Woman Says Fear for Life Led to Plea

The trial of a Hollywood man charged with the beating death of his 2 1/2-year-old son opened in dramatic fashion Tuesday with the defendant’s former girlfriend telling the jury she once pleaded guilty to the boy’s killing because she feared for her life.

Dressed in a pastel green suit with her blond hair pulled in a tight bun, Eve Wingfield, 25, painted David Helms, 37, as a controlling and menacing figure who had threatened to kill her if she told authorities what she knew about the time period when Helms’ son Lance was fatally beaten--an issue at the heart of the trial.

“He said the police were going to harass us. They were going to try to make us go against each other, that we had to stick together,” Wingfield said in nearly two hours of emotional testimony.

“David said if I was to get off on this thing,” she said, he and another man “were going to kill me.”

Wingfield was sentenced to 10 years in prison for Lance’s death after pleading guilty to a charge of felony child endangerment--on bad legal advice, she said later--but was freed after a reinvestigation by the Los Angeles Police Department found the key witness against her had changed his account. Prosecutors then brought charges against Helms.

Wingfield was one of four witnesses in Van Nuys Superior Court on the first day of the trial. The others included the mother of the defendant--the victim’s grandmother--and witnesses who say they saw Helms hit and kick the boy.

With her son looking on in a pinstripe suit, Gail Helms recounted a lengthy list of bruises and scrapes on Lance’s head, back, arms and legs that she said she saw, noted and photographed in the months leading up to his death on April 6, 1995.

The slaying ignited criticism of the child dependency court--which removed Lance from a relative’s care and returned him to his father--prompting the state Legislature to change the law to require that a child’s safety take precedence over policies aimed at reunifying families.

Lance, born drug-addicted, was initially placed in the care of his aunt, Ayn Helms, by child welfare authorities before he was given back to his father in August 1994, despite allegations from relatives that Helms had abused the child.

Jurors also heard from who men who were visitors to the Oxnard Street apartment complex where Lance and his half-brother Calvin lived with their father and Wingfield. One witness characterized Helms as angry, “like the whole world was on his back.”

Jody Fasone said he saw Helms strike Lance on several occasions, including once at a Taco Bell fast-food restaurant where, Fasone said, he hit the boy in the back of the head hard enough to knock him out of his stroller. Another time, Helms knocked the boy into a security barrier at the apartment complex, Fasone said.

Postponing his opening statement, defense attorney Jack Stone attempted to undermine Wingfield’s credibility, asking Wingfield why she did not tell authorities the truth about how long she spent at a pawn shop just before Lance died and why she went to prison for 21 months for Lance’s death.

Wingfield said she was told by her lawyer, a court-appointed public defender, that if she agreed to the plea she would be out of prison in four years. He “made it seem like this was the only choice that I had,” she said.

The lawyer’s advice was based on testimony by county Medical Examiner James K. Ribe that Lance had died 30 to 60 minutes after he was beaten, placing the beating during a time he was in Wingfield’s care. Wingfield was released last September and her trial reopened after Ribe told investigators Lance had died virtually instantly from the beating--moving it into a time period when Wingfield was at the pawn shop and Helms was alone with the toddler.

Wingfield told the court Tuesday that she pleaded guilty a second time to felony child abuse in June because she was promised she would serve no more prison time. She did not want to risk pleading not guilty, losing in court and being sent back to prison, she said.

“That I got out is a complete miracle,” she said. “I don’t trust the system, I think it’s screwed.”

Wingfield said she met Helms when she was 17 and within six months was pregnant with his son Calvin. Wingfield said she wanted to get married but Helms “wasn’t mature enough. . . . He didn’t have his priorities straight.”

After Helms fathered Lance by another woman, Wingfield resumed the relationship but tearfully told the court, “It was bad, it was very bad.”

Helms wanted the studio apartment to be meticulously clean, she said. If it was not, she said, he would hurt her “physically and verbally.”

When asked by Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter if Helms was a loving father, Wingfield replied: “When I look at my brother-in-law and how he treats his kids, there’s such a difference, it makes me sick.”