Woman Who Killed Infant Son Allowed to Get Mental Help on Outpatient Basis

A Superior Court judge Friday ignored a recommendation that Sheryl Lynn Massip be confined to a state mental hospital and ordered her to undergo at least a year of outpatient therapy to determine whether she has recovered from a psychosis that led her to kill her infant son two years ago.

Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald appeared to have based his unexpected ruling on an 11th-hour disclosure that a Los Angeles County man in circumstances similar to Massip’s had been allowed to undergo outpatient therapy at a clinic in Fullerton, contrary to what was described as established procedure in Orange County.

Under those procedures, psychologists and an administrator for county mental health programs testified, they are required by law to confine and evaluate for at least six months anyone found guilty of certain violent crimes by reason of insanity.

The only facility designated as appropriate for such confinement--even if the person had shown significant progress toward recovery--is Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County, they said.

Exception to the Rule

The psychologists, during a lunch break in the court proceeding, however, checked and disclosed that they had found an exception to that rule, which involved a man who had been found not guilty of assault by reason of insanity.

The man, they said, had been undergoing outpatient therapy in Los Angeles County and then was transferred in 1980 to an outpatient clinic in Fullerton.

“If we can accept transfers from Los Angeles” into the outpatient program, “we can accept this woman,” said Fitzgerald.

The judge’s decision stunned the 24-year-old La Palma woman, who said later that she was prepared to be sent to a mental hospital.

Massip said she intends to get a driver’s license and look for a job as a beautician.

Asked if she planned to have more children, Massip responded, “Absolutely not. That’s a very futuristic question at this point.”

National Attention

Her case attracted national attention because of her contention that she was suffering from a severe case of post-partum depression--or “baby blues”--in April, 1987, when she ran over her 6-month-old son with the family car, then tried to cover up the killing.

A jury last year found her guilty of second-degree murder. But Fitzgerald, in an extraordinary action in December, set aside that verdict and ruled that Massip indeed had been insane at the time of the killing, and therefore was not responsible for her actions.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas J. Borris, who prosecuted Massip, said after Fitzgerald’s ruling that the judge’s action on the jury verdict is in the process of being appealed. He does not know if Friday’s ruling also will be appealed, he said.