Baby Beaten With Bottle Remains in Critical Condition

A 13-month-old girl who police say was beaten on the head with a champagne bottle by her father remained in critical condition on life support systems at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana on Wednesday night, hospital officials said.

Doctors conducted neurological tests Wednesday to determine if the girl, Natalie Alexandra Lynch, was brain-dead, but the results were not immediately available, said Dr. Donald Dicus, vice president of medical affairs at the hospital.

The girl was found at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday in the arms of her mother, Helen Lynch, 35, who had been beaten to death with the champagne bottle.

The girl’s father, Joseph Peter Lynch, a 43-year-old electrical engineer, admitted to Santa Ana police later that morning that he repeatedly beat his wife and daughter with an empty bottle inside the couple’s Santa Ana condominium, police said.

Lynch remained in Orange County Jail on Wednesday. He was placed in a restraint cell because he was “violent and had been fighting with everyone,” then was moved to the jail’s medical ward for unspecified reasons, said Lt. Richard Olson, Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

An arraignment hearing on charges of murder and attempted murder that had been scheduled for Wednesday was postponed until 9 a.m. today because Lynch was “too ill to come to court,” a district attorney’s office spokeswoman said.

Friends and neighbors of the couple described Joseph Lynch as a friendly, outgoing father of three whose wife seemed reserved but was involved in church, school and social activities. A Scottish citizen with a passion for soccer, Lynch coached his oldest daughter’s team in an American Youth Soccer Organization league. He also was secretary of the condominium complex’s homeowner association board.

Helen Lynch, an Australian, was active in her daughters’ Brownie troop and took them to piano lessons and story hours at the local library. She played tennis every weekend with friends.

“We thought he was amazingly well-tempered as a coach . . . jovial . . . and very well-versed in the game,” said Sharon Portman, whose family was involved in many of the same activities as the Lynches. Portman was especially close to Helen Lynch, she said.

“They were a typical married couple,” she said. “They got along. Of course we discussed the normal things that married couples often experience--’Oh, he forgot to call me the other day when he was late,’ that sort of thing. Typical women’s discussions.”

The Lynches had two other children: Holly, 9, and Angela, 4. Both were asleep when their mother was slain. They are being held in protective custody at the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange, police said.

Portman said the Lynches had lived in Canada and Mexico before coming to the United States about 4 years ago and seemed happy here.

Helen Lynch “said that they really liked it here, and I think Joe was prone to agree,” Portman said. “She felt a great deal of warmth and sense of community.”

Another family friend, Cornel Macri, said everything seemed fine Friday night when he went to Eddie West Field in Santa Ana to watch an international soccer game with Joseph Lynch, then returned to Lynch’s condominium for drinks.

But then on Saturday, out of the blue, Lynch began talking to him about leaving for Australia for a few weeks and asked if he knew a travel agent, Macri said.

“There was something unusual about the idea,” Macri said. “Then on Sunday night he looked very depressed. I thought maybe he’d had some drinks. He’d been at a wedding; maybe he was too tired from that.”

Lynch’s behavior grew more peculiar Monday, neighbors said. Macri’s wife, Anne, saw Lynch walking toward the laundry room that afternoon and said she thought: “ ‘What is he doing? What’s the matter with him?’ He looked to me like he was a crazy man . . . insane.”

That night, Lynch arrived more than an hour late for a homeowner association meeting and looked “like he just awoke from a sleep,” Cornel Macri said. “For a while he said nothing. Then he jumped up and was almost running out the door. I laughed because it was a funny move, and made a sign for him to sit down and wait just a little bit longer. Then he immediately got up to go again and made a very strange laugh.”

That was about 10 p.m., Macri said, just a few hours before Lynch called police to his condominium and showed them the battered body of his wife and his injured daughter.

Staff writers Mariann Hansen, Lucille Renwick and Carla Rivera contributed to this story.