Spouse Is Key Witness Against Wife in Murder Case

Through the first six years of their marriage, Jeffrey and Tani McCollough believed they would never be able to have children. And then--unexpectedly, almost miraculously--she became pregnant.

But, according to testimony Friday in Los Angeles Municipal Court, the couple’s joy at starting a family was dimmed by her overwhelming anxiety that she would fail as a mother. It began when she was pregnant and continued after the birth.

In the end, Deputy Dist. Atty. Karen L. Tandler alleges, Tani McCollough’s fears became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On Nov. 23, 1994--10 days after she gave birth--Tani McCollough allegedly smothered baby Colin, wrapped him in a blanket, laid him in his cradle, jumped out a bedroom window and threw herself from an overpass onto the Ventura Freeway.

An elfin 31-year-old who appears half her age and walks stiffly from the injuries she received in her fall to the freeway, Tani McCollough was charged earlier this month with murdering her infant son.

But the cause of the baby’s death remains a mystery. The Los Angeles County coroner could not rule out two causes: suffocation, which is homicide, and sudden infant death syndrome, which is a natural cause of death.

Because an autopsy failed to determine exactly what caused the baby’s death, Jeffrey McCollough is the most crucial--and reluctant--prosecution witness against his wife.

Details of the family tragedy began to unfold Friday at a preliminary hearing before Judge Katherine Kennedy-Powell. The source of most of those details was McCollough, first through his statements to police, and then through his own words on the witness stand.

It was McCollough who discovered his wife missing and his son cold and turning blue in his cradle in the family’s two-bedroom apartment in Burbank. He dialed 911 and tried to resuscitate the infant--just as he had learned in the class he took with his wife at Tarzana Medical Center.

Later, at the emergency room in St. Joseph Hospital, Jeffrey McCollough talked to Police Officer Reeve Rickard, the officer testified.

At the time, McCollough knew only that his son wasn’t breathing and his wife was missing. But, the officer testified, he was already piecing together the clues.

“If she did this, I hope she dies,” McCollough blurted out, according to Rickard’s testimony.

McCollough also told Rickard about a disturbing conversation he had had with his wife two days earlier, after coming home from work and finding her “with that look in her eye.”

He told the officer he asked her what was the matter. She refused to answer, explaining: “I can’t tell you. You’ll hate me.”

After McCollough prodded her, she confessed that “I’ve had bad feelings about the baby. I’ve thought about smothering the baby, and then killing myself.”

On the witness stand Friday, McCollough contradicted the officer, recalling that the conversation with Rickard occurred en route to the hospital.

McCollough reluctantly became a witness against his wife after receiving a grant of immunity.