Couple Whose Child Was Slain Win a Legal Round

A Mission Viejo couple who claim they have been unfairly portrayed as suspects in their toddler’s death have won a victory in their ongoing legal wranglings with Orange County sheriff’s investigators.

Investigators have returned the passport and other immigration documents they took last summer from Feilong Wu, stepfather of 2-year-old Cecil “C.T.” Turner, whose body was found last summer near his home, Wu’s attorney said Tuesday.

Orange County Superior Court Judge David O. Carter ordered the documents returned. Today, Carter will begin hearing pretrial motions in the Wus’ suit, which claims sheriff’s investigators falsely accused them of smothering their child.

The child’s body was found Aug. 13 in heavy brush along Oso Creek, about half a mile from his home. The discovery ended a massive search that began a day earlier, when the child’s parents told authorities he had disappeared.

No one has been charged in the child’s slaying, but the Wus argue in their suit filed in May that they have been unofficially accused.

Feilong and Edith Marie Wu claim in their suit that they were subjected to hours of questioning, denied legal counsel and offered up to the media as the lone suspects in the child’s slaying. The couple also claim that detectives have ignored other leads in the case.

“The Sheriff’s Department has said C.T. was killed before the time his parents called to report him missing,” the Wus’ attorney, Jeffrey Wilens, said Tuesday. “If that’s not an accusation, what is it?”

Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Ron Wilkerson declined comment, citing the pending court case. In past interviews, though, Wilkerson has denied that the Wus were ever publicly identified as suspects.

The Wus’ lawsuit claims they lost their jobs, apartment and car after being portrayed as suspects. The suit also claims that Feilong Wu’s career as a world-class diver has been hurt because, without his immigration documents, he lost a job with the Mission Viejo Nadadores swim team and, possibly, a chance to vie for the Olympic team in the year 2000.

“There’s a deliberate effort to make [the Wus] jump through every legal hoop,” Wilens said. The investigators “are convinced these people are guilty,” he said, “and they’re extremely irked that . . . they’re coming forward to criticize them in public.”

Carter is expected to rule today on Wilens’ motion to make public autopsy reports, crime scene photos and other documents in an effort to prove the Wus played no role in the child’s death. The judge will also consider a motion by county attorneys to dismiss the suit.