WHY did Dustin Crocker have to DIE?

SHE REMEMBERS THE PHONE ringing at exactly 2:55 that afternoon, the jangle suddenly alerting her nerves that something was wrong. Even as she asked, “Who is this?” Shirley Kovich recognized the agitated voice as that of Betty Blagg. her grandson’s babysitter: “It’s an emergency! It’s an emergency! It’s an emergency!”

Shirley heard the words, “It’s Dustin,” and her heart seemed to stop. “Oh, my God,” Shirley told the sitter. “Call the paramedics.” But Betty Blagg insisted: “No, you call them.”

She slammed down the phone and as she dialed 911, Shirley wondered what could be wrong. Dustin. her fourteen-month-old grandson, had been his jolly, robust self when she dropped him off at Betty’s Addison apartment at 8:45 that morning. Shirley had kept the boy overnight because Dustin’s mother, Karen Crocker, was working late.

Keeping Dustin was never a chore for Shirley Kovich. She doted on the boy, who was just beginning to walk, and thought about keeping the child with her that day as she ran errands. But February rain was drizzling, and Dustin was prone to colds. He would be better off at the sitter’s. What could have happened?

Shirley raced about a mile to the sitter’s apartment on Spring Valley Road, arriving moments before the paramedics rushed in. As she hurried through the front door, she looked to the right and saw her grandson in a playpen. Dustin was lying on his back, dressed in a diaper and a little shirt, looking tiny and helpless. The baby’s eyes were closed, and his pudgy right arm and right leg were convulsing spasmodically. Something was terribly wrong. She crumble

Weeping, Shirley stepped aside to make way for the paramedics who swept in with a stretcher and went to work on the small figure in the playpen. The five other children Betty Blagg tended in her registered family day home were across the room, eyes glued to the television set despite the frantic activity.

The babysitter’s face was emotionless, and Shirley couldn’t understand it. For seven months, she and her daughter had trusted Betty Blagg with Dustin, expecting her to cuddle him, feed him, care for him the way they did. He was obviously sick; how could Betty be so unconcerned?

That was before they discovered what couldn’t be seen from a glance into the playpen: the baby’s skull had been fractured, his brain badly damaged. The bruises on his head wouldn’t show up until later that evening. Two days after being rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was born, Dustin Crocker died.

Investigators were hampered by the fact that the only possible witnesses were under the age of five. But the cold forensic evidence was unequivocal: Dustin Crocker was brutally murdered. On February 18. 1988, someone picked up the baby and hit him repeatedly against a wall or floor. That someone, a jury decided, was his babysitter, Betty Blagg.

For Dustin’s mother and grandmother, the clinical evidence can’t answer the bewildering question: why? Why did a baby given into the care of a trusted adult have to die a violent death?

Whatever the answer, the case raises troubling issues for parents who entrust their children to care in others’ homes. And the state offers minimal help. There is very little regulation of family day homes, though this is by far the most common form of child care-70 to 80 percent of children inthe care of people other than their parents go to a family day home.There are 2,284 registered homes in the Dallas/Fort Worth area,compared to 1,278 registered day-care centers.

It’s not always possible for parents to know much about their babysitters. And many times, parents are reluctant to believe that someone could hurt their children.

The combination can be deadly. “I believe there are hundreds of potential Betty Blaggs out there,” says court-appointed attorney Mary Jo Earle.



KAREN CROCKER called Dustin her “miracle baby.” She looks through photo albums from the back to the front: pictures of Dustin, just beginning to walk. Dustin on a toy motorcycle. In a swimming pool, twinkling eyes half-hidden behind kiddie sunglasses. Dustin with a puppy. In every picture the chunky, brown-haired, brown-eyed toddler flashes a broad grin. Karen flips through the pages until she gets to those taken shortly after his birth. An incredibly tiny Dustin peeks out of a Christmas stocking.

The simple fact that Dustin was born was amazing to Karen. During her fourth month of pregnancy, a sonogram revealed that something was wrong. Tests showed that the fetus was suffering from severe anemia. Doctors at The University of Texas Health Science Center, believing the baby would die unless they intervened, tried a revolutionary procedure. Dustin became the first baby in the Dallas area to receive a blood transfusion in utero through the umbilical cord. Born December 5. 1986. nine-and-a-half weeks early, he weighed three pounds and nine ounces. Karen named her son Dustin, which means “valiant fighter.”

The pregnancy wasn’t planned. Years earlier, Karen had given birth to a stillborn baby daughter. At twenty-nine, she was single and had no plans to wed the married man who fathered Dustin. But she was getting her life together after battling drug problems in her early twenties. “I felt like time was running out,” she says. “I didn’t want to get married, but I wanted to have a child. I felt like my family made up for any love he might have gotten from his father.”

After his rough beginning, Dustin developed like a normal child. ’”He was a very happy baby,” says Shirley Kovich. “He didn’t know how not to smile.” And Karen Crocker found her life full of a happiness she had never before known, despite the stress of being a single mother. “In fleeting moments, I’d wonder what life would be like without him,” Karen says. “You just don’t want to think about things like that. No parent likes to sit and think those things.”

Karen moved from Garland to Ad-dison to be near her mother and stepfather, who adored the baby and helped her financially. When Dustin was born, she got a job as a benefits clerk tor an insurance company. After several months of relying on her parents, she wanted to be independent.

The job meant that she had to find someone to care for Dustin during the day. Karen thumbed through the ads for babysitters in the paper and called a few of them. Several had no openings; others were curt, turning her off. But Karen found one who seemed perfect: fifty-four-year-old Betty Blagg. who lived in her apartment complex. Though she had never married, Betty said she loved children, and years earlier had adopted a three-day-old baby. Her daughter was now sixteen.

And Betty Blagg’s fee was affordable: only $55 a week. Karen’s gross salary was $1,100 a month, and putting Dustin in a licensed day-care center would have cost $110 a week.

“My initial feeling was that I liked her, that I could trust her,” Karen says. A visit to Betty’s three bedroom apartment across the complex from hers confirmed that feeling. The few pieces of furniture were worn, but the apartment looked clean and neat. And she was reassured when Betty told her that her family day home was registered with the stale of Texas. That seemed to be an official stamp of approval.

What Karen didn’t know was that anyone with $35 can register in the state of Texas to operate a family day home. The state runs a cursory check on the applicant’s criminal record dating back ten years, but only for Texas convictions. Unless a complaint is filed, the Texas Department of Human Services makes no attempt to verify that the information provided is accurate and makes no inspection visits. (Day-care centers are inspected at least once a year.) Caregivers must be over eighteen, but no training is required.

Karen later discovered that Betty, who has a ninth-grade education and no formal child care training, did not have a criminal record, but she had lied on her application about the use of prescription drugs. In fact, court testimony revealed that Betty Blagg had a twenty-year dependency on Valium.

Betty began keeping Dustin in early July, and all seemed to go well for a time. Karen would pick Dustin up in the evenings and spend time chatting with Betty about work, about buying a car, about finding a church, about Dustin’s development. Betty seemed a godsend, reassuring the first-time mother about Dustin’s progress.

Early on. following the advice of a friend, Karen asked her mother to pay a surprise visit to Betty’s apartment to check on her son. Betty told Shirley that the baby was asleep, so she left. That night, when Karen arrived to pick up Dustin, Betty explained that she didn’t like pop-in visits. “I have the children on schedules and 1 don’t like them to be disrupted,” she told Karen. That bothered Karen, but she agreed to abide by Betty Blagg’s wishes.

As the year progressed, Karen and Shirley began to have small, nagging doubts. Dustin was at the age when babies begin to reach out, to explore their world. But when they came for him, Dustin always seemed to be in a back bedroom in a crib or confined in a playpen, never crawling or playing on the floor. Both realized they had never seen where Dustin slept during the day; Betty never allowed them beyond the living room and kitchen.

“I would go into the house and the kids would be lined up watching TV on the floor,” Shirley says. “There were no toys or puzzles out.” And Betty began to look extremely tired. The noticeable fatigue made Betty look far older than her years: the short blond hair drab and lifeless, deep circles etched around her eyes, her big-boned frame stooped.

Around Christmas, Karen started noticing behavioral changes in Dustin. Normally tearless, he began to act terrified when his mother turned on the water to take a shower, or when she diapered him in a public place on cold tile. “Oh, it’s probably just a phase he’s going through,” Betty told Karen. But despite those reactions at home, Dustin never seemed reluctant to go to Betty’s home.

In hindsight, Karen realizes that she should have asked more questions and insisted on the right

to make surprise visits. But her fears seemed ephemeral, not easy to pin down. “I’m not a real aggressive person and Betty could be very intimidat-| ing to me,” she says. And she needed Betty Blagg. In addition to her insurance job, Karen was working three nights a week as a cocktail waitress to pay her bills.

But by early 1988. Karen says, she was thoroughly disenchanted with Betty. Shirley, believing that Dustin needed more stimulation, suggested that the child be put in a nursery school. Karen would continue to pay $55 a week and Shirley would make up the difference. Karen Crocker decided to take Dustin out of Betty’s care.

But she didn’t make that move soon enough. On the afternoon of February 18, she rushed to Parkland to find Dustin in the Pediatric-Trauma unit. For two days, Karen sat by his bed, reading books and singing songs to Dustin as he lay comatose, waiting for some sign of improvement. This time there would be no miracle. Dustin died at 11 a.m. on February 20, without ever regaining consciousness.



HAVING SPENT MORE THAN FIVE YEARS PROSECUTING CASES, Assistant District Attorney Karen Becak Lambert has handled dozens of murder cases, but the trial of Betty Blagg was the first in which the victim was a baby. No matter how many cases an attorney handles, nothing quite prepares her for the photographs of a dead child, especially one who has died violently.

“What could a child have possibly done to incur such wrath?” Lambert asks. “Here you have the most innocent victim you could possibly have.”

In many ways, the case seemed cut and dried. Dustin sustained his injuries when the only adult present was Betty. But in other ways, it was not so straightforward. Betty Blagg refused to cooperate with police officers, though prior to her arrest, she madeI a statement to Steven Braun, the investigator for the Department of Human Services. ironically, Shirley had run into the in-vestigator at Betty’s house only two days before Dustin was hurt. He was investigating an allegation of sexual abuse that turned out to be unfounded. Shirley told him later that if she had known who he was, she would have taken Dustin out that day. But Braun ex plained that he couldn’t identify himself without violating Betty’s due process rights. (Braun declined to comment since he’s now in a new job, as did Betty Blagg.)

The only possible witnesses were children, all under five years old. Only one of them, Christopher St. Clair, four-and-a-half at the time of Dustin’s death, was verbal enough to testify. Christopher, Lambert says, clearly was terrified of Betty. Before Dustin’s death. Chris had told his mother that Betty had hit him. but she had not believed him. Would a jury believe him now? Lambert didn’t know. For the trial, which took place in November. Lambert knew that she had to rely on Dustin himself, through a graphic description of what the autopsy revealed happened to his body. She hoped jurors would draw the same conclusion she had- that Betty Blagg had killed Dustin by beating his head against a hard surface, possibly the bathroom tile, which would leave no mark on the wall.

On February 18, the day Dustin was taken to the hospital, hospital officials notified the Addison Police Department and the Department of Human Services that they had a possible child abuse case.

The next day, Betty Blagg stopped her babysitting operation and her registration was revoked. Addison police investigator Alex Pena visited the hospital, where he took pictures of the baby and interviewed Karen and her mother. The sight of the child shook him up. “You never get used to these,” Pena says. “I can look at it and be objective on paper, but when you see a thirty-pound baby lying there with his head crushed…”

At about 10 p.m., Pena and another police officer went to Betty’s apartment. After they knocked, a hand pulled aside the drapes of a front window and a voice shouted, “Who is it?”

“Police.” Pena announced. Betty cracked the door open, reluctant to let them in. and the officer asked, “Are you Miss Blagg?” Peering out, Betty answered: “I’ve talked to my lawyer and he said I didn’t have to talk to you.” But a moment later, she asked Pena how Dustin was doing. “I think all that she was concerned about was whether he was dead or not.” Pena says.

Betty finally let them into the apartment, but allowed them to go no farther than the living room, where Pena read her her rights. Betty would say little, and this aroused Pena’s suspicion. “When people do something accidentally, they’re willing to tell you how it happened,” Pena says. They left after a few minutes, promising to let Betty know how Dustin was doing. The day after Dustin died. Pena arrested Betty at her sister’s home. The sister protested, but Betty went along willingly.

Unable to specify the exact weapon used. Pena could not get a warrant to search her apartment. But his investigation led him to believe a warrant probably would not have made a difference in the case-he believes a floor was the murder weapon.

“Dustin was beginning to walk and was in his terrible twos,” Pena says. “He was a handful. He did something to upset her. He hit a nerve and she lost it. I think she threw him to the ground and stomped on his head. I think it was an explosion on her part.”

Betty Blagg was released on $15,000 bond and charged with murder with a deadly weapon. (A deadly weapon can be anything used to inflict lethal or serious bodily injury, including a wall or a floor.)

Public defender Mary Jo Earle became Betty’s attorney after the court declared her indigent and no longer able to work at her chosen profession. From the beginning, Earle says, Betty maintained her innocence, claiming she would never seriously hurt a child. Her position was that Dustin must have had a preexisting injury, that Karen or her mother had hurt him, then brought the baby to her.

Betty told Braun that the child had been fine until early afternoon. Unable to get him to eat much for lunch, she had put him in his crib, where he cried. As she picked him up out of his crib, he wriggled free and fell to the floor. Betty says she tried to break his fall, scraping his stomach with her fingernails. He looked stunned, she said, so she knew it was a hard fall. He had blood in the corner of his mouth, Betty says, so she thought he had bitten his tongue or cheek. She put him back in the crib and gave him a bottle, but he refused it. He was still crying, so she left the room. Eight to ten minutes later, she says, the crying had stopped and she returned to the room to discover Dustin was having seizures. Betty then called the grandmother. She offered no explanation for why she didn’t call the paramedics herself.

Earle’s first impression of Betty was that she was a “sweet little old lady.” Attorney Carl Hayes, who worked with Earle on the case, didn’t have such a benign feeling. “I thought she was very defiant,” Hayes says. “My first impression was that she was guilty and trying to cover up.” Earle continued to believe Betty was innocent, despite convincing evidence to the contrary. Hayes formed the opinion that she had committed the crime, but in a “blackout” state.

“I think she did it. and didn’t realize it,” Hayes says. “She’s so convincing,” Earle says. “She firmly believes she’s the fall guy.”

The two attorneys checked into Betty’s background, noting that she had passed the rigorous inspection required of adoptive parents. She was very religious, with a sister who was a minister at Word of Faith church. They found people who had used Betty’s services and spoke glowingly of her. In short, they found nothing to indicate she was capable of murder. “She would easily have passed any scrutiny the day-care industry had,” Earle says. They did discover, however, that she had been taking Valium for twenty years, and two months before Dus-tin’s death had visited her doctor, complaining of stress and “day-care burnout.” But the doctor simply refilled her prescription for the tranquilizer. Hayes says.

As the trial date approached, Betty’s attorneys began to worry about their client’s mental stability. She would get antagonistic when they tried to talk to her about the case, and she refused to look at photographs of the dead baby. Thinking she might be suicidal or ready to “flip out, they notified stale District Judge Gerry Meier of their concerns.

But their worries were unnecessary. During the week-long trial, Betty, who had a new curly blond hairdo, was a model of composure, sitting calmly through the trial as it was heard by a jury that included a social worker at a psychiatric hospital, an agent for the Internal Revenue Service, an aircraft mechanic, a pilot, a travel agent, a church pastor, a researcher, and a realtor. Their average age seemed to be in the late thirties. None had small children.

Braun testified that he checked the walls of the room where Dustin had slept and found no marks of impact, but did find what Betty identified as dried feces in two places on the walls of that room. Was it possible that a diapering accident had caused Betty to become angry and lash out at Dustin?

Braun also mentioned something else he found peculiar: there were no towels, shower curtain, rugs, or furnishings in the bathroom nearest that room. Earle suggested that Betty was redecorating the bathroom for her teenage daughter, but Braun says the babysitter claimed they never used that bathroom. Lambert offered the jury no explanation, but the information meant something to Karen, who remembered Dustin’s sudden fear of the shower. Had the moment of fury that killed Dustin actually been just the final manifestation of violence? Had Betty been using the shower to punish Dustin in some way?

Lambert called Les Gorniak. a custodian who testified that he once discovered a small child sleeping on the floor of a dark, closed closet in Betty’s apartment while there for routine maintenance. He confronted Betty, but her explanation was that it was the only quiet place for the baby to sleep. That night, according to Karen, Betty told her that Dus-tin did “the cutest thing.” Betty said Dustin crawled into the closet and went to sleep.

The prosecutor also called Christopher St. Clair, entering into evidence a drawing the child had made for Steven Braun showing a large figure he described as Betty “bumping baby Dustin’s head” against the wall. Christopher drew himself as a tiny, limbless creature with enormous eyes, watching from high in a corner. In pretrial questioning, the child had taken a doll and hit it against the wall, describing what his babysitter had done to Dustin. Lambert believed he had heard or seen something.

But in the courtroom that afternoon, the child had difficulty answering her questions. After waiting for seven hours to testify, he was tired and obviously afraid of Betty, sitting a few feet away in the defendant’s seat.

Lambert: “Did you ever see Betty do anything to Dustin?”

Christopher: “Bump his head.”

Lambert: “Bump his head? When did you see Betty bump the baby’s head?”

Christopher: “Don’t know.”

Lambert: “Don’t know when it was? Was it when you were staying with Betty? Can you say it just a little louder?”

Christopher: “Yeah.”

Lambert: “Say it one more time.”

Christopher: “What did you say?”

Lambert: “Can you say that a little louder?”

Christopher: “What did you say first? What did you say?”

Lambert: “Oh, let me ask you again. Okay? What did you see Betty do to baby Dustin?”

Christopher: “On his head.”

Lambert continued this frustrating line of questioning, bringing out that Betty had hit Christopher with a paddle and a fly swatter on his face, but the boy contradicted himself several times. And Earle was able to show that Christopher couldn’t testify consistently.

“He was the most obviously coached child,” Earle says. Lambert says she was careful not to coach or lead the boy, but admits that he was a terrible witness.

Sandra St. Clair, the boy’s mother, testified that she noticed pronounced bruising on Christopher’s face in November, and that her son told her Betty had hit him. But when St. Clair confronted the woman, Betty denied hitting the child. “You know that your brother hit you with a truck,” Betty told Chris. “Why are you lying to your mother?” But even after another time when Chris came home bruised, St. Clair left her children in Betty’s care.

Lambert: “Why did you decide to believe Betty’s explanation of the bruises instead of Chris’s?”

St. Clair: “I chose to believe Betty’s explanation because I didn’t want to think what Christopher was telling me was the truth.”

Lambert: “Why was that?”

St. Clair: “Because I wanted to believe that she wouldn’t hurt my child.”

Lambert: “Is that causing you a lot of pain right now?”

St. Clair: “Yeah.”

Lambert: “If you had known that it was Betty that inflicted the injuries to Christopher, would you have ever taken your son back to Betty?”

St. Clair: “Never.”

But the defense was able to show that Sandra St. Clair had reason to doubt what Chris was saying, that she was having trouble knowing when the child was telling the truth and when he was lying. And at one point, Betty had suggested St. Clair take her children out of her care, saying that they were difficult. Investigators were unable to turn up any other parents who suspected that Betty abused their children; in fact, a number of parents came forward as character witnesses.

There was little the defense could do about Lambert’s star witness: Dustin’s body. Using graphic photographs showing his bruised and battered head, the expert testimony of Dr. M.G.F. Gilliland. a Dallas County medical examiner, Lambert painted a vivid, gruesome picture of Dustin’s death.

Gilliland testified that there were scrapes consistent with fingernail scratches across his stomach and at least three separate “areas of impact” on the right, left, and back sides of Dustin’s head. An eighth of an inch fracture of the skull ran along the right side of his head. The brain was swollen, and there was massive internal bleeding between the brain and its membranous covering on the right side, as well as bleeding into the backs of the child’s eyes.

The pattern of bruising was the result of “a blow or being struck against something,” Gilliland said, describing the impact necessary to create such battering as equal to the force of an automobile accident at thirty-five miles an hour or a fall from a height of twenty or thirty feet. It was impossible, Gilliland testified, for the injuries to result from a fall of three or four feet onto a carpeted floor, as Betty claimed.

And the “preexisting injury” was also impossible, the medical examiner said. Symptoms of such massive head injury, such as seizures, would set in almost immediately. When Shirley Kovich dropped the boy off that morning at 8:45. everyone agreed, he was happy and well. And Betty had told Braun that Dustin seemed fine up until the time she allegedly dropped him.

Though the defense attorneys could not discredit the forensic testimony, they went after the man they believed was the real culprit: Dr. Lawrence Neil Pivnick. Pivnick. who described Betty as a “very anxious, tense lady,” had treated her for approximately ten years.

According to Earle, Betty had begun taking Valium in her mid-thirties after developing symptoms of cancer. At the time, another doctor decided the problem was psychosomatic and prescribed the tranquilizer. Piv-nick testified that he had been able to get Betty’s dose down from twenty to ten milligrams per day. but despite repeated attempts, had been unable to get her off the drug.

Though Pivnick testified that the drug had only two or three serious side effects, Earle introduced evidence that Valium actually has up to seventy potential-though rarely seen- side effects, including rage. She suggested that though Betty had come to him complaining of “day-care burnout” in December, the doctor had done nothing more than write her another prescription for Valium, setting up a dangerous situation. Making their own use of the doctor, the prosecution pointed out Pivnick’s concern that if he took Betty off Valium. she would be even less able to cope. And Lambert reminded the jury that Pivnick had advised Betty to seek counseling, something Betty made no attempt to do.

“That battles me.” Lambert says. “If she was crying out for help, who was she crying to? I think it was just ridiculous to say it was Valium or the doctor’s fault when she hadn’t done one thing to help this alleged stress or burnout.” Betty never mentioned feeling rage to the doctor or in her statement to Braun. And she didn’t warn Karen or the other parents that she was on edge. That would have meant no income.

“I don’t know what was going through her head and I never will.” Lambert says. “But I know she intentionally killed that baby. She didn’t hit him just once and put him down and say, ’Oh, my God.’ No, she hit him again and again. She’s a lady who hurts kids, then lies about it. She’s an evil person.”

On November 17, after four days of proceedings, the jury deliberated for fourteen hours and returned with a verdict: Betty Blagg was guilty of murder with a deadly weapon. But after only two hours of discussion, they returned with a sentence that outraged Lambert and brought tears-her only show of emotion-from the defendant: ten years’ probation. None of those Lambert had successfully prosecuted for murder had ever received such a light sentence.

Her options limited, Judge Meier ordered Betty Blagg to spend the maximum time in jail allowable under probation-thirty days-and set as a condition of probation that she must submit to testing for use of controlled substances and participate in substance-abuse treatment if needed.

Karen Crocker and her mother couldn’t believe it. The jury believed Betty was guilty of murdering a baby and gave her a slap on the hand. “It makes me angry,” says Shirley. “The young man who defaced the synagogue got ten years in prison. So, for the next ten years she has to report to a probation officer. For whatever reason, in such a short period of time, she completely destroyed our lives. What does this say about the value we place on small children’s lives?”

The prosecutor agrees. “I think she should have gotten life,” says Lambert, who told a newspaper that the sentence was tantamount to saying “everybody gets one free baby-killing.”

But defense attorney Earle thinks the sentence was fair. She sees Betty as a victim of her doctor and a lax day-care system. “She obviously didn’t torture the baby.” she says. “It happened in a split second. Betty Blagg shouldn’t have been keeping children. You know if you open a snow cone stand on the corner you have to have a health permit. But you can open a day-care center and feed children with no health permit. People need to be regulated and must prove they are able to care tor children.”

The sentence was the best possible compromise given the facts of the case and the composition of the jury, says Gayle Marshall, a social worker who sat on the panel. “The case aroused a lot of strong feelings among the jurors and everyone else. It’s difficult to contemplate how someone could do this. Everyone has hostile thoughts, but they [several individual jurors] had to deny that they had those hostile thoughts and anybody else could have those thoughts. I do see the benefit of sending a message [with a harsher sentence], but we probably could not have budged two jurors.”

The jurors who held out for probation asserted that Betty Blagg probably did not intend to murder the child; she didn’t cope well with life and simply lost control. Her age. her sixteen-year-old daughter, and the fact that she was “pitiful, sad, wretched-looking” also came into play. “In a way it’s like kicking a dog when it’s down,” Marshall says. “And we had a reasonable expectation that she could be prevented from access to children. We also did not feel she had good legal representation and we didn’t want to penalize her for that.” And, she says, the defense attorneys insinuated it was the doctor’s fault when ultimately it was Betty’s responsibility to get help.

But who was watching out for Dustin Crocker? The jury foreman. Kevin McCor-mick. told a newspaper the sentence was ap-propriate because the prosecutor was unable to show how the baby died.

“How could we give her a life sentence for doing a brutal act when they couldn’t prove how she did it?” McCormick said. “And if you give somebody who’s fifty-four years old life, that’s it. Their life is over. That baby’s dead. It’s not up to you or me to make someone the scapegoat. If it was a thirty-year-old guy who killed a five-year-old and the neighbors said they saw him slapping the kid around, it would be one thing. They had one child testify that Betty hit him. The mother didn’t believe the story, so why should I?”

In short, it seems the jury believed the testimony enough to convict Betty Blagg of murder with a deadly weapon, but not enough to punish her for it.

Betty Blagg has shown no remorse. Karen says she has not even received a note or card from Betty since Dustin’s death. “My son is gone, but someone should be held accountable,” she wrote in a journal she was keeping of her thoughts. “It’s not a case of scapegoats. It’s a case of right or wrong, of passing judgment and punishment that fits the crime. My life and that of my family has been changed drastically forever. I don’t think that even once those jurors thought about the pain and suffering Dustin had to go through at that woman’s hands.”

For months after Dustin’s death. Karen berated herself. Consumed with guilt, she kept wondering, “What if?” What if she had paid those surprise visits? What if she hadn’t let Betty intimidate her? Why had she trusted the sitter? “We were remiss in not going in back of the house and questioning more.’ admits Shirley. “At the same time, no one ever thinks someone is going to murder your child.

“There are times when I literally want to go out to that cemetery and dig him up and hold him.” Shirley says. “It’s just so empty. And I know if I’m affected like [ am, how hard it is on Karen.”

Last fall, Karen Crocker spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital for “dysfunctional grief.” Extremely depressed and angry, she was unable to do her duties at home or work. “I was angry at Betty, angry at myself and my family.” Karen says. “I had reached a point where I wanted to lay down and die.”

Over Christmas, Karen visited friends in California, returning with a more positive attitude. She has a new job and is living in her own apartment after moving back home for a while. She’d like to go back to school to become a certified social worker, helping abused children. Her goal now is to get involved in changing child care legislation and educating parents about what to look for when choosing a caregiver. It’s a mission born out of bitter experience. “People should follow their gut feelings,” says Karen. She and her mother are pushing the expansion of family day home associations, which are support groups for caregivers. There are now twenty-four in the Dallas area. “Perhaps somebody would have caught that she had day-care burnout,” she says.

The mother and daughter are planning on distributing information pamphlets in hospitals and doctors’ offices, hoping that they can prevent another family from going through their tragedy.

“If we can do that.” Karen says, “I will be able to say, “Okay, sugar, you didn’t die for nothing.’”

According to Earle. Betty Blagg still maintains her innocence, believing that she was framed for Dustin’s death. Currently unemployed. Betty reports to her probation officer once a month. She is prohibited from operating a day-care facility.

Could Dustin Crocker’s death have been prevented? That’s a question Karen goes to bed with every night; the answer, however, is elusive.

In the current fiscal climate, will the legislature allocate funds to make child care safer? According to Susan Lund, executive director of Child Care Partnership, it must-and it must go further still, she believes. Currently, there is no national information network that would allow those overseeing each state’s family day home businesses to check convictions around the country. Under current state regulations, Betty Blagg could wait ten years and go back into the child care business in Texas. Or she could move to another state and open a family day home.

And that could be another parent’snightmare.

HOW TO SPOT DAY-CARE BURNOUT

BY FAR, THE MOST COMMON FORM OF child care in Dallas/Fort Worth and around the country is provided in family day homes. About half of all child care complaints received by the Department of Human Services involve this type of care.

Texas requirements to open a family day home are among the lowest in the country-Family day homes are registered, but not licensed. Currently, if they are eighteen or older, caregivers can go into business without any special training, or even a high school diploma. To register, they pay $35 and fill out an application form. Their criminal background is checked back ten years, but there is little scrutiny of the applicants unless a complaint is tiled. There is no on-site inspection. And family day home providers serving three or fewer children don’t even have to register. One expert estimates that as many as half of all family day homes are not registered.

The Texas Department of Human Services is studying the need to revise requirements for family day home providers. The proposals would raise the age requirement to twenty-one, unless the caregiver had specialized training; in addition, applicants would be required to have training in child development, health, safety, and nutrition before opening a family day home, and twenty hours of training annually to maintain the registration. Care-givers would also be required to take CPR and first-aid training. The state would pay for spot checks of about 25 percent of all family day homes each year.

But for now, it is up to parents to carefully screen home care providers. Here are some tips from experts at Child Care Partnership, an advocacy/training group for quality child care; and Child Care Dallas, which administers fifty family day homes in Dallas County.

Determine the caregiver’s reliability and expertise: how long has she been in business? Does she have any special training? Does she belong to any professional organizations, such as a family day home association? Does she offer a contract that sets out clear guidelines explaining payment, what happens in case of sickness or vacations, etc.?

Is she warm and nurturing? Does she like children? Does she have a daily plan of activities? Does her home appear clean and well laid out? Are toys and play equipment provided? Does she have a good understanding of nutritious foods and snacks? Ask to see where your child would sleep, eat. and play.

And finally, do her ideas about child-rearing coincide with yours? Ask how shehandles potty training, temper tantrums,discipline. (It is illegal in Texas for acaregiver to use corporal punishment onchildren under five years old.) Ask if youcan pay occasional visits. And beware if acaregiver seems defensive or prohibitssurprise visits. – G.W.