Strife Reported Between Parents of 2 Dead Children

The estranged wife of a man accused of murdering their two children warned women Monday to break off abusive relationships before something happens.

“Tell any woman who is in an abusive relationship to get out, because the man is not going to change, even if he says he’s sorry,” said Yolanda Ruffin, 24, who reportedly had been beaten by her 26-year-old husband, Henry James White, on several occasions.

“Once you get away, don’t let your kids go back,” Ruffin said. “Because if he doesn’t love you, he doesn’t love your kids either.”

Police say White picked up the two children, Christopher James White, 5, and Brianna White, 1, at the Los Angeles home of their uncle, A.C. Smith, on Thursday night. The children, who lived with their mother in Paramount, had been staying with Smith because she was busy at work, he said.

According to Ruffin’s mother, Gail Clark, White took the children to his parents’ home and then to the apartment he shares with a friend in north Long Beach.

Clark said Ruffin told her that after several earlier telephone calls, White called Ruffin about 9:30 a.m. Sunday and “there was a lot of yelling and screaming on his end.”

Ruffin told her mother that White called back about an hour later, warning his estranged wife that she was “going to regret what was going to happen for the rest of her life,” and that “she was the one to blame” for it.

Although White had beaten his wife several times during their 6 1/2-year relationship, Clark said, he had never harmed the children, so Ruffin was not worried about their well-being.

About the time of the last phone call, Clark said, she drove to the apartment complex where her grandchildren and their father were staying to take the children to the Los Angeles County Fair.

White failed to bring the children down to her car as planned, she said. Not thinking anything was amiss, she drove to the fair by herself.

A few hours later, , White walked into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department substation in Paramount and told deputies he had hurt his children.

White reportedly directed deputies to the apartment complex in north Long Beach. According to the deputies, he led them to a bin at the foot of a trash chute, where they found the bodies of the two children, wrapped in black plastic garbage bags.

Long Beach Police Sgt. Steve Filippini said it appeared that the children had been drowned. However, the coroner’s office said late Monday that the causes of death will not be determined until further forensic tests are completed.

“There was no significant trauma on either child,” said Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the coroner.

White was booked by Long Beach police on suspicion of first-degree murder.

Smith and other relatives said that although White, a normally mild-mannered man, was given to fits of violence against his wife, he had never seemed a threat to the children.

“He told me he loved them and he would never do anything to hurt his kids, but he lied,” Ruffin said, breaking into tears. “If I’d had any idea that he would hurt them, I never would have let them stay with him.”

“He took their lives for no reason,” said Clark, who described her grandchildren as “happy kids . . . innocent children who had nothing to do with what happened. . . .

“They were a gift from God,” Clark said. “I guess God has taken them home.”

Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this story.