Attorneys Wrap Up Arguments in Baby Murder Case

A jury will begin deliberating this morning on the fate of Sheryl Lynn Massip, the Anaheim woman accused of brutally murdering her 6-week-old son with the family car.

Attorneys capped their closing arguments in the case late Monday, wrapping up an emotional, 7-week trial that pitted bitter testimony from Massip’s ex-husband against her own stories of hallucinations and voices telling her to “put the child out of its misery.”

The Orange County Superior Court jury of eight women and four men now will have to consider two distinct phases of the case simultaneously: Massip’s guilt or innocence in the killing of her son, and her sanity at the time of the act.

Massip’s defense attorney, Milton C. Grimes, does not deny that his client first tried to throw her newborn son into oncoming traffic one morning 18 months ago, then hit him over the head with a blunt object, and finally ran the child over with the family car and threw his battered body into a trash can.

But Grimes told jurors when he summed up his case Monday, “Sheryl Massip was insane on April 29, 1987, when she took the life of her son.”

In the course of testimony from medical experts and Massip’s friends and family, Grimes sought to show the jury that the normally calm and passive young woman suffered from postpartum psychosis, a rare maternal disorder that is thought to cause hallucinations and severe personality changes in some new mothers.

But prosecutor Tom Borris, closing out his own case Monday, told jurors that Massip became frustrated after realizing that she “bit off more than she could chew” in raising a colicky newborn who cried constantly. “This was worse than anything she ever anticipated having to deal with.”

Borris acknowledged that the “gut reaction” toward the case could be to view a woman who kills her own child as insane. But he urged each juror to “think with your head” and find her guilty of murder.

Massip’s father, Ed DeLano of Rowland Heights, who watched the entire trial from the front row along with several other family members and friends, said his daughter told him that she is glad to see the trial end.

“She’s relieved that there won’t be any more people talking about this, about whether she’s guilty or innocent.

“She’s placing her faith in God. Whichever way this thing goes, she’s got a lot of rebuilding to do with her life.”