Mom of Dead Newborn Charged With Murder : Crime: Jackie Anderson was arrested after her baby was found in a car trunk. She also faces charges in 1992 child-abandonment case.

Prosecutors filed a murder charge on Tuesday against a Fullerton woman whose newborn son was found dead in the trunk of her car last week and, in an unusual move, also charged her in a 1992 child-abandonment case authorities did not pursue.

Jackie Lynn Anderson, 36, appeared in court for the first time since her arrest Saturday, a day after her mother discovered the newborn’s body in a cardboard box while searching the car. An autopsy determined the child was born alive, but the cause of death is still unknown pending scientific tests that will take weeks.

New details emerged Tuesday indicating that Anderson, who has a history of giving birth at home and then quickly relinquishing the children, has repeatedly slipped through a county social welfare system designed to protect children but apparently not set up to address her problems.

Social service officials said Anderson was not offered aid such as parenting classes or alcohol rehabilitation programs because she gave up each of her three living children. In a system designed to help problem parents, Anderson was, in a technical sense, not a parent at all.

If Anderson had abused or neglected her children while they were in her custody, the county Social Services Agency--through the courts--could have required her to seek help that might have prevented the death of her fourth child, said Sylvia Wall, acting director of the Children’s Services division of the Social Services Agency.

“If we have the children in protective custody, then often we attempt to provide social services that will assist the parent to become a better parent and to be able to take the child back,” Walls said. “But she did not want the children back.”

Anderson was not charged in 1992, when she left a 1 1/2-day-old girl--still uncleaned after her birth--in bed while she went to work. The girl, first discovered by a roommate, survived after paramedics cleared her lungs. Social service officials on Tuesday said the girl was adopted by an Orange County couple after spending at least a year as a ward of the court.

Court records show, however, that the district attorney’s office has unsuccessfully sought more than $2,700 from Anderson in child support owed to the county for that daughter.

Anderson already had given up for adoption a child born in her home in 1991. And her oldest child, then 11, was living with relatives.

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A social worker who remembered the 1992 adoption of the baby girl Anderson allegedly abandoned said the procedure was routine, and that Anderson “came off as . . . very normal.”

“It was a real quick and easy adoption,” the social worker said. “She had given up a child before and knew what to do. And at the time the adoption was finalized, you’d never have known the child had had such a difficult beginning. She was a happy child.”

Even if Anderson were deemed in need of counseling, social service workers could only recommend she seek help, not force her to do so, Wall said. The social worker said she did not know whether that recommendation was made.

Barbara Talento, director of the Health Care Council of Orange County, called Anderson’s case a social breakdown that reaches far beyond the county Social Services Agency.

“This woman clearly, all along, presented a picture of a human being who had little thought about [life after] pregnancy,” Talento said. “But all along the line, people saw that she got pregnant, didn’t want the children and did not step in.

“Everybody’s going to say ‘it’s not my job,’ and so because it was never anybody’s job, here is this child who was born alive and made dead.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. David Brent said Tuesday that authorities do not believe Anderson intentionally killed the child. He said he will likely seek a conviction for second-degree murder, which carries a maximum prison term of 15 years to life. A felony child-neglect charge stemming from the 1992 case carries a penalty of as much as six more years in prison.

The second-degree murder approach is based on a theory of “implied malice.” Because of the earlier alleged abandonment, Anderson should have known she was putting the child at grave risk, Brent said. He said it remains unclear whether the newborn was alive when put in the trunk.

“Someone who has placed a child in danger before, does that make them more aware? Does the person realize the risk and ignore it?” Brent asked. “The theory here is that there were certain duties owed the child that were neglected. That’s the minimum.”

Prosecutors took the unusual step of filing charges nearly three years after they dropped a case once considered too weak to pursue. The statute of limitations in the neglect case would have expired at the end of this year.

Anderson was arrested for child endangerment on Dec. 7, 1992, after the newborn girl was discovered in her bed.

Fullerton police referred the case to the Orange County district attorney’s office, but the case was sent back to police for further investigation, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton, who heads the child-abuse unit. Middleton said the case was never brought back for prosecution.

Attempts by authorities to determine what happened have been hampered because the police investigator has retired. Police officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday on why the case was never brought back to prosecutors.

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Brent said the latest case helps support an allegation that Anderson was neglectful in 1992. In turn, he said, the earlier abandonment could suggest a pattern and support a charge that Anderson should have known her actions were putting the newborn son in danger.

“We know more now than we knew then,” Brent said of the decision not to prosecute after the 1992 incident. “What was insufficient is [now] sufficient.”

Police said Anderson--unmarried and jobless--had a drinking problem and strained relations with her mother, Peggy Anderson. Peggy Anderson found the baby while searching her daughter’s car for alcohol, police said.

The younger Anderson’s arraignment in Municipal Court in Fullerton was postponed until Sept. 1. Municipal Judge Richard E. Behn set bail at $500,000.