Mother Charged With Murder in Fire That Killed Her 3 Children

A woman whose three young children were killed in a Huntington Park apartment fire, a tragedy that drew a communitywide outpouring of sympathy and money, was charged Tuesday with murdering the youngsters by deliberately setting the blaze.

Joann Parks, 25, who was arrested at her job near St. Louis, pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder with a special circumstance of arson, which could make her subject to the death penalty if convicted, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Dink J. Bozanich.

Handcuffed and wearing a navy blue jail smock, Parks was smiling when she entered the courtroom, but quickly drooped her head during her brief arraignment in Southeast Municipal Court in Huntington Park. She is being held without bail at the Sybil Brand Institute.

Her arrest on Oct. 23 capped a “lengthy, difficult investigation,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jacqueline Franco. Investigators refused to speculate on a motive.

The cause of the April, 1989, fire was traced to living room extension cords that had been “purposefully cut with a knife” four times and wrapped around thick polyester drapes, court records said.

Investigators studying the route of the flames determined that another fire was touched off by “application of open flames” to debris in a bedroom, the documents stated.

A closet had been blocked by a clothes hamper during the fire, preventing the escape of one child whose body was found crouched inside, according to the records.

Parks had said after the fire that she was awakened by her children’s screams and tried in vain to rescue them. She escaped through a window. Her hand and face were burned.

Jessica Amber Parks, 1, and her sister, Roann, 2, were found in one bedroom. Ronald Edwards Parks III, 4, was found in the closet.

No charges have been filed against Parks’ husband, Ronald, 45. According to friends, he is en route to Los Angeles from St. Louis, where the couple has lived since March.

Investigators became suspicious after receiving telephone calls from several of the Parks’ friends and former neighbors.

A year before the Huntington Park blaze, the family was burned out of a rental house in Lynwood. While talking about that fire to neighbor Kathy Dodge, Parks once commented, “If Ron had come home five minutes later Jessica would be dead and we’d be rich,” according to court documents.

Dodge told authorities that the children were not kept clean, that she once saw Jessica eat dog food off the floor and that she had seen Joann give the child large doses of cough medicine. Franco, in one court document, concluded that the children were victims of child abuse.

The deaths of the three toddlers drew sympathy from many throughout the Southeast community. The couple was deluged with gifts, cards and money. Ronald Parks’ co-workers from a Fontana ice cream company donated $5,000. Members of the Christian Science Church of Pico Rivera, where the family worshiped, set up a special account to accept the gifts.

“People were really moved by this,” said Bell City Administrator John Bramble, whose in-laws, John and Helen Tolle, donated the children’s cemetery plots. “The officers and firefighters were desperate to get the kids out of the house.”

Paul Garman, a Christian Science practitioner who said he is a close friend of couple, described them as “sincere, good people. . . . We are trusting in God to lead her out of this.”

Joann Parks had been working as a caretaker at a Christian Science nursing home near St. Louis, where the couple had moved to be near Ronald Parks’ ailing father, Garman said. Administrators at the home said the pair was quiet and kept to themselves. Neither talked of the fire or death of their children.