Convicted Baby Killer Is Sentenced to Life in Prison

A Lancaster man was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for sexually assaulting and then killing a 13-month-old girl.

Robert Brian Patalsky, 26, had been found guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances that could have resulted in the death penalty. But the San Fernando Superior Court jury that found him guilty recommended a life sentence without parole because Patalsky, a former carpet cleaner, did not have a prior criminal history and the killing was not premeditated.

Judge Ronald S. Coen imposed the sentence recommended by the jury.

The toddler, Brianna Lee Schmidt, died Nov. 30, 1991, after she had been left by her mother, Patalsky’s girlfriend, in his care while she went shopping. At one point in the day, Patalsky rushed Brianna to a neighbor’s house, saying he had found her in a playpen, covered in vomit and breathing erratically.

Medical examiners later determined, however, that the baby had been raped and sodomized and that she had died from violent shaking.

Patalsky testified during the trial that he did not kill the infant. But on a taped statement made to police he could be heard to say, when it was played in court for the jury, “If it happened, I did it. I was the only one there, but I didn’t do it.”

In his closing argument at the trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz Jr. described the attack on the infant as “unspeakable.” During deliberations, one juror had to be replaced by an alternate because he was too emotionally distressed by the evidence, according to Foltz.

Foltz had sought the death penalty for Patalsky, who was eligible for it because of the special circumstances that the killing was committed in conjunction with acts of rape, sodomy and child molestation.

Brianna’s death was one of seven killings of infants and toddlers in the Antelope Valley over a 14-month period in 1991 and 1992, which authorities said was done by their parents or guardians. The deaths raised awareness among community leaders regarding the severity of child abuse problems in the area and led to calls for expanded services and information programs.

Investigators said many of these deaths, including Brianna’s, were linked to adults’ use of the drug methamphetamine, commonly called speed.