Child’s Murder in Minnesota

Siegel’s series on the murder of Dennis Jurgens was illuminating and deeply affecting. I wonder how many more children have been killed by abusive parents who were never called to account.

In the mid-1960s, while I was living in a small town in southern Illinois, I served on a coroner’s jury in the case of a baby who died after what his parents described as repeated falls. A pediatrician who testified showed X-rays which revealed multiple fractures in differing stages of healing, injuries which the physician said could not have been caused by the number and kind of falls described. After considering the X-ray evidence and the testimony of witnesses which included the parents and the pediatrician, the jury ruled the death homicide. However, the investigation was dropped, and no charges were ever filed. I have always felt that someone quite literally got away with murder, the murder of an innocent child, a case that would surely have been pursued vigorously had the evidence pointed to anyone outside his family.

MILDRED L. BENNETT

Waldron, Ariz.