Liz Carroll is anything but credible

Defense claims foster mom wasn't home when 3-year-old boy died
Greber, Dave. Dayton Daily News, Feb. 16, 2007, pg. A5.

BATAVIA — Liz Carroll, the foster mother charged in the death of a 3-year-old Middletown boy, wasn't even at home when the death occurred last summer, her attorney said Thursday.

Instead, the 30-year-old woman was at a grocery store, and upon returning home, she was told by her husband, David, that Marcus Fiesel was dead, defense attorney Gregory Cohen said in his opening statement. "And they panicked," Cohen said. "They absolutely panicked."

In his opening remarks, Cohen portrayed his client as a victim, controlled by an abusive husband and the couple's live-in girlfriend Amy Baker.

Cohen said it was Baker — the Carrolls' bowling partner, foster care reference and the prosecution's star witness — who conspired to tie up the developmentally disabled boy in a blanket with tape, place him in a playpen in a closet in early August and leave him to die.

Prosecuting attorney Daniel "Woody" Breyer recounted the events that allegedly occurred between Aug. 4-6 — when Marcus allegedly was left in the Carrolls' closet while they attended a family reunion in Kentucky — and Aug. 15-28, when they said the boy went missing and the Carrolls were indicted by a Hamilton County grand jury.

Breyer explained the condition in which Marcus was found Aug. 6, according to an account by Baker: Stiff with rigor mortis, his feet raw from kicking the sides of the playpen and his nose bloodied from thrashing in a blanket "cocoon."

Among the other witnesses called by the state to testify were employees of Lifeway for Youth, the private foster care agency that placed Marcus on May 5, 2006, with the Carrolls.

Kathy Neeley, Marcus' case manager, was the last person outside the Carrolls and Baker to see the boy alive on Aug. 3.

When she visited the Carrolls' home Aug. 10, she was told by Liz Carroll that Marcus had been up all night sick and had just gone to bed.

When asked why she didn't press the issue, Neeley replied: "I had no reason to do that. (Liz Carroll) had taken him to every appointment prior to that. I had no reason to want to wake the child up out of respect for her as a mother."