This is so sad.

Stepfather testifies of horrors inflicted on Eugene teenager
At his wife’s sentencing hearing, he says he failed to intervene
By Karen McCowan

The Register-Guard

Published: Thursday, Feb 17, 2011 05:01AM


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The stepfather of a local teen murdered by her mother testified Wednesday that he did not know his wife was beating and starving Jeanette Marie Maples until a few months before the girl’s December 2009 death.

But Richard McAnulty told jurors considering the death penalty for his wife, Angela, that he also caused the teen’s death by failing to stop the abuse or take Jeanette to a doctor even after seeing her terrible injuries.

“I did nothing,” he admitted. “I failed her as a father.”

Angela McAnulty, 42, pleaded guilty Feb. 1 to torturing and murdering Jeanette. Richard, 41, also faces an aggravated murder charge, but prosecutors have said his role in the case did not justify a possible death sentence.

Waiving his right not to incriminate himself, Richard McAnulty testified despite no deal with the Lane County District Attorney’s Office limiting his possible sentence.

Among new revelations in his testimony, Richard told jurors his wife did not want to contact authorities after finding the battered teen “ice cold” and lifeless in the early evening of Dec. 9, 2009. Instead, she suggested burying Jeanette in their backyard or in the Coast Range, Richard testified. He said he persuaded Angela to call his mother, Leaburg resident Lynn McAnulty, for advice. She urged the couple to immediately call 911, and when Angela refused, he eventually did so, Richard said.

He also alleged that Angela wanted to flee after paramedics left to transport their daughter to the emergency room, saying, “I did something bad, and they’re going to put me away for a long time.”

Richard said he persuaded her instead to follow the ambulance, but agreed along the way to her request that he take the blame for Jeanette’s injuries. She told him she needed to “be there” for their surviving children, he testified, and also said authorities would go easier on him because of complications from his recent heart attack.

He said he recanted the false confession, however, as soon as police told him the other children and Richard’s mother had implicated Angela.

He began his daylong testimony by telling jurors that he was unaware for years that Jeanette was being abused because his job as a truck driver kept him away from home for weeks at a time.

That changed after he suffered a heart attack and complications from related surgery in July 2009, he said. Only after coming home to recuperate did he see his wife targeting her oldest daughter for abuse that included withholding food and water, Richard said. Only then did he see Angela taking Jeanette behind a closed bedroom door to give her what he called “real bad spankings” that left her with broken teeth, disfigured lips and deep, and infected wounds from belt lacerations on her hips.

Under questioning by prosecutor Erik Hasselman, Richard admitted failing to give Jeanette food and water even though Angela regularly left them alone together to go shopping or drive Jeanette’s younger sister and brother to school. He also acknowledged that Jeanette sought his help on one such occasion just four days before her death. The thin, battered teen invited him to enter for the first time the bedroom where Angela whipped her, showing him blood-stained belts, sticks and switches and pointing out a bloody spot on the floor.

“I looked at that bedroom, and it was horrifying,” Richard told the jury. “I seen blood splattered everywhere. (Jeanette) told me her mom would have her strip naked and lay there directly on the floor, and she would whip her ... I was scared. I was terrified. I didn’t know it had gotten that far.”

In often rambling testimony, the 200-pound man told jurors that his much smaller wife ruled their River Road home as he recuperated, refusing to give him keys to locks on food pantries and the bathroom. He said Angela rebuffed his efforts to intervene, telling him the girls were not his and she alone would decide how to raise them. He said she also threatened to blame him for Jeanette’s injuries if he alerted authorities.

Richard acknowledged he was so cowed that he didn’t seek help for Jeanette even after seeing her drink from the toilet because her mother had turned off the water supply to all the house’s faucets.

Angela wanted to “make sure (Jeanette) didn’t get into the water,” he said, because she was “tired of Jeanette getting her up every night to go to the bathroom,” he said. His wife had previously ordered him to put an outside lock on the bathroom door, Richard explained, because she “didn’t want nobody using it unless she was there.”

Richard said his surgery scar and other health problems made it too painful for him to bend down below the sink to turn the water back on for Jeanette.

He said Angela carried the only keys to the bathroom and to pantries she’d padlocked in the kitchen to keep Jeanette from “stealing food.”

The Register-Guard was unable to photograph Richard McAnulty on Wednesday after Lane County Circuit Judge Kip Leonard granted a motion by his attorneys barring cameras from the courtroom during his testimony since he faces his own trial in May. He appeared in court wearing a dress shirt and khaki pants, with thick glasses and a neatly trimmed mustache.

His testimony detailed the psychological as well as physical torture that marked Jeanette’s final months.

To punish the teen for such behavior as threatening to run away or call police after a beating, Angela would require Jeanette to stand for hours at a time with her hands extended above her head as she balanced on one foot “like a crane,” as the rest of the family watched television, Richard said. His wife would then get angry at the emaciated teen if she fell from that position, he said.

Angela “always fed Jeanette separate from us,” he said. While the teen got hot dogs for dinner, she had to stand or kneel in a corner, watching the rest of the family eat more nutritious meals, such as “mixed vegetables and meat” from a crock pot. Her younger sister and brother always got more to eat, he added.

When the family went trick-or-treating on Halloween, he said, Jeanette had to watch from the street while her sister and brother got candy because Angela didn’t want neighbors to see her injured face. Those injuries included repeated smacks to her mouth that left part of her lip dangling from her face, Richard said. He said he told his wife the girl needed stitches, but she insisted on bandaging the wounds herself.

The night before Jeanette’s death, Richard testified, his wife came to him upset, saying she’d “gone too far,” hitting her eldest daughter’s head “too hard” with a stick. The next morning, he said, the teen was cool to the touch and speaking incoherently, as if she had “taffy in her mouth.”

Instead of immediately calling 911 or rushing the girl to the hospital, Richard said, his wife enlisted her younger daughter, then 11, to help her clean blood from what Hasselman called “the torture room.” She took a break to go buy dinner at McDonald’s, he said, then came back and cleaned some more before informing him about 7 that Jeanette was “ice cold” and wouldn’t wake up. She tried unsuccessfully to revive her lifeless daughter in a warm bath, he said. After he called 911, she hurried to pull sweat pants onto Jeanette’s nude body so paramedics wouldn’t see “the holes in her hips,” Richard said.

tragic and suspect

not quite sure how true the stepdads story rings, would like to know what the siblings will have to say ,,and the autopsy

my god...how can you watch that happen an be too scared to move?

there is something else to the story, for certain,,

a "few months"....?? wtf?????

Yea the father did wrong. and she has already been convicted.

what you read was what he said with no deal before the court yesterday.

his trial is still to come and he did not take the 5th.

He will answer for his cowardness as it seems she had quite control over him.

What I am amazed at is you are attacking him and she is the one who did all this to her. He is trying to take responcibility but this is sad the female race never attacks itself when they abuse.

what are u all anyway. Women do no wrong it looks like. how pitiful

http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/story/Angela-McAnultys-younger-daughter-faces-her/GF7yvUnWakW-30QqeNQEnw.cspx

http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/story/Grandmother-testifies-in-McAnulty-penalty-hearing/2zKwDKOJJUKa4mHC7ABtAA.cspx

http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/story/Day-2-in-McAnulty-trial-includes-police/RJA-As4CwkmHdtQH7E4mYA.cspx

What she did is inexcusable and defies explanation and needs no further comment so none was made
He is at fault because he had more that enough time to act for the benefit of the child(ren) and did nothing only to admit a guilty conscious after it was too late.
THE MOTHER SHOULD FACE PUNISHMENT TO THE FULL EFFECT, and in my opinion she is not human at all but rather something else disgusting and horrible

NO ONE SHOULD EVER BE ALOWED TO DO THAT TO ANOTHER REGARDLESS OF ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES . that shouldn't need explanation

Thank you. Maybe i did not understand about drives me mad to even think of such a act. what horror for that child.

The mother is, quite obviously, a raving psychopath to ever put any of her children through this terrible ordeal. What is the stepfather trying to achieve out of this - he's trying to win sympathy by offering the public & judicial system his complete co-operation? chances are that he'll never gain a legion of fans... after giving them his story!? We've only got his word concerning the treatment of his stepdaughter!? He could've been fully aware of everything going on!? He could be a psychopath too!? Nobody would, even in the most dire situation exactly like this, standby & allow the systematic beating & torture of their stepdaughter, claiming that he was too scared to act? That his wife rendered him impotant & unable to react to the situation after seeing her brutality? I just don't buy it... So he walked away & let this poor girl continue to be tortured by the woman he married? That act of allowance makes him equally complicit. He knew what was happening & yet did nothing about it, but allowed it to continue? By allowing it to continue - he's an accomplice & as guilty as his psychopathic wife, as if he himself were torturing his stepdaughter! Jail him... & throw away the key! ;)

I think the family has been through enough hell.

the siblings have lost a sister and need time to heel

this man nearly lost his life and now his peace, he needs time to heel (if it is found he had no active part)

this woman needs to be somewhere where she cant harm others

OK Ghandi!

This story is terrible.
If this man watched this happen the remaining children would be better off in a foster home.

'watched' is in dispute

that he saw after effects is not

people can freeze up in extreme situations, it doesnt make them criminal,,(in my opinion)

EUGENE, Ore.-- A DHS case worker and a school guidance counselor took to the stand Tuesday to testify about the abuse Jeanette Maples suffered at the hands of her own mother. Cascade Middle Schoo employees filed 3 reports with the Oregon Department of Human Services between 2006 and 2007 A DHS caseworker then interviewed both Jeanette, her younger sister and her parents, Angela and Richard McAnulty, before she closed the case coding it unable to determine if there was abuse in the home It was a note Jeanette Maples passed her 6th grade teacher that put guidance counselor Jennifer Smyly on alert"She told me she was always hungry, wasn't allowed to eat, that for unishment she had to put her nose to the wall and bend on her knees punishment she had to put her nose to the wall and bend on her knees for 2 and a half hours," said Smyly After talking with Jeanette multiple times, Smyly filed her first DHS report in April 2006"The first report consisted of Jeanette reporting that she was always hungry," said Smyly. "On one occasion I remember Jeanette telling me she had to eat a pepper and vomited and then had to eat that, her own vomit. A second report was filed, that's when DHS case worker, Sandra Alberts stepped in"She talked about discipline in the home being that she wasn't allowed dinner, the last time she ate dinner was 2 weeks ago," said Alberts According to Alberts, Jeanette worried her mom would find out she'd been talking to school officials. And lied to Alberts about her mom's work schedule, so Alberts wouldn't talk with her mom. But when Alberts visited Angela McAnulty, she heard a completely different story"Their kitchen was full of fresh fruit and food," said Alberts Angela painted a different picture of Jeanette, according to Alberts McAnulty reported that Jeanette was a really sweet girl but had some ssues with telling the truth. In an interview with Jeanette's younger sister, Angela seemed a fair parent"Patience says they have to stand in the corner for a 20 minute period of time, and Jeanette had the same discipline as her," said Alberts But Jeanette was embarrassed about the bruises and cuts on her body and stopped dressing for gym class"I asked her why she didn't want to dress down like the rest of the kids she told me her knees were ashy," said Alberts Even though it was an abusive relationship, Jeanette often covered for her mom, telling Smyly that her mom was psycho but she loved her A third report was filed the next year after Jeanette came to school with a bruised lip , but by that time DHS had already closed the case"I closed it coding it as unable to determine, it means that the abuse could possibly have happened or be happening but there's conflicting nformation to corroborate," said Alberts"Angela convinced DHS workers, Jeanette was lying," said Smyly In May 2006 the DHS case worker told Angela and Richard McAnulty and Cascade Middle School administrators that the case was closed. DHS didn't make any follow-up visits to the McAnulty home or to interview Jeanette afterwards.

I wonder why the child complained of being hungry but not about being beat?....

its a sad story, for everyone