Mother Is Still Held as Officials Probe Twins’ Deaths in Car

As Orange County prosecutors wrangled Wednesday over the fate of Beverly Jean Ernst, a mother whose twin infants died of apparent heat strokes in a closed automobile, the woman’s brother said that the deaths were an “accident” and called her “a very good mother.”

Steven Ernst, 27, appeared at his sister’s arraignment on a probation violation on a separate matter in North Orange County Municipal Court and said tearfully, “She would never have killed her babies . . . she loved those babies.”

However, Ernst said Wednesday that he knows little about what happened at a Euclid Avenue store in Garden Grove on Sunday, when his sister’s two infants died after apparently being kept for what police said was at least an hour inside her car, where the temperature rose to an estimated 120 degrees.

Police have said that only one window in the car was cracked open about an inch while Beverly Jean Ernst, 25, visited with the part-owner of a janitorial supply store. She has yet to be charged by the district attorney in the case and has refused to talk about the matter with reporters.

During Wednesday’s hearing, a visibly distraught Ernst uncovered her face only long enough to gaze at her brother, who used sign language to say “I love you.”

She mouthed back, “Get me some money,” and then a bailiff ordered them both to stop talking.

It was Ernst’s first contact with any relatives in four days. She had talked to her brother only once since the deaths, he said, during a phone call she made to him from the Garden Grove police station Sunday.

Her brother recalled the conversation:

“She said, ‘Steve, the babies are dead.’ There was no emotion. She was in shock, I could tell.”

As the unrelated probation hearing proceeded, the mother clutched her body and shielded her face from media cameras.

Judge John W. McOwen set her bail at $5,000--and Steven Ernst vowed to bail his sister out by this morning. After the hearing, she was transported back to the Orange County Jail.

Meanwhile, Orange County prosecutors said Wednesday that they were still investigating the infants’ deaths. Prosecutors said that they had charged Ernst with the probation violation to give themselves more time in the case.

By law, authorities would have been forced to release Ernst from the Orange County Jail on Wednesday--where she has been held in lieu of $25,000 bail--because they have yet to charge her with any crime. She was arrested Sunday on suspicion of manslaughter and cruelty to children resulting in death.

Prosecutors said that Ernst’s arraignment in North Orange County Municipal Court on the charge of violating her probation on an unrelated misdemeanor conviction was a legal maneuver to keep the woman in custody until a decision is reached on whether to file a criminal complaint against her.

However, they were only partially successful.

Prosecutors, for example, wanted Ernst charged with the probation violation because a judge, by law, could then have ordered her held without bail.

That would have assured authorities that Ernst would remain in custody while they decide whether to file criminal charges that she left the 3-month-old babies unattended last weekend. They said that decision might not come before next week.

However, Judge McOwen set Ernst’s bail at $5,000, ruling that it was an appropriate amount given the circumstances. He scheduled a hearing Friday on the case.

Wednesday’s complaint was filed on the grounds that Ernst broke the terms of her probation--which state that she is not to break the law--by virtue of her arrest Sunday.

Steven Ernst said that his sister’s arrest last December stemmed from an argument between her and their mother. A neighbor notified police, and he said that his sister told an officer who arrived that they could settle the problem themselves.

When the officer allegedly insisted that she “open the door or he would break it down,” Steven Ernst said, “she unlocked it and charged him when he came in. . . . It wasn’t smart but she was real emotional at the time.”

He said their mother, Mildred, did not want Beverly Ernst arrested “just for an argument,” but the officer himself filed the complaint.

Ernst was placed on an informal three-year probation after her conviction last March for resisting arrest.

Asked why prosecutors have not yet decided whether to prosecute Ernst in the deaths of her children, Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade said, “We don’t want to make a snap decision. Hopefully, within a week I’ll be able to think about it dispassionately.”

E. Robert Goss Jr., the deputy public defender representing Ernst, argued unsuccessfully that the probation violation charge be dropped.

Holding Ernst without bail on the probation violation charge, Goss argued, would be “putting the cart before the horse” because she has yet to be charged with the alleged crime that is the basis for the violation.

But Mark A. Logan, the assistant city attorney of Anaheim who is prosecuting the probation case, requested that Ernst be held without bail on the probation violation charge because he claimed that her work as a self-employed house cleaner is irregular, that she has no regular address and has been “kicked out” of both her mother’s home and that of a friend and now lives out of her car. Thus, he said, she might not return to court.

Goss disagreed, telling Judge McOwen that his client has lived most of her life in Orange County, that she is a self-employed house cleaner staying with friends in Irvine and that her former husband believes she would appear on any charges.