Mom testifies dad doped babies in neglect case

NORFOLK

Each day when Corey Bryant and his wife, Heaven Smith, left for work, they left their 10-month-old twin daughters home alone, strapped into infant seats.

Sometimes the couple left the babies home alone so they could go out to eat or to the movies. Bryant gave the girls cold medicine so they would sleep.

That's according to testimony from Smith during Bryant's trial on charges of murder and child neglect. One of their daughters, Miracle, died of starvation and neglect on April 8, 2008, the day Bryant returned from a three-week Navy cruise. The other girl, Heaven, also suffered from starvation and neglect and remained in the hospital months after the discovery. She survived.

Smith has already pleaded guilty to murder and neglect charges and is scheduled to be sentenced next week. She spoke slowly during her testimony. She smiled when prosecutor Jill Harris asked her to identify a picture of one of her daughters, taken when the girls were chubby, healthy infants. "That's Heaven," she said. When Harris showed Smith a picture of her other daughter, Smith also said "That's Heaven."

From mid-November 2007, when the girls were 5 months old, until the day Miracle died, Smith said, they did not have a baby sitter.

Smith said she had considered abortion when she found she was pregnant, but decided against it. After the babies were born, she suffered from severe depression: She heard voices, stopped eating, became suicidal. She said she told Bryant she could no longer care for the babies and asked him about putting the girls up for adoption.

He wasn't interested, asking her what their parents would think and reminding her they would get more pay from the Navy if they had children, she said.

Smith said she recalled Bryant feeding the girls only four or five times. Often, she testified, he worked on an old sports car he was restoring, leaving the girls unattended inside.

In January, around the time their marriage became unstable, Smith said, she began feeding the girls less and less. She fed the girls twice a day, she said, leaving them in the infant seats with the bottle propped up to do so. She rarely fed them anything but formula.

She lifted them only to change their diapers, which she also did twice a day. Bryant told her to keep the girls covered when they went out so no one could see the rashes covering their bodies, she said.

Before he left for the Navy cruise, Smith said, Bryant saw that the girls' skin was hanging from their bones. No tears formed when they cried.

"He told me I should try to feed them water," Smith said. "They were dehydrated."

On the night before Miracle died, Smith testified, she told Bryant when he called that the girl was struggling to breathe. The baby hardly moved and could barely lift her head. Smith gave the girl a bottle, but she spit up.

"He said take her to the hospital," Smith said. "But I told him about the rashes on her face and back, and he said he would take care of it when he got home."

At the hospital the next day, Smith said, after Bryant's return, he instructed her to tell police that the girls had been with a baby sitter until the previous night.

He made up a name, Michelle Vaughn, and scrolled through his cell phone until he found a disconnected number to give the police, she said. They showed police an apartment complex a short distance away from their own and said that's where the sitter lived, Smith said.

Investigator Vic Powell testified that police called the number and tried to verify it to no avail. They knocked on every door in the apartment complex and could not find anyone who watched the Bryant babies.

Defense lawyer Shelly Wood asked Smith a series of questions about her role in the girl's death. Hadn't Smith been the one at home while Bryant was on the cruise? Hadn't she been the one who failed to give the girls enough to eat for nearly three weeks? Hadn't she been the one who failed to take the girls to a doctor?

"I didn't choose," Smith replied. "I did what my husband asked me to do."

"So if your husband told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that?" Wood countered.

"Yes, I would if I was depressed enough," Smith said.

The trial resumes Monday.

Michelle Washington, (757) 446-2287, michelle.washington@pilotonline.com