believed Christina used to beat Amber. The police did not find a belt in David’s apartment. They brought the belt to the medical examiner’s office, where someone held it up next to one of the bruises on Amber’s face and took a photo. This photo would later be submitted into evidence at David’s trial. They did not test the belt for prints, and if a DNA analysis was conducted, it was not entered into evidence. Though the belt roughly matched the size and shape of one of the bruises on Amber’s face, a medical examiner testified that a flexible object like a belt could not have caused the trauma that killed Amber. Furthermore, both David and Christina confirmed that neither Christina nor Amber had stayed at Christina’s apartment (where the belt was found) in the five days leading up to Amber’s death.

In both the kitchen and bathroom trash cans at David’s trailer, police found bloody tissues, which matched Amber’s blood type, O. David’s blood type was recorded as A, and Christina’s was never tested. David said Amber used tissues to wipe blood off of her lip and chin because she had “reopened a cut” in her mouth on the day of her death. Amber’s autopsy revealed two cuts in her mouth, one on the inside of her upper lip which showed evidence of healing, and one on the inside of her lower lip which the medical examiner deemed “fresh.”

Police surveyed acquaintances and local officials for character evidence against Christina and David. The detectives created a packet of 42 statements which would later be introduced in pre-trial hearings as “evidence of similar transactions,” allegedly constituting “aggravating circumstances” that would convince a judge to sentence Christina to death. Their investigation stretched back to Ohio, digging into the old Franklin County Children’s Services (FCCS) reports filed against Christina. Our 2019 investigation determined that only three reports of child abuse were ever filed against Christina in Ohio. All three were investigated and deemed “unsubstantiated” by FCCS. 

However, the detectives took down 20 separate statements as “evidence” of Christina’s violence from Ohio. Over half of these statements were made by her abusive ex-husband, James.  Another “incident” involved an emergency room nurse claiming Christina had burned Amber, which a doctor later correctly recognized as a staph infection. Christina insists the remaining statements were made by several family members of a man on whom Christina had called police for breaking into her apartment while drunk. These family members lived in Christina’s building and called FCCS seemingly as a method of retaliation; our investigation determined that FCCS workers either did not commit these false reports to the record or officially labeled them “unsubstantiated.”

Christina had a largely positive relationship with social workers at the Department of Family and Children’s Services (DFACS) in Carrolton, who helped her sign up for benefits, secure housing, and attend parenting classes after she fled Ohio. Though we were unable to obtain official records from Carrollton DFACS, Christina claimed the majority of the statements collected against her were made after Amber’s death, and many from people who had reason to dislike her. In a 1993 letter written as she awaited trial, Christina told a friend, “there are suddenly a lot of people I never met crawling out of the woodwork to say what a terrible mother I was.” 

Charges

Carrollton police ultimately charged both David and Christina with murder and cruelty to children. In an interview with us, one of the detectives said, “One of the two had to do it. They were pointing at each other but they were the only two so we charged both of them.” In their eyes, even if only one of the suspects had struck the “fatal blow,” the other must have been guilty of cruelty to children by not bringing Amber to the hospital or calling 911 before she died. 

At David’s trial, the medical examiner who performed Amber’s autopsy testified that it would not have been “impossible” for Amber to sustain her fatal head trauma in the morning, before Christina left for Jeannie Lagle’s. However, he also said that Amber’s behavior would have only been “normal” for a maximum of fifteen to thirty minutes after receiving the cranial blow. She would have likely proceeded through grogginess, unsteadiness, possibly nausea and vomiting, and finally just wanting to go to sleep. From the beginning, David consistently stated that Amber started behaving oddly almost two hours after Christina left the home on the 14th, and went to sleep three and a half hours after Christina left. 

More than 30 years after their investigation, the detectives on the case remain unsure about who struck the fatal blow. In an interview, they stated that even if David hadn’t hit Amber that day, David should have called the ambulance given her bruising and behavioral changes. 

Of David, Det. Thomas said, “Personally I think if the jury hadn’t known that she pled guilty to homicide they would have found him guilty . . . if his jury hadn’t known she had pled guilty to murder he would have gotten life.”

Of Christina, Det. Bradley said,  “I looked at her as more guilty because she was her mother. She was the person here on this earth that was supposed to protect her . . . And if he was doing this to her baby and she knew it, then it was her responsibility as her mother to get her out of there. She’s right where she needs to be.” 

Continue to “Court Cases: 1992-1995”

Amber was admitted to Columbus Children’s Hospital in December 1988 for severe diaper rash. Christina had apparently been using the wrong kind of ointment on Amber’s rash, which caused it to worsen into a staph infection. Initially concerned that Amber had been burned, Children’s Hospital staff called Franklin County Children’s Services (FCCS).

Top Left: A doctor’s note detailing that the doctor told Christina they understood the diaper rash was not “for sure intentional” and that it was up to FCCS to determine what would happen to Amber. The doctor notes that Christina was “appropriately concerned” for Amber’s health.

Right: a doctor summarizes Amber’s safe discharge into Christina’s care in early January 1989.

Bottom Left: FCCS never filed a formal report for this incident, yet the detectives submitted the incident as “evidence of abuse” to the prosecution.