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Amanda
Lynn WALLACE
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Parricide -
20-year history of psychotic behavior
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
April 19, 1993
Date of arrest:
Same day
Date of birth: July 24, 1965
Victim profile:
Her 2-year-old son, Joseph
Method of murder: Hanging (she
tied an extension cord in a bow around his neck, said goodbye and
hanged him from a transom)
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Status:
Sentenced to life in prison without parole on July 25, 1996.
Strangled herself in her prison cell on August 3, 1997
Joseph R. Wallace
(July 29, 1990 – April 19, 1993) was a two-year-old boy who was
murdered by his mother in their Chicago, Illinois apartment. The
circumstances of Wallace's death and the ensuing public outcry
precipitated large changes in the Illinois child welfare system
and the Cook County juvenile court.
Wallace's mother, Amanda Wallace, was known to
be mentally ill. Despite this, Joseph and his younger brother
Joshua were removed from a foster family and returned to their
mother. Amanda killed Joseph with an electrical cord.
Peace Comes To Amanda Wallace
ChicagoTribune.com
August 5, 1997
Amanda
Wallace has taken another life, this time her own. She died
Sunday, three days after she strangled herself in her prison cell.
For anyone who has been committed to protecting Illinois' most
vulnerable children, the news had to be cause for contemplation.
The last
time she took a life, it was that of her 3-year-old son, Joseph.
She stood him on a chair and tied a cord around his neck and
kicked away the chair, and all of Chicago reacted with revulsion.
Within a
year of his 1993 murder, police discovered 19 children living in
inhumane conditions at the infamous house on Keystone Avenue, and
a 5-year-old boy named Clifford Triplett was brought to a Chicago
hospital so malnourished that he weighed but 18 pounds. It was a
horrible year for vulnerable children.
Joseph's
death was cause for a reckoning in Illinois. People realized you
can't dump 75 children on one Department of Children and Family
Services caseworker and expect that caseworker to protect every
child. Today DCFS has fewer paper-shufflers and far more people on
the front lines protecting children.
People
realized that they couldn't tolerate courts that handled kids like
widgets on an assembly line. Today the Juvenile Court in Cook
County has more judges and, just as important, more judges who
recognize their first priority is to keep children safe from harm.
The years
since Joseph's death have been relatively quiet for the Illinois
Department of Children and Family Services, the agency charged
with protecting children like him. They've been quiet at least in
terms of those belief-defying cases of torture and mindless
neglect that jangle the nerves. And that's a relief.
Things have
been quiet, but that isn't to say that each day children aren't
beaten, burned, sexually assaulted or subjected to other cruelties
that simmer just below what happened to Joseph Wallace. At the
least, though, there is a greater sense that when these children
come to the state's attention, the state has half a chance of
saving them from further harm.
Amanda
Wallace has taken another life, but this time there is no public
revulsion, no call for action in the legislature.
When one
reflects on the life and death of Amanda Wallace, the dominant
sentiment is pity, and even a sense of relief. She wasn't so much
evil as desperately ill. She was spared the death penalty after
her conviction for killing Joseph, but sentenced to a life with
the demons inside her. Now, one hopes, she has found some peace.
Mother Sentenced to Life in a
Killing That Shook Chicago
By Don Terry - The New York Times
July 26, 1996
It was a crime that convulsed this city. On a
spring day three years ago, Amanda Wallace wrapped a brown
extension cord around the neck of her 3-year-old son, Joey, waved
to him as he waved goodbye, and hanged him from a transom.
His death became a lightning rod for critics of
the Illinois child welfare system, much as the death of 7-year-old
Elisa Izquierdo, who died at the hands of her mother in New York
City. Joey's hanging forced sweeping changes in the state's child
welfare system and led to the dismissals of the administrators who
had insisted on returning him to his mother from foster care even
though psychiatrists had warned that his mother was mentally
unstable and might well kill him.
Over the past four days, another chapter in the
tale of the hanging and bureaucratic blunders has unfolded during
Amanda Wallace's sentencing hearing in a third-floor courtroom
here, as the state that failed to protect Joey argued that his
mother should be put to death.
Today, Judge Michael B. Bolan of Cook County
Circuit Court said that sentencing Ms. Wallace to death might be
the most merciful thing for the defendant but that it would not
help society. He sentenced Ms. Wallace to life in prison without
parole.
As she was escorted out of the courtroom, Ms.
Wallace looked up at the judge and said, "Thank you, Your Honor."
Jack O'Malley, the Cook County State's Attorney
whose office prosecuted the case, said: "I'm not disappointed. The
judge seems to be saying that this is not a situation where you
send a message of deterrence to others. We are relieved that this
woman will spend the rest of her life in prison and not hurt
anyone else."
Before he imposed the sentence, Judge Bolan
listened to closing arguments in which the prosecutor, Jeanne
Bischoff, said Ms. Wallace had had a history of violence and was
"evil personified," adding, "No-one has mastered the abuse excuse
better than Amanda Wallace." Ms. Wallace was abused at the hands
of her own mother.
Ms. Bischoff said, "If this woman is crazy, she
is crazy like a fox."
The defense lawyer, Jimmie L. Jones, carried in
three cardboard boxes and put them on the courtroom's gray carpet.
They contained just some of Ms. Wallace's records from mental
hospitals, Mr. Jones said. "It's time Amanda Wallace received some
compassion," he said.
Last month, Ms. Wallace, who turned 31 on
Wednesday, was convicted of murder after delays and questions
about her fitness to stand trial. Judge Bolan had originally
declared her unfit but reversed himself last year after
psychiatrists determined that she was competent.
"Everyone in the system failed Joey Wallace,
including me," Patrick T. Murphy, the Cook County Guardian, whose
charge is to represent children and the elderly in court, said in
a telephone interview. "We failed horribly by returning him to
her. She is very, very insane. But we're all getting off
scot-free. She's going to spend the rest of her life in prison."
Mr. Murphy said his office had erred by failing
to fight a judge's order to return Joseph to his mother.
After Joey was killed, three social workers and
administrators responsible for protecting him were dismissed and
new laws were enacted that reversed the longtime emphasis on
reuniting families and instead required the child welfare system
to consider first the best interests of the child. Foster parents
were also given an increased role in determining when it was safe
to return a child to a troubled parent. Joey's foster mother
pleaded with the system not to return him.
"Did the Amanda Wallace case result in more
than some people getting fired?" Jess McDonald, the director of
the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said
today in an interview. "The answer is yes. Changes in law, changes
in training, changes in the way things are done."
But the changes have not been enough, said
Michelle Oberman, a law professor at DePaul University, who
studies mothers who kill their children. The Illinois
child-welfare agency and others like it across the country
continue to be under financed and poorly staffed, she said,
adding, "What really frustrates me about this case is that we're
trying to purge our guilt as a society by punishing a woman who
everyone knew could not do the job of parenting."
Ms. Wallace grew from a troubled little girl
into a deeply disturbed woman in a long list of foster homes and
mental institutions. Before her ninth birthday, she had begun a
well-documented lifetime habit of self-destruction: swallowing
glass and nails, stabbing herself bloody with needles and setting
fire to her bed.
When she was not hurting herself, her mother
was hurting her. She locked the child in a dark closet for hours
without food or water and whipped her with extension cords. The
mother, Bonnie, testified for the prosecution on Monday and said
that her daughter had started running away from home when she was
7 years old "anytime she could get out."
"I whipped her butt," Bonnie Wallace said. "I
didn't beat her." She said Ms. Wallace was sent to live with in a
foster home when she was 8 but was transferred to a mental
hospital after setting fire to her bed.
Today, Evelyn Walker, Amanda's older sister,
testified for the defense that when she was 11, she wet her bed.
Her mother punished her by whipping her with an extension cord.
Then, as 2-year-old Amanda watched, their mother placed Evelyn on
a stool, wrapped the cord around her neck and looped it around a
light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She then kicked away the
stool, but Evelyn fell to the floor unharmed.
Ms. Wallace did not see her mother testify. On
Monday, she erupted at the judge as he recited some of the details
of Joey's last moments.
She pushed back her chair at the defense table
and began walking toward the jail lockup. Judge Bolan ordered her
to stop and two members of the Cook County Sheriff's SWAT team
assigned to guard Ms. Wallace grabbed her wrists and dragged her
before the bench.
"I'm not listening," Ms. Wallace said.
"Yes, you are," the judge said.
She struggled with the guards, who held her in
place.
"You're not my God," she told the judge,
sprinkling her statements with profanities. "I did not do this."
"You hung Joey," he said.
After a few minutes, Judge Bolan ordered the
guards to take her to a holding cell, where she could hear the
courtroom through a speaker.
But as her mother testified a guard came into
the courtroom to report that Ms. Wallace had tried to strangle
herself with a jail undershirt.
The judge dismissed the incident.
Dr. Clotiel J. Harris, a psychologist, who has
known Ms. Wallace since she was 7 years old, was in court and
watched Ms. Wallace's outburst. "She has been mentally
institutionalized for most of her life," Dr. Harris said. "It's
absolutely ridiculous to even think of executing someone like
Amanda Wallace. She is ill. What is society's excuse. How did we
become so mean?"
Last Act In A Tragedy: Life
In Prison For Amanda Wallace
Murdered Son Might Be Catalyst For Hope
Juvenile Court And Dcfs Reforms Could Be The
Legacy Of Joseph Wallace
By Louise Kiernan - ChicagoTribune.com
July 26, 1996
At the foot
of a small hill in a Northbrook cemetery rest the remains of a
3-year-old boy buried with a "Sesame Street" videotape by his
side.
Of the many
places to look for signs that Joseph Wallace's death meant
something more than another ugly story of the horror a parent can
inflict on a child, his grave might offer the only irrefutable
evidence that time has, indeed, wrought change.
Dead grass
obscures the edges of the flat marker for "Joe Moe." A scraggly
pine tree planted by his foster parents now stands about 2 1/2
feet tall.
Some greater
consequences for Joseph's murder will undoubtedly be suffered,
too, in the prison where his mother, Amanda Wallace, must live out
the rest of her days, paying for her crime in whatever ways her
troubled mind and heart can.
On Thursday,
Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Bolan sentenced her to life in
prison without parole. He could have imposed the death penalty but
chose not to--and Wallace muttered her thanks to the bench.
Earlier in
the day, Wallace's oldest sister, Evelyn Walker, had commented:
"Everybody had a hand in Joey's death--my mother, my sister, DCFS,
even me. Everyone who had a hand in his case is responsible for
Joey's death."
Bolan's
decision meted out society's punishment to Wallace, who was
herself an abused child, and concluded in one sense this
disturbing case. But the accounting for society's failure to
protect Joseph from her remains murky.
More than
three years after his murder provoked a maelstrom of political and
public outcry, the state system that unintentionally sent Joseph
to his death by repeatedly returning him to his violent and
mentally ill mother has not changed so much as the initial clamor
promised nor so little as cynics may suspect. But more children
than ever--50,000 young lives--are in its hands.
Most people
say, with a silent knock on wood, that Joseph Wallace would not
die now.
Enough has
improved that someone--a lawyer, a caseworker, a judge--would
almost certainly halt the slow-motion fall that began before
Joseph was born, when his pregnant mother mutilated her womb, and
concluded in the early hours of April 19, 1993, when she tied an
extension cord in a bow around his neck, said goodbye and hanged
him from a transom in the family's West Side apartment.
Yet the
sheer awfulness of what happened to Joseph Wallace provoked so
much fear among the people who make decisions about the lives of
abused children that it created another set of problems.
No one
wanted to risk another murder, and as a consequence, an already
sluggish system locked up.
More
children were taken from their parents and fewer were returned
home. Instead, they drifted through foster care while their cases
languished in the hands of people scared that any choice would be
the wrong one. Only now does the paralysis appear to be easing.
Many flaws
clearly persist in the long-troubled system, and one needs look no
further than Joseph's younger brother, Joshua, to find evidence of
them. Still legally bound to his mother, he has been in the
state's care and without a permanent home since the day of the
murder.
Some of the
reforms most likely to improve children's lives, while certainly
influenced by the Wallace case, are not those that arose in the
frenzied weeks following revelations that Wallace regained custody
of her children despite her well-documented history of violent and
bizarre behavior. Instead, these changes result from much broader,
slower shifts.
The most
dramatic improvements lie within the gleaming white walls of the
Cook County Juvenile Court building on the West Side.
Dismissed
three years ago by one task force investigating the Wallace case
as a "huge, unworkable failure," the Juvenile Court system now
harbors a few glints of hope as bright as the sunlight that plays
along the glass bricks lining the waiting areas.
After the
building opened in January 1994, the number of judges hearing
abuse and neglect cases doubled to 14, and another judge has since
been added.
More
important than the quantity of new judges, however, is their
quality.
Juvenile
Court has long been considered a judicial dumping ground, but
attorneys and workers on all sides of abuse and neglect cases cite
the caliber of the judges as the most significant change.
"We have
intelligent, hard-working, progressive judges here, which never
happened before," said Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy,
a frequent critic of the court, whose office represents children
in abuse and neglect cases.
Last year,
Circuit Court Chief Judge Donald O'Connell split Juvenile Court
into two divisions--juvenile justice and child protection--as part
of his plan to overhaul the court.
He named
Judge Nancy Sidote Salyers to preside over child protection.
During her tenure, the court has made dents in clearing up
backlogs, devoted three courts to terminating abusive parents'
rights and fixed other long-standing problems such as coordinating
cases so all the children in one family appear before the same
judge.
The Cook
County Board has also budgeted $4 million to buy a computer system
to replace one from 1974. And, after several delays, hearing
officers hired to ease judges' workloads are helping to determine
whether children should ultimately be returned home or put up for
adoption.
Caseloads,
although halved in 1994, remain crushing. Each judge is
responsible for about 3,500 children, and attorneys in the
child-protection courtrooms routinely handle 300 or more cases
apiece.
Frustration
surfaced as recently as Tuesday, when one-third of the court's
assistant public defenders called in sick in an apparent protest
of the heavy workloads and staff shortages that make transfers out
of Juvenile Court difficult.
Court
workers are swimming against a tide of new cases. More than 17,000
children have entered the child-welfare system since Joseph died.
His murder helped increase the stagnant pool of old cases because
it seemed safer to keep children in foster care indefinitely than
to risk returning them home.
Assessing
the Wallace case, Salyers said: "It almost seems that everything
that could go wrong with it did go wrong.
"It was such
a stunning tragedy that everyone lost their confidence. As a
result, it's taken years of additional training to get that
confidence back up to make those hard but good decisions. And some
of those decisions, obviously, are to reunite families."
Some
observers say caseworkers, judges and lawyers still remain
skittish about sending children back to their parents. "When have
you ever read a headline `Judge slow to reunify family'? " asked
one attorney.
But there
are some signs of movement. In each of the last four months, the
court closed more abuse and neglect cases than it opened.
"I am still
cautious because it's not a trend yet," O'Connell said, "but there
has been a leveling off and we hope it continues."
The massive
influx of children into the care of the Department of Children and
Family Services also appears to be slowing somewhat, but reforms
at the agency remain more difficult to assess.
Murphy
asserts the agency "hasn't gotten better, but it hasn't gotten
better for a variety of reasons."
Some things,
however, have improved. Caseloads are half what they were five
years ago (about 25 children per worker, according to Director
Jess McDonald). Foster parents have more of a say, at least under
the law, in what happens to their young charges. An inspector
general provides independent oversight of DCFS' workings. The
agency is developing a program to better train workers to assess
risk.
DCFS
announced this week an overhaul of its most ambitious reform
effort, which grew out of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil
Liberties Union in 1988.
The new
plan, which must be approved by a federal judge, would replace
specific requirements--for example, the number of children per
caseworker--with the more general goal of making children safer.
Critics say
the plan is an acknowledgment that previous reforms failed, but
McDonald says it refocuses the agency on its mission.
"What do you
want the system to do?" he asked. "You want it to make children
safer. It should be obvious, but that's one of the reasons the
system got sued in the first place."
Similarly,
the impact of the most publicized reform stemming from the Wallace
case, the "best-interest" law, is unclear at best. The state law,
implemented within two months of Joseph's death, puts the best
interests of children first at all stages of Juvenile Court
proceedings, replacing language saying the courts should reunify
families whenever possible.
"There
clearly was a major impact on everything that goes on in Juvenile
Court (from the Wallace case), and it's still being felt," said
Bruce Boyer, supervising attorney with Children and Family Justice
Center of Northwestern University Law School. "But it would have
happened without regard to what was going on in Springfield. It
wasn't so much a legal change as a change in attitude."
Still, that
law gives comfort to the woman who cared for Joseph for much of
his short life, foster parent Faye Callahan.
"You hear
that statement a lot, `best interests of the child,' " she said.
"So, maybe that's Joe's legacy. The awareness of that statement."
Another
legacy continues in the Park Ridge home where she and her husband,
Michael, live. The Callahans continue to care for foster children
and have adopted a state ward who is now 3 years old.
"It's not a
matter of thinking about yourself," Faye Callahan said. "It's a
matter of thinking about the children. I've dealt with loss and
frustration, but is it fair to penalize a child because I don't
want to deal with it?"
No one
inherited the pain and frustration of Joseph's murder more
directly than his brother, who is now 4 years old.
Joshua's
situation has been complicated by the attempts of family members
to win custody of him and confusion over the identity of his
biological father. But mostly, the boy has waited in limbo because
his mother was accused--but not convicted--of murder.
The Cook
County state's attorney's office didn't want to pursue termination
of Amanda Wallace's parental rights, which would free Joshua for
adoption, until she was tried for Joseph's death. Her murder
conviction will make the termination case, set for trial in
September, easier to prove.
Joshua's
years in foster care have taken a toll. He has twice told people
his mother hanged his brother. He recently appeared not to
recognize her when she was on television. He also has had
behavioral problems but has settled down, according to his
attorney, assistant public guardian Djuana O'Connor.
Joshua lives
with a foster family in Oak Park.
"He's a very
perceptive and engaging child," O'Connor said. "He's a child who
wants to be part of a family.
Wallace
Trial Set To Begin Mid-june
ChicagoTribune.com
March 30,
1996
Chicago — Criminal Court
Judge Michael Bolan said Friday that Amanda Wallace will go on
trial June 17 for first degree murder in the hanging of her
3-year-old son, Joseph.
Two weeks ago, Bolan
reversed a year-old ruling that Wallace, 30, was mentally unfit to
stand trial for murder in the 1993 death.
Her son had
been removed from her custody before his death, a death that
attracted wide attention because it occurred only two months after
the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services convinced
the Juvenile Court to return him to Wallace. Other family members
had opposed the move.
Wallace
To Stand Trial In Son's Death
Mother Now
Ruled Mentally Competent
By Maurice
Possley - ChicagoTribune.com
March 16,
1996
For more
than six months Amanda Wallace had been telling authorities that
she was not mentally ill--that she wanted out of the Elgin Mental
Health Center to stand trial for the murder of her 3-year-old son,
Joseph.
Though
psychiatrists had declared her mentally unfit for trial a year
ago, Wallace had since convinced state medical experts that
despite a 20-year history of psychotic behavior, she understands
the court system well enough to be declared fit.
On Friday,
Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Bolan granted Wallace her wish.
"Let's get
on with the trial," Bolan declared, setting aside last year's
ruling that she was unfit.
As if to
underscore Bolan's finding, Wallace immediately turned to her
defense attorney, Jimmie Jones, and--using language ordinarily
spoken by lawyers and judges--said she wanted to meet with Bolan
and assistant state's attorneys to discuss pleading guilty to the
first-degree murder charge.
Wallace
whispered to Jones that she wanted him to ask for a "402
conference," referring to Illinois Supreme Court rule 402, which
sets out guidelines for plea negotiations before trial.
Wallace's
use of the legal term in requesting the conference was an example
of what the prosecutors have contended for months--that Wallace is
not mentally ill, but a crafty manipulator who has tried to
control the system.
In February
1995, Wallace, 30, had been declared unfit to stand trial for the
1993 murder of her son. But following nearly 20 hours of testimony
on a motion by prosecutors to overturn that decision, Bolan ruled
that she now understands the workings of the court system and is
capable of assisting Jones in her defense--the two legal standards
that must be met to be ruled mentally fit for trial.
Wallace, who
had turned in her chair to face away from Bolan as he began
discussing his ruling, swiveled around to face the bench, smiled
and nodded when the judge said, "I'm satisfied, having heard the
evidence and listened to the experts, that the defendant is fit."
After
Wallace asked for the 402 conference, Jones was granted an
off-the-record discussion with Bolan and the prosecutors that was
held in the courtroom, but in whispers. At one point, Jones, in an
audible voice, could be heard to protest his client's position,
saying there were "several defenses" that he planned to explore
for possible use at trial.
Bolan
conceded that Jones was in a difficult position, but he said Jones
would have to follow Wallace's wishes.
After the
hearing, Jones declined to comment, but prosecutors Jeanne
Bischoff and Linus Kelecius confirmed that Wallace had asked for
the plea negotiation session.
It is
unlikely that such a session will be held. The murder charge
against Wallace carries a maximum penalty of the death penalty,
and the Cook County state's attorney's office has a strict policy
that forbids any plea negotiations in a capital case.
After
spending more than a year in the Elgin Mental Health Center since
being declared unfit, Wallace no longer wishes to reside there.
Several state psychiatrists testified that she repeatedly
demonstrated her knowledge of the court system and an ability to
work with Jones in an attempt to be declared fit and be returned
to the Cook County Jail.
Bischoff, in
her closing argument, branded Wallace a malingerer whose
actions--including setting fires and swallowing glass and a
plastic spoon--were "calculated" and "aggressive."
Bolan
ordered Jones to file by March 29 any pretrial motions that would
address such issues as a potential insanity defense or suppression
of Wallace's admissions to police immediately after she was
arrested. Minutes before, according to authorities, Wallace had
strung an electrical cord around the neck of Joseph, attached it
to the crank of a door transom, waved goodbye and kicked out the
chair under the boy's feet.
Wallace has
a long history of psychotic behavior, and authorities believe she
was sexually abused and beaten as a child. She began engaging in
self-mutilation at a young age, using items such as light bulbs
and soft drink cans, and in 1974 was removed from her mother
because of abuse, according to a report compiled by the Illinois
State Police.
The tragedy
of Joseph Wallace's death was compounded because family members
had asked the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
to award them custody of the boy and his younger brother, Joshua.
That didn't happen, despite Wallace's threats to kill the boys,
because DCFS caseworkers and private agencies hired by the state
convinced at last two Juvenile Court judges that Joseph was better
off in his mother's care.
An
investigation touched off by Joseph's death ultimately led to the
firing of three DCFS workers, reforms in DCFS and the removal of
Joshua from Wallace's care.
As the case
proceeds to trial, the next step will be to determine whether
Jones seeks an insanity defense. Under state statute, a successful
insanity defense requires Wallace to prove that at the time of the
crime she lacked the substantial capacity to understand the
criminality of her actions.
Defendants
acquitted by reason of insanity are ordered confined to Elgin for
no longer than the maximum penalty of the crime charged--natural
life in Wallace's case--but can be released earlier if cured of
mental illness.
State law
also allows for a verdict of guilty but mentally ill--a finding
that allows a judge to sentence a defendant to prison where
treatment can be obtained for mental illness. Under that statute a
finding is made that the defendant was not mentally ill enough to
be determined insane at the time of the crime but was ill enough
to require treatment in prison.
Amanda
Wallace's Story
'Good
Luck To You, Mother'
With Those
Words, A Judge Returned 3-year-old Joseph Wallace To His Mentally
Ill Mother. Whether Officials Knew The Extent Of Amanda Wallace's
Vicious Past, Chronicled Here Is Under Investigation
By Cameron
McWhirter and Andrew Gottesman - ChicagoTribune.com
May 9, 1993
Troubles
grew as she did.
A ward of
the state since age 7, Amanda Wallace reeled through a litany of
destructive and self-destructive events. She frequently attempted
suicide by overdosing on pills or cutting herself. She burned down
houses and once tried to burn herself alive. She attacked people
with baseball bats. At Elgin police headquarters, Wallace's record
fills 10 computer screens.
Amanda
Wallace spotted a nurse in the peach-colored hallway of Ward One
and began badgering her. The nurse turned and walked away.
So Wallace
attacked, throwing the nurse to the floor and breaking her elbow.
Lumbering above the frightened woman, the 250-pound patient
punched wildly at her head.
Security
guards raced to restrain Wallace on the afternoon of June 26,
1989, in the Acute Treatment Center of the Elgin Mental Health
Center.
But they had
to be careful. The 23-year-old woman was, after all, about to
become a mother.
Thirty-four
days later, Joseph Wayne Wallace was born. His short life would be
ruled by child welfare workers, judges, his mother's doctors-and
by this threatening woman who wanted desperately, in her own
confused way, to be his mom.
And 1,360
days after coming into the world, police say, Joseph would die by
his mother's hand, but only after she gained custody through the
juvenile courts.
The story of
Amanda and Joseph Wallace was a slow-motion disaster. The lives of
a deranged mother and a tortured son unraveled as those within a
child welfare bureaucracy stumbled through court dates and
paperwork without seeing the obvious: Amanda Wallace was out of
her mind.
Their
inexplicable blindness to Amanda Wallace's 20-year history of
bizarre and often criminal behavior made Joseph's life a perilous
experiment destined to end violently.
"If they
didn't have that information available to them, why not?" said
John Casey, an attorney serving on a committee investigating how
the courts handled the Wallace case. "If they did, what the hell
were they thinking?"
Joseph's
death has sparked action from Chicago to Springfield to
Washington, D.C. Policymakers are reviewing the state's child
welfare laws, specifically, those statutes that make reunification
of families the top priority.
Interviews,
court documents and police records show the 5-foot, 10-inch-tall
Wallace to be a woman for whom the steadfast patience required to
raise a child was not remotely possible.
A ward of
the state since age 7, she spent most of her formative years in
mental institutions and foster homes. Relatives said Wallace never
forgave her mother when she was consigned to the Illinois
Department of Children and Family Services. She also never forgave
DCFS.
Wallace's
life became a vicious litany of destructive and self-destructive
events. She frequently attempted suicide by overdosing on pills or
cutting herself. She burned down houses and once tried to burn
herself alive. She attacked people with baseball bats. At Elgin
police headquarters, Wallace's record fills 10 computer screens.
Despite her
incessantly turbulent history, Wallace, described in one
evaluation as "charming and manipulative," repeatedly convinced
DCFS caseworkers, judges, private doctors and government lawyers
that she could be a good mother if given the chance.
"My future,
to me, is my child," she said in a Dec. 12, 1989, custody hearing.
"I want to give him love, affection, something I didn't have."
The child
welfare system gave her three chances, until Joseph was hanged on
April 19, the 16th Chicago-area child under the age of 15 to be
killed this year.
- - -
Amanda Lynn
Wallace was born July 24, 1965, on Chicago's West Side. She was
the second child, and the first daughter, of Oliver Barnes and
Bonnie Wallace.
Her father
was shot to death three years later, on Aug. 23, 1968. The
circumstances are unclear.
Around the
same time, her brother Henry died in a house fire that began
accidentally. Amanda's brother Paul said he started the blaze
while playing with matches.
The family,
which included three more children by other fathers, moved to the
South Side-into the new Madden Park housing development in the
3800 block of South Ellis Avenue.
"As time
went, the project was infested with a lot of gangs and violence,
so mom moved us out," said Paul Wallace, 30.
The Wallaces
went farther south, to the Roseland community at West 107th Street
and South LaSalle Street. But the new family home would never be a
part of Amanda's life, a fact that would always infuriate her.
Relatives
said that Amanda, described as a tomboy, was a bright student at
Van Vlissingen Elementary School. But they also said that she was
developing signs of serious mental problems and anti-social
behavior.
At first,
she picked schoolyard fights. Then her mischief turned into small
crimes, such as stealing and vandalism. She also started to set
fires.
"She wasn't
impossible to deal with, but that's how mom saw her," Paul Wallace
said.
Their
mother, Bonnie Wallace, worked as a coach cleaner for the Chicago
& North Western Railway.
"Every time
mom would go to work and try to make a living, she would be
bombarded by phone calls from the police (about her children),"
Paul Wallace said.
Bonnie
Wallace said she finally let DCFS take Amanda in hopes the child
could be reformed. DCFS officials would not discuss how or why
Amanda became a ward of the state.
"She (his
mother) felt there was nothing else she could do if she was going
to make a living," Paul said.
Amanda never
recovered.
"She hasn't
forgotten that she was given over to the state," said Ada Smith,
Amanda's great-aunt. "It still lives with her, and she still hates
Bonnie for it."
"It seems
like she's been mad at me pretty much all my life," said Bonnie
Wallace.
DCFS first
sent Amanda to a foster home on the South Side, relatives said.
She stayed there for about two months before moving in with Smith,
her second foster parent.
The child's
behavior became more violent and her fascination with fire grew
into a chronic problem. In four months, she set two fires in
Smith's house. The second started when Amanda opened a closet door
and dropped in a burning scrap of paper before walking off to
school.
The blaze
caused $12,800 worth of damage.
"I gave her
up the next week," Smith said. "I said, `Did you set the fire?'
She said, `Yes, auntie, I did.' I said, `Why?' and she said,
`Because mommy said if I burned down your house I could come to
live at home.' "
The confused
child was wrong; she would never again live at home, except for a
brief period more than a decade later.
Nine-year-old Amanda was sent to a series of institutions. She
entered residency programs at Chapin Hall, which at the time
provided treatment for emotionally-disturbed children, and Chicago
Read Mental Health Center.
She told
family members that she was physically abused in the institutions,
and often tried to escape. Once she climbed through a window, but
fell and hurt her head.
Several
relatives see her as a victim, albeit a devious one, who needed
special attention.
"She was not
crazy," Paul Wallace said. "Living in the institution, she took on
her environment ... she had behavioral problems.
"Everybody
else sees her as schizophrenic. I saw her as extremely cunning and
manipulative."
Despite
their sympathy, family members began to fear Amanda. That fear
persisted until the day she allegedly killed Joseph.
Relatives
visited Amanda occasionally, but the meetings were hostile. She
frequently exploded with rage, fought with her mother and
threatened to kill her family. She also turned violent against
herself, swallowing foreign objects and cutting her arms, legs and
stomach.
Amanda's
final institution in Chicago was the Henry Horner Children's
Center. "We all concurred, I think, that she was very deeply
disturbed," according to a former Horner staff member.
By the time
she left, Amanda was swallowing glass and mutilating herself.
At 18,
having spent nearly a decade in institutions, Amanda Wallace left
the state's care and was on her own.
- - -
She went to
live with friends from the institutions, both in Chicago and in
Elgin. Briefly, Amanda moved back into her mother's Roseland
house.
Then she set
it on fire.
"She told me
the reason why she did it was because she never lived in the house
and it was some type of revenge," Paul Wallace said. "If she
couldn't enjoy the house, nobody would."
Amanda
Wallace got several apartments in Elgin, but spent much of her
time in the nearby state-run Elgin Mental Health Center. As crises
would develop, she would regularly use the center as an escape.
She started
several fires in the hospital. Once, she attempted suicide by
using a Bic lighter to ignite the bed on which she was strapped.
But doctors
repeatedly let her return to the outside world. Physicians
prescribed a slew of medications for numerous medical problems,
including epilepsy, borderline personality disorder, high stress,
insomnia, headaches, gallstones and poor circulation.
Using income
from disability checks, Wallace rented several apartments in the
poorer sections of Elgin, often with other ex-patients. She never
had a job and appeared to spend much of her time getting into
trouble.
From 1987
until 1992, Elgin police compiled 68 reports involving Wallace. On
another 28 occasions, she made unsubstantiated or vague
accusations against landlords and neighbors.
In April
1988, Wallace pleaded guilty to damaging state property after she
destroyed a room at the mental institution. In December 1989, she
pleaded guilty to smashing store windows in downtown Elgin.
Wallace told police that she wanted to get arrested, according to
the report.
That year,
she also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery in the attack on
the nurse.
It was in
this world that Joseph was conceived, with a man known as Eric
Harrison. He was one year younger than Wallace and also had been a
patient at the mental health center, according to police records.
Harrison later filed two
complaints against his ex-girlfriend with Elgin police, one in
August 1989 for battery. He told police that he had visited
Wallace to talk about their child. He said she flew into a rage,
pounding him to the ground, kicking him and then knocking him
unconscious by smashing his head into a brick wall.
Officials have been unable
to locate him.
- - -
When Joseph was born in July
1989, he was immediately taken by DCFS.
Wallace's
psychiatrist at Elgin said the new mother "might hurt (or) kill
her baby," according to a state investigator's report made only 9
days into Joseph's life. In heavy pen, the DCFS investigator
stressed another comment from the doctor, John Rohr.
"Amanda
should never have custody of this baby or any baby."
The doctor
said Wallace treated her new child as an object, not as a person.
Initially,
DCFS and the courts agreed. Joseph, given the identification
number X0439003, lived in an Oak Lawn foster home from August
until late October 1989.
In
September, a DCFS child welfare expert recommended that Joseph
"remain in the custody of DCFS and that he be placed in a
long-term foster home."
The baby was
transferred to Michael and Faye Callahan, a Park Ridge couple who
took in Joseph for much of his 45 months of life. They first cared
for him from October 1989 to late June 1990.
A
light-skinned boy with loose curls and long eyelashes, Joseph was
described as happy, though slow, during his initial stay.
Meanwhile,
Wallace moved from apartment to apartment in Elgin. And wherever
she went, she caused mayhem.
She was
named in several police reports for burglary, disorderly conduct
and other serious crimes.
In February
1990, Wallace was accused of pouring black paint on a neighbor's
car because she thought the woman's children had broken into her
apartment. In March 1990, a complaint was filed against Wallace
for threatening another woman. The woman said she had refused to
rent an apartment to Wallace, who then threatened to burn down her
house.
Amanda
Wallace and her children, Joshua, center, and Joseph Wallace,
right, who was hanged by an electrical cord by his mother in 1993.
Joseph's death sparked an uproar across the country and helped
prompt Illinois to overhaul its troubled Department of Children
and Family Services. Nearly two decades later, the Illinois
Department of Children and Family Services yet again struggles
with high caseloads, staffing shortages, and recent troubling
child deaths
Amanda
Wallace is led through the Area 5 Police headquarters after being
charged with hanging her 3-year-old son Joseph Wallace. Just
months prior, the courts had returned Joseph to his mother, who
had a history of mental illness.
(Carl
Wagner, Tribune archive photo / April 19, 1993)
