Questions over girl’s death linger as Whittle leaves jail

Just two years after Elizabeth Goodwin was found dead in a bathtub, the woman who had been the autistic child’s guardian has been released from the Kootenai County Jail on probation.

Denise Whittle, 35, originally charged with manslaughter in the drowning of 6-year-old Elizabeth, had reached a deal last spring in which she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of felony injury to a child and was sentenced in May to 10 years in prison. She served about 15 months since her arrest in late February 2003.

Her husband, James Whittle, 37, was recently denied probation and is still serving 10 years in prison on a felony injury to a child charge for breaking one of Elizabeth’s legs during toilet training.

Denise Whittle’s release Monday to eight years of supervised probation touched nerves. The emotionally charged case created deep fractures among Coeur d’Alene’s therapeutic and child welfare workers. Some believed Denise Whittle to be a Jekyll-and-Hyde monster who put on a good face for social service agencies. Others contend that in-home caregivers working with Elizabeth lobbed wild accusations that the Whittles abused children.

The plea deal meant there was no trial to hash out the allegations, and much of the case – former stepchildren claiming they were abused by Denise Whittle in Nevada a decade ago, right down to how much water was in the tub the night of Oct. 22, 2002 – remains in dispute.

The inexact nature of autism itself became an issue.

“The leading cause of death among children diagnosed with autism is accidental drowning. They love water and they have seizure disorders,” Liz Mathes, a Coeur d’Alene counselor who works with autistic children, said Tuesday. Mathes has worked with the Whittles and with Elizabeth.

Others say this sort of talk only further victimizes Elizabeth.

At sentencing in May, Kootenai County 1st District Court Judge John Mitchell said he was troubled by Denise Whittle’s account that she left Elizabeth unattended in a shallow tub for only a few minutes while she went to an adjoining room, returning to find the girl on her side, dead.

“I don’t know how a child could vomit and drown without making any noise,” Mitchell said. He repeated his concerns Monday about unanswered questions in Elizabeth’s death, and ordered Whittle to have no contact with children other than her own and to stay in counseling.

In exchange for her guilty plea, Whittle was allowed to begin her sentence with six months in what is known as a “rider program.” The rider, or retained jurisdiction, allowed Whittle to be evaluated by state prison staffers to determine if she would be a good candidate for probation, and to participate in counseling and behavior modification programs often not available elsewhere in the state prisons.

The recommendation on Monday was an overwhelming yes, and Mitchell suspended Whittle’s remaining prison time, allowing her to walk free.

“I am not surprised by the decision. It was a very good jurisdictional review report,” Kootenai County chief deputy prosecutor Lansing Haynes said Tuesday. “But if I could wave a magic wand, this is not the result I would want.”

Haynes said his office agreed to the plea deal because the nub of the case remained murky.

Despite a severe burn and a broken leg suffered by Elizabeth in the months before her death, and the allegations from former stepchildren, “we had no ability to prove what happened in the bathtub,” Haynes said. “We needed the certainty of a conviction.”

Agreeing to the plea deal also meant agreeing to Monday’s possibility that Whittle would be released after her rider, he said.

“To be fair to her, I made a recommendation for jurisdictional review, and she did good job there,” Haynes said.

Teri Johnston, one of the child aid workers who raised the alarm about suspected abuse in the Whittle home said:

“She followed the rules, she did exactly what she was supposed to do and that’s why she got out. I don’t think Denise has undergone any major changes in the last few months. But I guess time will tell – eight years is a long time to be on probation.”

Johnston and Andrea McCarty worked with Elizabeth in the Whittle home, helping the child with speech therapy, coordination exercises and reading. They have said they became alarmed at what they saw as abuse directed at Elizabeth by the Whittles.

“We had reported the Whittles twice and we knew they had been reported to CPS (Child Protective Services) by the school district several times,” Johnston said Tuesday. “A month before Lizzy’s death, we had gone to CPS after she got that bad burn on her back and we told them, ‘If you don’t get her out of there she’s going out in a body bag.’ “

CPS workers, Johnston said, “looked at us like we were hysterical housewives. A month later it happened.”

Administrators at child welfare agencies have said that any intervention to aid Elizabeth was restricted by the private nature of the guardianship agreement reached between the Whittles and Emily Goodwin, Elizabeth’s mother. Those arguments are bogus, said the attorney who drew up the agreement.

Speaking in April, Coeur d’Alene attorney Paula Harrison said the agreement states “any party” may review the guardianship. She said welfare agencies should have investigated at the first reports of abuse.

“This just broke my heart,” Harrison said in April, recalling the night she learned Elizabeth drowned. She remembered that the Whittles and Emily Goodwin – a 20-year-old single mother who had three children in quick succession and was living on the edge of homelessness – all seemed eager to find a good home for Emily Goodwin’s three children.

Elizabeth suffered injuries, said Mathes, the counselor, “but there is no evidence Denise caused them on purpose or through neglect. My sense is the judge had to sort through this image of Denise as a sadistic, sociopathic woman who loved to hurt children just for fun” and other testimony that Whittle was a devoted, if flawed, mother.

“I think what the judge came out with was fair. Denise is not a perfect person. She needed to prove herself for six months and now she needs to prove herself on probation,” Mathes said.