Man Found Guilty in Fatal Beating of Son

A Hollywood man was convicted Friday of killing his 2 1/2-year-old boy, capping a saga that turned mother against son, sent the killer’s girlfriend to prison in error and changed state child abuse laws.

Friends and relatives of Lance Helms, who was killed three years ago by fierce punches to the stomach, wept and embraced after the dead boy’s father, David Helms, 37, was found guilty of three felony counts, including second-degree murder.

The verdicts by the 10-man, two-woman jury appeared to stun Helms, who shot a piercing stare into the court gallery before they were read.

Lance’s death, precipitated by a Los Angeles Dependency Court judge’s decision to place him in his father’s custody despite Helms’ criminal record and history of abusing family members, shocked even a child welfare system deluged with heart-wrenching tales of abuse.

The images of the bright-eyed, sandy-haired toddler, his body splotched with black and purple bruises after the fatal beating, prompted the state Legislature to pass a law placing a child’s safety above all other considerations--even parents’ rights--in custody cases.

The guilty verdicts marked the culmination of an often lonely, difficult three-year campaign by the defendant’s mother, Gail Helms, to have her own son arrested for her grandson’s killing.

“It’s nothing to celebrate because it’s my own son,” Gail Helms said outside court Friday. “All I kept thinking in court was, ‘David, look what you did David.’ This is finally justice for Lance.”

Helms could receive 25 years to life in state prison, according to prosecutors. Superior Court Judge Sandy R. Kriegler set sentencing for Sept. 25.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter said that despite the testimony by medical experts and Helms’ former live-in girlfriend, Eve Wingfield, the two-week trial boiled down to Helms’ actions after his son’s death April 6, 1995, in his North Hollywood apartment.

He did not act, Hunter said, like a man whose child had been beaten to death by his girlfriend, as his defense contended. “He didn’t say anything,” Hunter said.

During the trial, Hunter called a half-dozen witnesses who testified that they heard or saw Helms abusing Lance, including one who said he saw Helms hit the boy hard enough to knock him out of his stroller.

Two years ago, Wingfield was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a public defender persuaded her to plead guilty to a charge of child endangerment causing death, counseling her that otherwise she probably would be convicted of murder by a jury.

The lawyer’s advice was based on damaging testimony by Los Angeles County Medical Examiner James K. Ribe, who indicated that Lance died 30 to 60 minutes after being beaten, meaning that the beating took place while he was in Wingfield’s care.

But Ribe had arrived at a different conclusion by the time Los Angeles Police Department Dets. Terry Lopez and Steve Bernard reinvestigated the killing at the urging of Gail Helms. On his own time and at his own expense, Ribe kept on the case, consulting experts and other sources.

By the time the detectives interviewed him, he had concluded that Lance died immediately after the fatal beating, shifting it to a period when Lance was in the care of his father, and Wingfield had left the apartment.

Last September, on the strength of a 31-page report by the detectives, a Superior Court judge ordered Wingfield released from prison. She later pleaded no contest to felony child abuse for failing to protect Lance from his father, and was placed on probation.

During the trial, Ribe delivered powerful testimony that Lance died immediately from blows that tore up the little boy’s insides with the force of a car accident, cracking a rib, splitting his liver and ripping through the blood vessels that anchor the organs to the spine. He also called his previous conclusion, that the boy lived as long as an hour after the beating, “just ridiculous.”

David Helms’ defense attorney, Jack Stone, hammered on the change in medical testimony, accusing Ribe of “tailoring his scientific opinion to coincide with the facts.”

Stone had no comment after the verdicts.

Several jurors said after the trial that they felt that Ribe showed integrity by admitting his mistake.

“I think justice has been served for the first time in three years,” said the jury foreman, who declined to give his name. “The most emotional part of it was having to look at the pictures of Lance. That was very hard to look at . . . that little innocent face.”

A female juror added: “There were so many mistakes . . . that boy didn’t have to die.”