UPDATE: Police doubted dad's story on deaths of children (Ridley Park, Pennsylvania)

UPDATE on dad AARON MICHAEL, who confessed to killing two of his children from earlier relationships before he murdered his girlfriend.

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2009/07/23/news/doc4a67d89aeac7b942710510.txt

Police doubted man’s story on death of children
Thursday, July 23, 2009
By ROSE QUINN, CINDY SCHARR and GIL SPENCER

RIDLEY PARK – Veteran police Sgt. Harold Snyder had his own working theory as to how infant Alijah Townes died in 2007. But without strong enough probable cause evidence for an arrest, it became a waiting game.

Gut feelings aside.“He could pull off an interview, but you knew you were talking to a weasel,” Snyder said Wednesday night, referring to Alijah’s father, 29-year-old Aaron Michael of Chester.

Stopping short of calling Michael a murder suspect, principally because the baby’s death has not been ruled a homicide, Snyder said, “Everyone just knew ...”

Police Chief Thomas Byrne, too, said though details about Townes’ death two years ago Tuesday are a little vague, certain things always stood out to him.

“He showed up at Taylor (Hospital) with the baby in the car, saying that the baby choked on French fries or something,” Byrne said, referring to Michael.“Then, he didn’t even hang around in the emergency room,” Byrne said. “To me, that was odd.”

Shortly after he hunted down his former girlfriend Andrea Arrington and shot her about 11 times late Monday, Michael bared his soul and confessed that he had killed two of his children several years ago. Arrington, 23, of Ridley Township, died Tuesday morning. She and Michael have a surviving 2-year-old son.

According to three law enforcement sources, Michael admitted in phone conversations with two friends — just before he was shot and killed by a Chester police officer — that he put plastic bags over the heads of Lamar Patrick, 4, on Sept. 29, 2005, and Alijah Townes, aged 4 months, on July 21, 2007, as they slept.

The cause and manner of the deaths of both children remain officially undetermined.

Delaware County Medical Examiner Dr. Fredric N. Hellman was asked Wednesday if his office would re-open the probe into the children’s deaths.

Hellman said he wanted to get more information and check the credibility of the information attributed to the father.“In a 4-month-old, it’s so easy to smother these children and leave no clue,” Hellman said. “If you can’t prove it, then at best you call it undetermined and leave the door open should further info come forward down the road.”

Byrne said a day or two after Alijah Townes’ death, he started getting phone calls from reporters asking about the investigation, and whether he was aware of Lamar’s death.

That’s when Snyder decided to put a call into the Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division for some assistance in the investigation, Byrne and Snyder said.

“It’s never been closed,” Snyder said of the case. “But it was never open as a homicide, either. It’s always been an ongoing investigation.“To satisfy our own records, what we’ll do now is change it to a homicide and close it out. Since we can’t arrest or prosecute, we will close it out by exceptional means.”

Snyder, a 36-year police veteran, said the Townes boy was one case that always stuck with him. He even remembered taking “a thick pile of medical records” home and showing it to his wife, a nurse practitioner.“I had her translate all that for me,” he said.

Alijah Townes was unresponsive on arrival at Taylor Hospital, Snyder recalled Wednesday.“My recollection is he was DOA (dead on arrival),” Snyder said.“(Michael) said he found him slumped down in the car seat. He said he had given him French fries,” Snyder said. “The doctor didn’t find any French fries in his throat.”

Both Snyder and Byrne remember wondering at the time who would give a child that age French fries.

Tuesday night, Tiffany Patrick of Ridley Township told the Daily Times she never believed her son, Lamar, choked on a piece of Jolly Rancher hard candy, as Michael had maintained.“I’ll never know why, but I do know how my son died,” she said.

On Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney Michael Galantino offered some insight into how difficult it is to pinpoint the cause of death in such cases.

Galantino, who sits on the county’s Child Death Review Team and the state Attorney General’s Medical and Legal Advisory Board on Child Abuse, said he had been told there was no forensic evidence found during the autopsies to make a determination as to how Michael’s two sons died.“Suffocation deaths are very difficult to determine unless there is evidence of ligature or tying as in strangulation cases,” he said.

Galantino also noted that the AG’s board, which reviews cases from across the state, has had similar cases in the past.“We receive cases that are difficult to determine,” he said. “And sadly, there have been some cases like this that have come before the board where there’s just little or no evidence as to what happened.”

In some cases, Galantino said one bit of evidence or information is eventually discovered that fits with what the investigators know and the case is resolved.

Snyder worked the Townes case with county CID Detective James DiRomauldo. He said he interviewed Michael two days after the child’s death.

According to Snyder: Michael picked up his son at the baby’s mother’s house in New Jersey. They crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge and headed to the Christiana Mall in Delaware. Michael had a photo of Alijah taken and put on a key chain for himself at a kiosk in the mall. At some point on the way back to Michael’s home in Pennsylvania, they stopped at McDonald’s.

“He said he was on Chester Pike and drove to the closest hospital,” Snyder said.

What exactly happened and where, Snyder can’t say.“I’m sure he drove to Taylor Hospital because no one knew him there,” Snyder said, offering more into his working theory. “He had to distance himself from Crozer. That’s where the other boy died.”

Snyder said the specifics of Michael’s story all checked out.“The kid looked all right in the photograph,” Snyder said.

He even spoke to the woman who snapped the shot, and she said nothing seemed odd at the time.“The way he told the story, it’s plausible,” Snyder said. “The father’s driving, the car seat is in the back. He turns around and the baby’s head is down.”

As for the plastic bag, Snyder said, “It wouldn’t take long. You wouldn’t have to put it on tight either, just drop it over. The baby would keep breathing. The oxygen would run out.”

Said Snyder, “The thing with a homicide is that when you get a working theory, sometimes you just have to wait. With a homicide, you do have the luxury of time because there is no statute of limitations.“If you jump the gun, you never get a second chance,” he said, referring to double jeopardy.“Let’s say Michael didn’t die,” Snyder said. “What he told his friends, all that would have been information we needed to make the next move.”