Conflicting Stories Hamper Hearing on Fatal Beating

Joey Phelps was a smart 3-year-old, fond of Sunday comics and deft at operating a videocassette recorder to view his favorite “Care Bears” and “He-Man” movies.

A week before Christmas, the precocious blond was brutally beaten to death in his Sylmar apartment in an attack that a coroner likened to “being hit by a truck.”

A neighbor recalled that, for more than an hour in the early morning of Dec. 18, she heard “very loud and violent” noises emanating from the apartment where Joey lived, sounds that led her to think furniture was being upended. At some point during the “thumping, heavy crashing and banging,” a child whimpered briefly, the neighbor said.

Sometime during that period, authorities allege, Joey was killed. What they don’t know is who killed him.

Contradictory Stories

The effort to identify the killer is under way in Van Nuys Municipal Court, but seven days of testimony have been dominated by contradictory stories from the people who might know the answer.

According to Los Angeles police, three people acknowledge that they were in the Foothill Boulevard apartment sometime after 1 a.m. on Dec. 18--Joey’s mother, her live-in boyfriend and a baby sitter. None admits having heard or seen anything to indicate that Joey was being attacked.

The baby sitter, George Vick of Sylmar, testified at a court hearing last week that he left a healthy Joey with the mother’s boyfriend shortly after midnight. Vick said he then drove to pick up the mother from work at a Chatsworth graphics research firm, returned her home about 1 a.m., and left immediately, without looking in on Joey.

The boyfriend, musician Andre Avila, 33, told police that he went to a store after Vick left, and returned home to find the tearful mother with the lifeless toddler in her arms, investigators said.

Confronted by Boyfriend

In her account of events, the mother, Debra Meyer, 35, testified this week that she took a shower while the two men talked in the living room. Later, after Vick had left, she was confronted by her distraught boyfriend, carrying the dead boy in his arms, she said.

Meyer and Avila drove the child to Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills, where he was declared dead on arrival at 1:56 a.m., police said.

A coroner’s official said Joey was pummeled in the course of a few minutes, most likely between midnight and 1:35 a.m.

But, based on the neighbor’s testimony that she heard a child crying after 1 a.m., police believe they can narrow the time of death to sometime after then, Detective Ed Fitzgerald said.

Baby Sitter Not Charged

The baby sitter, whose story police say they believe, has not been charged with any offense.

Meyer and Avila have been charged with felony child abuse, on a prosecution theory that, regardless of who beat Joey, each had to have known and permitted the attack. Both have steadfastly denied any awareness.

Until someone steps forward as an eyewitness, prosecutors are left with only circumstantial evidence. To date, that evidence has been insufficient to charge anyone with the more serious offenses of murder or manslaughter, prosecutors said.

The preliminary hearing in the case against Meyer began Jan. 28 in Van Nuys Municipal Court and is expected to conclude today. At that time, Judge Terry Smerling will decide if the prosecution has presented sufficient evidence to hold her for trial.

Avila’s preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin Feb. 26 in the same courtroom. He was released from County Jail on Jan. 7 after posting $25,000 bail.

Meyer, who is being held at Sybil Brand Institute because of an inability to post the same bail amount, chose to testify in her own defense, a highly unusual step at the preliminary hearing stage of a criminal case.

In two days of sometimes tearful testimony, she described her son as an advanced 3-year-old, a child who would neatly fix his bed each morning and retrieve the daily newspaper from the front of the apartment. Joey operated a VCR on his own, and entertained himself by thumbing through the Sunday comics, Meyer said.

Joey’s father, Raymond Phelps, lives in Modesto, police said.

Meyer admits that she has told conflicting versions of what transpired the night of Joey’s death. In explaining her inconsistencies, she testified this week that Avila, who had moved in with her only two weeks earlier, coached her on lying in her first interviews with police.

‘Better Stick With Story’

Meyer said Avila told her what to say, then warned: “You better stick with the story or they’re going to get you for the murder of your son.”

In her first few accounts of the evening, Meyer told police and friends that she came home about 1 a.m., kissed her son good night, showered, then looked in on the boy, only to find him dead.

Meyer said Avila explained to her that it was important to say that she found the child, arguing that it would look suspicious if she admitted she had deviated from her normal custom of kissing Joey good night after coming home from work.

The point is critical because Meyer’s attorney, Robert Zeller of Alternate Defense Counsel in Van Nuys, is expected to argue that Joey was killed before Meyer came home from work and that she did not see Joey until Avila carried his body from the boy’s bedroom.

Severely Bruised

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rebecca G. Omens said evidence has shown that Joey had been bruised severely at various times since September, during a period when Meyer and Avila were dating but not living together.

Last fall, Meyer told a co-worker that Joey suffered from a rare blood disorder that caused his skin to discolor, the employee testified.

Meyer admitted this week that she lied about the blood disorder, but said she did so because the co-worker was “nosy” and kept inquiring why Meyer had recently been tardy for work. Meyer said she thought the co-worker would “get off my back” if the woman realized that her son was ill and had to be hospitalized for a blood transfusion.

Meyer testified that, with each passing day, she remembers more details and is better able to clarify what happened the night Joey died. Her earlier memory was obscured, she said, by medication she was taking to calm her.

But her recollection falls short of identifying the killer.

“Did you ever intentionally hurt Joey?” she was asked on the witness stand this week.

“No,” she replied.

“Do you have any direct knowledge of who beat Joey?”

“No.”