Baby-Sitter Gets 1 Year for Giving Lethal Mix of Medicine to Baby

A North Hollywood woman who gave a lethal home brew of medicines to twin baby boys, killing one of them, was sentenced to one year in jail on Tuesday by a judge who said the defendant’s drug addiction impaired her judgment and led to the boy’s death.

Melvine Kaiserauer, 43, also was placed on probation for five years and warned by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Darlene Schempp to avoid misuse of codeine and other prescription drugs.

Schempp said 14-month-old Christopher Collins “died a tragic and unnecessary death” because Kaiserauer mentally “was off someplace else, and she won’t acknowledge that.”

The judge agreed with the defense that Kaiserauer probably acted out of maternal concern for Christopher and his brother, Brandon, and had no intention of hurting them in the Feb. 20, 1991, incident.

Paramedics who rushed to the Kaiserauer home were unable to resuscitate Christopher but saved his brother, who made a full recovery, authorities said.

In October, a jury convicted Kaiserauer--who had been baby-sitting the boys without pay as a favor to their father--of manslaughter, two counts of administering a controlled drug to a child and two counts of child abuse.

She could have been imprisoned for 11 years. With credit for time served since her conviction, Kaiserauer could be released in about four months.

“Her drug addiction is what killed the baby,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth A. Loveman said. “Her judgment was impaired.”

Although Kaiserauer gave the babies drugs without intending to hurt them, Loveman said: “She acted in a reckless and careless manner, and that’s a crime. You just don’t give codeine to babies.”

Kaiserauer, who said only a few words in her sentencing, maintained in interviews with psychiatrists from the Probation Department that she thought she was giving children’s Tylenol in liquid form to the babies in an effort to “get their fevers down.”

But in a tape-recorded interview she gave police shortly after the boys were rushed to a hospital, Kaiserauer admitted that she had given the boys a mixture of codeine and Tylenol because it had worked on another baby she often cared for. Jurors said they relied heavily on the tape in convicting Kaiserauer.

Kaiserauer’s attorney, Marvin L. Part, sought to elicit sympathy from jurors by depicting the babies as neglected by their father, Roger Collins, who became a sole parent in 1990 on the death of the boys’ mother in an automobile accident.