By Nicholas Stix
I found the 24-year-old article below when I was looking for material on Bronx Family Court Judge Rhoda Cohen, who was the worst family court judge I ever dealt with as a foster-care caseworker, a lifetime ago. For Judge Cohen, it wasn’t over ‘til the unfit mother won.
Not that I ever saw the good judge. Fortunately, I only had one natural mother from the Bronx at the time. Most of them were from Brooklyn, where I lived, which is why I was assigned Brooklyn cases.
When my natural mother had a court date, she didn’t bother showing up. That was sufficient grounds to terminate her parental rights for the son and daughter in question, but not in Judge Cohen’s court. Instead, she had us wait around a few hours, and then just issued mom a new court date. And since it was at least a three-hour round trip to Bronx Family Court, plus waiting time, Judge Cohen wasted an entire day of my precious work time.
Another reason this article is significant to me is that it shows not the police, but a judge “disappearing” a murder.
I have reported, time and again, on police agencies’ routine fraud in compiling crime statistics, but notwithstanding mid-1990s’ rumors of several murders in Far Rockaway, where I was then living, I have rarely managed to find reports of “disappeared” murders. However, I am convinced that many murders have been disappeared in this fashion, as part of the revolutionary dip in crime.
You don’t hide the body, you hide the cause of death, or the report, and thus the stat. Or you hide the report. Murders become suicides, accidental deaths, deaths by natural causes (e.g., drowning), or get lost or stolen. In early 1996, Newsday reporter Leonard Levitt learned of a murder that the NYPD had covered up. Once the killing was exposed, the brass asserted that a reporter had stolen all the police reports of the murder from the press room.
As Steve Sailer predicted during the Hurricane Katrina anarchy, medical examiners were bound not to examine corpses terribly closely for signs of trauma or gunshot wounds, once the waters subsided, and to find creative ways to reduce the number of the murdered, while the media would diminish the violence, and he was right. (See my reports on Katrina: 1,900-word version; two-part, 3,900-word version—here and here—and 9,900-word version.)
Note, too, that after the authorities did a preliminary count of the dead (who were determined to be white way out of the expected proportion) following Katrina, they never revised it.
I would appreciate readers sending in any reports where the deceased, who were initially reported to have not been murdered, were later discovered to have been murdered.
As for the following story, I checked the New York Times’ archives under both “Christopher Marchiselli” and “April Marchiselli,” and came up with nothing. Longtime Democratic Bronx DA Mario Merola had died in office, after 15 years, of a cerebral hemorrhage, and under his interim replacement, Paul T. Gentile, the office devolved into chaotic infighting, dissuading Gentile from seeking election.
A black, lefty, low-level city judge, Robert Johnson, was delivered the office on an affirmative action platter by the supposedly rival Liberal and Republican parties, and when he polled only 39 percent in the Democratic primary, he was still the party’s standard-bearer, since the next-highest polling candidate received only 28 percent of primary ballots cast. (The New York City primary system for local offices has since been reformed, and in a primary in which no one polls the majority of votes, there must be a run-off between the two top candidates.)
Johnson became Bronx DA on January 1, 1989, and has controlled the office ever since. It looks like he wasn’t interested in making his ally, Rhoda Cohen look bad, of riling feminist voters, or of “increasing” the number of murders in the Bronx in 1988.
I’ll see if I can find out more about this case, but it won’t be easy.
Appeals Court Finds Mother Guilty of Abuse in Son's Death
By John T. McQuiston
February 29, 1988
New York Times
A Manhattan appeals court has overturned a Family Court ruling and found a Bronx mother guilty of abuse in the death of her 19-month-old son, who was found scalded and drowned in a bathtub. The appeals court also ruled that her 5-year-old son should be removed from her custody.
Testimony in the case showed that the dead infant, Christopher Marchiselli, had second- and third-degree burns over as much as 65 percent of his body. It also showed that he had fluid in his lungs when he was admitted to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital on Sept. 11, 1986. He died a day later.
The infant's mother, April Marchiselli, a 25-year-old waitress, testified that she had left the boy and his 5-year-old half-brother, James, in a bathtub with running water. She said the water turned scalding hot and Christopher fell face down in the water.
Two physicians, Dr. Rea Herrera and Dr. Daniel Kessler, testified that the pattern of the burns on Christopher were inconsistent with Mrs. Marchiselli's story. They said they believed that the baby had been immersed from the chest down for a few seconds in scalding water.
Both doctors concluded that Christopher could not have accidentally assumed the position that had caused his injuries. They also observed in their testimony that James did not have the strength to immerse the baby and then pull him out again.
In its decision Thursday, the four-judge panel of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan found that ''the only possibility presented by the medical evidence was the presence of an adult 'outside agent.' ''
The panel also found Ms. Marchiselli's account of what happened to be ''inconsistent'' and that it ''fluctuated wildly.''
The appeals judges said they found it ''puzzling in light of the unrefuted medical evidence and the inconsistencies in the mother's stories'' that a lower court judge had found the dotors' [sic; probably a scanning-caused typo] testimony ''mere speculation'' and Ms. Marchiselli's account credible. The lower court judge, Rhoda Cohen of Bronx Family Court, ruled on Aug. 31, that Ms. Marchiselli was guilty of neglect.
The appeals judges reversed the lower court finding and found Ms. Marchiselli guilty of abuse. They sent the case back to Family Court for disposition of James's future care, according to Lenore Gittis, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society and James's court-appointed law guardian.
Ms. Gittis, who filed the appeal, said it was up to the Bronx District Attorney's office to determine whether the law-enforcement authorities should further investigate Christopher's death. Efforts to obtain comment last night from the Bronx District Attorney's office were not successful.
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