Childs Accused of Changing Her Story

Prosecutors launched a withering assault Monday on a Simi Valley woman accused of trying to kill her husband for his insurance money, saying she made contradictory allegations of abuse and numerous misstatements to police.

At the same time, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Herbert Curtis III, who is presiding over the case, warned attorneys that unless they finish soon he may declare a mistrial.

“At the moment, I see no end in sight,” said Curtis, who admonished both sides to shorten their arguments or risk a new trial. “If the case goes into next week and jurors say they can’t be here, they will be excused and I’ll declare a mistrial.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Lee spent Monday grilling Eileen Childs, 37, about her allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband, Larry Childs.

Childs and her 19-year-old daughter, Jennifer, are accused of setting fire to Larry Childs’ mattress and then beating him with a baseball bat last March. Prosecutors contend the motive was a $1.4-million insurance policy that Eileen Childs planned to use to open a Jiffy Lube station and launch her daughter’s singing career.

Eileen Childs said her husband “snapped” the night of the fire. He attacked her and Jennifer and the two were simply trying to protect themselves, she said. Larry Childs, 57, has denied ever abusing his wife and family.

Lee asked why Eileen Childs, in a restraining order filed after the incident, said her husband only hit her the night of the fire, without mentioning the dozens of beatings she alleged in testimony last week. She also asked why Childs and her daughter thought it was so strange that her husband ran screaming from his burning bedroom.

“Did it occur to you that maybe he was screaming because there was a fire in the bedroom?” Lee asked. Childs, who said the cerebral lupus from which she suffers seriously impairs her memory, said she didn’t know why that didn’t occur to her.

Lee also asked if Childs ever considered that her husband was pulling her and her daughter down the hall to get them away from the fire. But Childs said her husband hit her in the nose that night and pulled her and Jennifer by the hair. It was then, she said, that the two began hitting him with the baseball bat and a glass mug.

“He was screaming like a woman, pulling me down the hallway,” she said. “It was like an unrecognizable man was in my home.”

Before the fire, Childs had cashed in a $132,000 life insurance policy. She told the court she wanted the money to pay off her debts in case the lupus, a chronic inflammatory disease, killed her.

“You believed you were dying and you bought a $41,000 car? You bought a car and you did not pay off all your debts,” challenged Lee.

Lee also noted that Childs had been divorced twice before. In one case, she filed for divorce claiming physical abuse. “If [Larry Childs] abused you, why didn’t you divorce him?” Lee asked.

Childs, who appeared unruffled throughout the day, said she wasn’t sure herself why she didn’t get a divorce, though she filed for one the day after the fire. She said her husband could be charming and eloquent. He even wrote her love songs, including one called “Firestarter.”

Lee grew increasingly frustrated with Childs’ faulty memory. Childs often confused the sequence of events from the night of fire, correcting interviews she’d given earlier to the police.

Monday’s proceedings were marked by testiness among Lee, the judge and the two defense attorneys. When the jury had been sent home, defense attorney Jenny Scovis complained that Lee was hounding Childs over her memory loss.

“This woman has lost her memory,” Scovis said. “And she [Lee] is pounding her to death. This woman really doesn’t remember.”

Lee called the charges from opposing counsel “100% untrue” and “slander.”