DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Highland Falls, New York - 2005)

Custodial father CHRISTOPHER RHODES was eventually convicted of murdering his seven-year-old daughter.

http://www.recordonline.com/index.html

January 29, 2005

Mom says family kept Jerica away
By Howard Altman
Times Herald-Record
http://us.mc654.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=haltman@th-record.com

Syracuse – Lisa Mason is getting ready for a trip to see her daughter for the first time in five years.

She is crying because when she sees little Jerica Rhodes after the three-hour drive from her home in Syracuse, she'll be looking at her daughter in a coffin.

Thursday morning, 7-year-old Jerica was found stabbed to death in the boys' bathroom of the Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Highland Falls, where she wasa first-grader. Thursday night, Jerica's father –27-year-old Christopher Rhodes – was charged with second-degree murder.
"My baby was beautiful," Mason says yesterday, barely audible through moans of grief. "She was smart. So smart."

As she cries, Mason says that the horror of Jerica's death is compounded by her long estrangement from her daughter. She blames the separation on the Rhodes family, who are influential in both Highland Falls, where Chris' father, Linwood Rhodes Jr., was once police chief, and the City of Newburgh, where Linwood was a detective.

"The family kept me away from her for so many years," Mason says.

Lisa Mason says she met Chris when they were growing up in Highland Falls, a bucolic little villagehard by the Hudson River, home to the U.S. MilitaryAcademy at West Point. It was the beginning of a longand tempestuous relationship.

By the time they were 15, the relationship had turned sexual, says Mason, now 26. But it was never good.

"Me and Chris were unstable," she admits.

When they lived in the City of Newburgh in the mid-to late 1990s, Mason said, Chris Rhodes would frequently choke and hit her.

"He was very aggressive – to show me my place," she says.

The abuse started even before she became pregnant with Jerica, Mason says.

The couple's on-again, off-again relationship continued, with Mason eventually moving into an apartment with Rhodes in Highland Falls. Mason claims Rhodes continued his violence against her until Highland Falls police arrived one final time at their home.

Mason claims that Rhodes took Jerica's birth certificate, ripped it up and flushed it down the toilet.

"He did not want proof that I was the mother and that Jerica was born in Bridgeport, Conn.," she says.

Mason says police did not arrest Rhodes. Instead, she says, they took Jerica.

Police Chief Pete Miller did not return a detailed phone call seeking comment on Mason's claims.
Linwood Rhodes Jr., Chris Rhodes' father, angrily dismissed Mason's charges. At a news conference, he said it was Mason who who cut off contact, not the family.

Mason says she surrendered custody of Jerica voluntarily, thinking that it would be only temporary.

Mason again breaks into tears.

"He used his influence with the police," she says,bitterly. "His father was the chief of something. He always used his father's name."

Over the years, Mason says, she would send cards,letters and gifts to her daughter at the Rhodes family home in Highland Falls, where Jerica lived after the family gained custody. Mason says she made an effortto reach out every Dec. 10, Jerica's birthday. But the cards and letters and packages werereturned, unopened.

"They wouldn't let me see her," she says. "Theywouldn't let me even send her gifts."

The last time she saw Jerica was in 2000, when she arranged a meeting with Chris' brother, Trevor Rhodes. Mason says she wanted to introduce Jerica to her sister, India.

"We met at a mini-park in Highland Falls, but it turned out to be a big fight when Chris found out and showed up. Then his parents showed up," she says. Mason says her last memory of Jerica is seeing Chris' parents drag her away.

The phone calls started coming in Thursday morning from friends, informing her that Jerica had been killed. Late that night, state police asked her to goto the barracks in Marcy, near Utica, for questioning. She was told that Chris was being charged with second-degree murder.

"I just wanted to know why? Why? If she was beingso well taken care of, how did the family allow thisto happen?" she asks.

As she prepares for the long drive to Highland Falls, Lisa Mason can no longer contain herself.

"Chris was very violent and abusive. He hurt me alot. I ran. He told me if I left him, I would never see my daughter again. I guess he kept his promise."