Posted on 06/21/2007 4:18:33 PM PDT by Graybeard58
15-year-old suspect is the sister, daughter of victims
Portage - A criminal complaint filed Wednesday details the depraved torture of an 11-year-old boy and murder of his mother, accusing a collection of transients who said they came to Portage in February because they wanted to "see snow."
The unexplained abuse of the boy - some by his own mother - evolved into the beating and eventual murder of that woman by a group of young people from Florida and Kentucky who were running from authorities there and in Colorado, according to a criminal complaint and records filed in Columbia County Circuit Court.
Authorities found the body of Tammie Garlin, 36, on Friday, buried in the backyard of a rented house where the group had been living.
Garlin's own teenage daughter is among the suspects charged in her death.
The girl, Felicia Mae Garlin, 15, is charged with three adults - Michael Sisk, 25, Candace Clark, 23, and Michaela Clerc, 20 - with first-degree intentional homicide, abuse of a child, mutilation, hiding a corpse, false imprisonment, aggravated battery, three other felonies and a misdemeanor. The adults are also each charged with a 10th felony, contributing to the delinquency of a child.
The teen was a "full participant" in the crimes that stretched over the months the group lived in the rented house at 304 W. Oneida St., Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said at a news conference.
In court, Kohlwey told Circuit Judge Alan White that Sisk and Clark ran the household but Felicia Garlin was "operating as an adult" and took charge of the home when the couple were away.
Sisk and Clark were ordered held without bail Wednesday. Garlin's bail was set at $500,000, Clerc's at $350,000.
Officials would not comment Wednesday on the whereabouts of Clark's three daughters, ages 2 1/2 , 1 and 3 months, who also had been living at the house on Oneida St. No motive revealed
While the complaint details the abuse, it offers no hint of a motive for the inhumane treatment discovered after Florida authorities asked Portage police to check out a tip that Clark's oldest daughter, who had been abducted from foster care, was in the house.
At least 10 times, the group bound the boy, placed him in a bathtub and poured scalding water over his body, according to the complaint. The repeated burns mutilated the boy's hands, feet and head, reported Barbara Knox, medical director of the University of Wisconsin Hospital Child Protection Program, who interviewed the boy.
The adults also whipped the boy with belts and extension cords, he told Knox, hog-tied him, choked him until his eyes would close and forced him to drink gallons of water until he passed out. He said he got one meal a day and often had to stay in a cramped space under the stairway.
The boy, found naked and huddled in a closet on Thursday, also reported that his mother initially joined the others in scalding him - until she became a victim herself.
Hospital officials declined to update the boy's condition.
Once the others turned on her, Tammie Garlin suffered much as her son, until her murder around June 4.
Clark and Felicia Garlin offered slightly different accounts to police, but agree Tammie Garlin was kicked and abused after becoming incapacitated sometime in early June. When she couldn't walk from the second floor to the first-floor bathroom, two of the others carried her down and dropped her on the bathroom floor.
At least two of the women had kicked her earlier, and Sisk reportedly bashed her in the head with a folding chair weeks before her death. An autopsy revealed makeshift stitches Clark sewed to close wounds in Tammie Garlin's forehead.
According to Clark, Sisk went into the bathroom and shut the door after Garlin became unresponsive. A few minutes later he came out and said, "She's dead."
Clerc, who had been Garlin's lover, according to the complaint, laughed.
Felicia Garlin told investigators the group took her mother's body out through a kitchen window and dropped it into the trunk of a car they had backed into the yard. Sisk dug a hole in the backyard and they buried the body.
The girl told police her mother suffered from cancer, AIDS and other illnesses, but an autopsy showed that Tammie Garlin was healthy except for the physical injuries - including a broken nose and evidence of strangulation, which was listed as the cause of death. Meandered to Wisconsin
Just how the group came to Wisconsin also remains somewhat unclear.
News accounts and public records show that Clark and Sisk met around Henderson, Ky. Both are believed to be Kentucky natives.
Clark is wanted on 23 outstanding warrants in Kentucky for a variety of crimes, including some related to her alleged theft of a Henderson roommate's identity.
Ruth Porter said Wednesday that Clark had drained her checking account of more than $3,000 and has been using her identity in several states over the past 18 months. Clark had also stolen her handgun and computer and pawned them, Porter said, but had never shown any sign of violence.
"She was a quiet person, kept to herself pretty much," Porter said.
Sisk and Clark turned up in Colorado in November and December 2005, and police in Grand Junction arrested Sisk on charges of defrauding a check-cashing business through false identification. He was convicted and sentenced to serve two years in a county jail, with work release privileges. He left and didn't return on Sept. 21, 2006, according to court records.
Clerc told police that she and Tammie Garlin had been lovers, but had split around August 2005. Shortly after the breakup, Clerc met Clark on the Internet, Portage police Lt. Mark Hahn has said.
Clark and her children moved to Florida and lived with Clerc in Sanford. Later they were joined in the home by Garlin and her children, Hahn said.
On July 21, 2006, her 2-year-old daughter was placed in protective custody after Clark was arrested on fraud and identity-theft charges, the Orlando Sentinel reported. According to Wednesday's complaint, the toddler's foster parents were Cynthia and Mark Martell, the parents of Michaela Clerc.
On Sept. 23, 2006, Clark retrieved her daughter from Cynthia Martell and fled, according to the Orlando Sentinel report.
Hahn said the group, with Sisk, traveled to Maine and purchased airline tickets to Alaska in November 2006.
They didn't make that trip and instead arrived in Wisconsin in January. They stayed in Janesville, Lake Delton and Wisconsin Dells motels before renting the home in Portage, Hahn said.
Roughly two weeks after Clark vanished with her daughter, Martell alerted the foster care authorities, and a slow-moving effort to find the girl began. That investigation, while delayed, eventually led police to the house in Portage and the crimes uncovered there. Even experts puzzled
Just how it could have happened remains a mystery, even to experts.
"What may have gone on in this family is anyone's guess," said Anthony Meyer, medical director of Aurora Psychiatric Hospital in Wauwatosa. "But it did occur and sadly, it can occur among people who know each other."
Meyer, who has not examined anyone in the case, said three scenarios might explain what happened.
Accommodation syndrome results when people are intimidated by the main perpetrator or leader and participate in the group activity in the hope of saving themselves from similar treatment.
A second theory parallels what is often seen among soldiers in war. A group dehumanizes the target and attempts to eliminate what they see as a problem by any means necessary.
"In abuse, usually the victim has stimulated so much rage or the perpetrator is so immature that they take out their feelings on the victim," he said. The final speculation is that things just snowballed, he said.
"It's hard to parcel out what happened," Meyer said.
No words........
If you haven’t seen the people, they even look like an incarnation of pure evil.
I saw this on the news this morning.
Beyond sick.
A pack of soul-less animals. They even eat their own.
Just pure evil.
Here are links to the photos. I provided links so the captions can be read also:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-feliciamaegarlin20070620145934,0,1133448.photo
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-sisk061607,0,5749192.photo
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-clarkpic061607,0,1238940.photo
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-courtneypic061607,0,3703075.photo
Thanks for those links.
The mother reportedly participated in the abuse of her son until the group turned on her. Which pretty much kills my sympathy for her.
Her demise looks a lot like poetic justice.
“Roughly two weeks after Clark vanished with her daughter, Martell alerted the foster care authorities, and a slow-moving effort to find the girl began. That investigation, while delayed, eventually led police to the house in Portage and the crimes uncovered there.” Thank God they followed through to Wisconsin. I shudder to think of the kind of life those 3 babies were headed for. What is bizarre to me is that the foster parents were the biological parents of the mother of the babies. What kind of monsters were created here? How does this happen?
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