Mother Acquitted on Postpartum Defense Will Remarry

Eight months after her stunning acquittal on charges of murdering her newborn son with the family car, Sheryl Lynn Massip is making plans to remarry.

But as hard as the 25-year-old woman tries to put her life back together, she is still confronted by painful reminders of her past.

Massip, a production worker and then an administrative secretary for the last several months at an undisclosed Orange County printing firm, was laid off last week--partly as a result, she contends, of her notoriety.

Now living in La Palma with her mother, who also works at the printing firm, Massip said the reason management gave her for the layoff--budget cutbacks--appears to have had some foundation.

But she also believes that the timing of the move, just days after word spread around the office about her identity as the woman who ran over her child and was acquitted of murder based on a defense of postpartum psychosis, may have been more than coincidence.

Massip, now using her maiden name, had worked for several months in relative anonymity at the printing firm. That was until she became the subject of sometimes-scathing office talk after an unknown co-worker tacked a news photograph of her on an office bulletin board.

A friend told her that word of the photograph and the story it accompanied were circulating at the office and that people were saying “awful things” about her, Massip said. She did not want to know details.

“Word had got around, and a lot of people just were not understanding. It caused a bit of a commotion for a few days,” Massip said in an interview.

“The whole thing upset me terribly,” she added. “I lost a lot of sleep, and I’ve had to visit my therapy sessions more often since then.”

Because Massip and those close to her would not disclose the name of her previous employer, management there could not be contacted to comment on the incident as she related it.

Massip, when contacted by The Times, was also hesitant to discuss her upcoming marriage and would not provide details. Her fiancee is a Brea chaplain who works in area hospitals and convalescent homes, but she did not wish his name disclosed publicly.

“We are not planning on children at this time,” she said. “Right now, I’m not in any frame of mind to even consider it, and (her killing of her son in September, 1987) certainly has a lot to do with that.

“I still have a lot of pain and a lot of scars from what happened 2 1/2 years ago,” she said.

Of the marriage, she said: “It is a happy event. I am getting married. I just hope that the public and the court understand that I’m doing the best I can to get on with my life.”

Her concern about public understanding underlined the intense and emotional scrutiny drawn in the fall of 1988 to her murder trial--a trial that featured tearful testimony against Massip by her ex-husband. Alfredo Massip, the father of the dead child, divorced Massip after the killing.

An Orange County jury, confronted with a defense that was the first of its kind in the state, found Massip guilty of second-degree murder.

It rejected Massip’s claim that she was haunted by delusions caused by postpartum psychosis at the time she tried to throw her colicky, 6-week-old son into oncoming traffic, then hit him over the head with a blunt instrument, and finally ran over him with the family car.

But Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald, in a shocking reversal that legal observers said was virtually unprecedented in a murder case, threw out the jury’s verdict and found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

He said she was clearly suffering at the time of the killing from postpartum psychosis, a disorder thought to cause severe anxiety, psychotic delusions and even violence in about three of every 1,000 new mothers.

In addition, Fitzgerald abandoned traditional procedure that would have resulted in Massip’s incarceration for six months in a state psychiatric facility. Instead, he allowed her to remain free while undergoing court-ordered examinations.

Attending group and private therapy sessions twice a week and taking hormone medication, Massip still suffers bouts with depression and anxiety, she and her family say.

Her engagement has raised her spirits. But as evidenced by her problems at the printing company, Massip said she is not sure she will ever fully overcome her past. “I’m coping, that’s all I can say.”