Lawyer Ties Twins’ Deaths to Boyfriend

The attorney for a young woman accused of killing her twin infants by leaving them in a hot car for five hours last July placed the blame squarely on the woman’s boyfriend as her trial began Monday.

But prosecutors say Beverly Jean Ernst, 26, had been warned twice on other occasions after leaving her babies in her car unattended that it could be dangerous for them.

Ernst faces two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of felony child endangerment in the death of Adam Ray and Ashley Rachelle, who were 3 months old when they died of heat stroke inside her car last July 20.

Prosecution and defense lawyers agree that the babies were left alone in the car about 7 a.m., when Ernst and boyfriend Scott Morrow went inside a storeroom where he was living on Euclid Avenue in Garden Grove. They also agree that it was past noon, after both of them woke up from five hours of sleep, that they ran to the car and then called paramedics.

Deputy Public Defender Dennis P. O’Connell painted a bleak picture of Ernst’s life at the time and said she entrusted Morrow to watch the children while she slept “for 15 minutes.”

“Instead, Mr. Morrow himself goes to sleep; he doesn’t wake Beverly up in 15 minutes,” O’Connell said. “She woke up (past noon) and screamed, ‘Damn you, Scott, why did you let me sleep?’ ”

O’Connell said that Ernst was living with her mother in Anaheim when the twins were born on April 27, 1986, but that her mother had told her she would have to move out soon. Ernst then went to live with friends but was being forced by their landlord to leave, O’Connell said. Ernst was in the process of trying to find a place for her and the twins to live when she went to see Morrow at the storeroom about 3 a.m., the morning of the twins’ death, he added.

According to testimony at an earlier hearing, Morrow, Ernst and a friend, Greg Alfadly, then went to a coffee shop in Anaheim until close to 7 a.m., when Morrow and Ernst returned to the storeroom.

O’Connell said Ernst did not want to go in but Morrow coaxed her to take a short nap, with the promise that he would watch the children, who were still in the car.

At a preliminary hearing last October, Morrow testified that he did not remember that Ernst went into the storeroom with him and could not remember for sure if he had promised to watch the babies. He answered “I don’t remember” to many key questions. He did remember waking up and seeing her in bed next to him.

Morrow worked for Leonard R. Wosic, who was starting up a janitorial supply firm in that building and let Morrow sleep there nights.

Wosic, the prosecution’s first witness Monday, said he came into the store just after noon on the day the children died and saw Morrow and then Ernst wake up. But Wosic said Ernst did not scream anything about her babies for possibly another 10 minutes. Wosic said there was a short conversation after Ernst got up, then another conversation when she told Wosic that she knew somebody who wanted some janitorial supplies.

Ernst, who was released from jail after the incident without bail, sat with her head down, her long brown hair covering her face. Throughout the proceedings she wrote almost constantly on long sheets of yellow paper. The only time it was possible to see that she was visibly upset was when Superior Court Judge Jean H. Rheinheimer read to the jurors that she was accused of killing her children and also causing them “unjustifiable physical pain and mental suffering.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade told jurors that medical evidence will show that the infants died no later than 10:30 a.m., nearly two hours before Ernst and Morrow ran to the parking lot to try to help them. Wade said they died of heat stroke.

Wade also told jurors that when Alfadly showed up at the storeroom about 3 a.m., he noticed the infants unattended in the car at that time, too, and that Morrow and Ernst were inside. Alfadly testified at an earlier hearing that they did not come out for about 20 minutes.

Wade told jurors that he would present evidence to show that Ernst’s brother and a friend had scolded her on separate occasions about leaving the children in the car alone during hot weather.

Ernst’s trial is expected to continue at least another week.