First a brief update to the Logan McQueary case is here (KPHO, 12/22/10). Information in that case is coming fast and furiously. McQueary is the Arizona man whose girlfriend kidnapped his then-nine-month-old son Gabriel, fled to Texas and there either gave the boy to strangers or killed him. She’s admitted to doing each thing and police apparently are stumped. She’s been in jail in Arizona since she was apprehended in Florida early this year.
Now the article fills in a few gaps on what her then-friend and current legal opponent Tammi Smith’s role in the whole sad saga was. Smith is older than McQueary’s girlfriend, Elizabeth Johnson, and already has an adopted child. After talking to Johnson about her desire to be rid of Gabriel and deny custody to McQueary, she and her husband Jack jumped to the conclusion that they could adopt the boy.
“We went and bought a brand new crib. We bought everything. We bought a house full of baby food, formula, diapers, you name it. We went and bought everything, a crib, a new dress, everything for him.”
Exactly why they bought a dress for a boy, remains unclear. But what becomes clearer by the day is that the Smiths, who are familiar with the system of adoption in Arizona never for an instant believed they wouldn’t get custody of Gabriel. Stated another way, they assumed that the father and his rights could be swept away without much difficulty.
But Logan McQueary stuck to his guns. A judge granted him custody and the next thing he knew, his son was gone.
The point being, those in the know about adoption don’t think fathers are much of an impediment to their getting rights to children. That’s clearly what the adoptive couple in Ohio thought who tried to take Benjamin Wyrembek’s son. Brazen as can be, with full knowledge that Wyrembek claimed his child, they sought to push him aside. It doesn’t get much clearer than that; the adoption industry is used to ignoring fathers in its money-driven need to place children.
Tammi and Jack Smith seem to have had the same attitude. It’s good to see Tammi facing criminal charges. That places her at odds with Elizabeth Johnson which increases the likelihood that some day we’ll find out what really happened to Logan McQueary’s son.
Second, it’s a good thing this didn’t happen in England; if it had, a three-year old girl might be dead. As it is, she’s safe and sound, but her mother is facing criminal neglect charges. Read about it here (KRGV, 12/17/10).
Just a few years ago a man in a small English town spotted a two year old girl wandering around without any apparent adult supervision. Fearing being charged with child abuse, he let the child go. A short time later she drowned in a small pond.
This story has a happier ending. In the far-south Texas town of Brownsville, a three year old girl got out of her second-floor apartment in the wee hours of the morning. She was there by herself; no one seems to know where her single mother was. But the little girl was hungry and her mother hadn’t fed her, so she struck out on her own, right near a busy street.
Fortunately a homeless man located her, talked to her, gave her some cookies, took her home and, when he couldn’t find her mother, called the police. The police, far from calling him a child molester, call him the girl’s guardian angel.
“Luckily, it’s a little angel that came to this child to look after her, you know. Luckily, he looked over her and did the right thing by giving us a call,’ says [police officer Eddie] Garcia.
The child is in foster care her mother has been charged with child neglect.