Mother Pleads Guilty in Beating Death of Girl

A La Puente woman who paddled her 5-year-old daughter to death to “strike the devil out of her” was allowed to plead guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder in exchange for her testimony against two other women who she said were involved in the beating.

Deborah Elizabeth Reynolds, 33, will serve 15 years to life in prison, but will have a chance for parole.

The plea agreement was struck shortly before Reynolds was to go on trial, along with Julia Ann Olivas, 36, and Esther Rebecca Griggs, 43. All three women were charged with murder.

Reynolds was arrested in July 1996, after she called 911 and told Covina police she had killed her daughter. Investigators found the girl, Breeann Spickard, on the floor of a bedroom in a Baldwin Park apartment complex owned by Griggs and rented by Olivas.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Slavitt told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles Horan that Reynolds’ testimony will strengthen his case against Olivas, who prosecutors charge was the most culpable of the three.

In his opening statement to jurors after Reynolds’ case was resolved, the prosecutor said evidence will show Breeann was beaten July 4 until her buttocks bled, all at the urging of Olivas and Griggs.

All three women had children, Slavitt said, who were often punished by being spanked with a wooden paddle.

“And what’s their motive . . . ?” Slavitt asked the jury. “They claim that they were striking the devil out of her.”

Olivas’ attorney, Pat Thomason, told the jury that evidence will show that Reynolds alone was responsible for Breeann’s death--that she pummeled her child bloody during a methamphetamine-induced hallucination.

Thomason said his 180-pound client did spank Breeann at one time, but did not participate in the fatal beating, or throw herself on the child and jump up and down, as the prosecutor alleged.

Reynolds, the defense attorney alleged, implicated Olivas “to justify in her own mind the murder of her daughter.”

Defense attorney Joe Shemoria told jurors they will see no evidence that his client, Griggs, beat Breeann. He said Griggs was involved only by association.

Shemoria said Reynolds’ account of the incident doesn’t implicate his client.

In addition to murder charges, Griggs and Olivas face allegations that the killing was committed in the course of torture.

Breeann’s older brother, now 8 years old, testified that his sister was beaten in a bedroom of Olivas’ apartment.

The boy said he heard Olivas and Griggs, while waiting in the living room with the other women’s children, telling his mother to beat Breeann harder.