Posted on Tue, Mar. 21, 2006
Series of failures doomed baby whose mother cut off her arms
BY JENNIFER EMILY AND KIM HORNER
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS - Plano, Texas, police Officer Mike Letzelter was there at the beginning and the end of 10-month-old Maggie Schlosser's life.
Maggie was 6 days old the first time he entered her world. He was called to her home after her mother ran down the street screaming about demons, with Maggie's 5-year-old sister pedaling furiously after her on a bicycle. Maggie had been left alone in the bedroom of the family's West Plano apartment.
The next time Letzelter saw the family, Maggie lay in a crib, blood-soaked and missing her arms. Maggie's mother, Dena Schlosser, would later admit she cut off Maggie's arms. But now, Schlosser sat in a chair, covered in blood, as Letzelter and other responding officers ran frantically from room to room, searching for other injured children. Maggie's two older sisters were safe at school.
During Schlosser's capital murder trial, Letzelter, a former Marine, squirmed and looked ill on the witness stand as he told jurors that Maggie's death nearly made him abandon his career. She haunts him, and he's troubled that doctors, caseworkers, police, the system - anyone - could not save her.
The trial was designed to determine guilt or innocence, sanity or insanity, prison or mental institution. But over and over during the two-week trial, prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurors and witnesses kept coming back to a different question: Why couldn't Maggie have been saved?
"The system failed Dena Schlosser. (Husband) John Schlosser failed Dena Schlosser," prosecutor Bill Dobiyanski said in front of the jury box. "CPS failed. LifePath failed. ... The treating doctors failed."
Schlosser did not plummet into a psychotic break the day she killed her daughter. She slipped and skidded in and out of reality for the 10 short months of Maggie's life.
Psychiatrists agreed that the support systems available to Schlosser did not do enough to treat her postpartum psychosis and depression. Her breakdown began after she gave birth - without pain medication - in the family's Plano apartment. For several months, she experienced religious delusions and hallucinations, which continued as she grabbed the largest knife in the kitchen and severed Maggie's arms at the shoulders.
She said she believed it was the command of God.
The Schlossers lived in an apartment with their three children: baby Maggie and two other daughters, now ages 7 and 10.
The couple lost their home in Fort Worth when John Schlosser lost his job as a computer specialist. He worked intermittently as a consultant during Maggie's life, but the family struggled financially.
After Maggie was born, Dena Schlosser gave up her job at a local child-care center to stay home with the kids.
John Schlosser isolated his wife, her family members said.
He ruled his home in the manner prescribed by their minister, Doyle Davidson, a self-appointed prophet and apostle at Water of Life Church in Plano. Dena Schlosser did not have many friends, and her mother, Connie Macaulay, lives in Canada and has advanced Parkinson's disease.
John Schlosser kept family members in the dark once his wife's episodes began. He told no one that his wife had cut her wrist the day after Maggie was born. Once authorities were involved, he downplayed the severity of her illness and convinced doctors she was better off at home.
He never told anyone that the family's minister preached that mental illness was caused by demons and that medicine wasn't needed if you had faith.
Dena Schlosser's best friend, a fellow church member, often asked John Schlosser whether his wife was taking her medication. He told her not to pressure him.
Restless just days before Maggie's death in November 2004, Dena Schlosser took Maggie out for a walk in the middle of the night. She packed the baby into her stroller and walked the nearby streets.
Hearing the whir of a small engine, Dena Schlosser concluded that the sound was a chainsaw and that someone must be building an ark. She walked up and down the street in search of the woodcutter. God wanted him to have Maggie, she thought. She searched and never found.
She returned home downtrodden and told her husband what happened. God brought you home, he told her.
Forensic psychiatrist William H. Reid testified that John Schlosser and the church prevented Dena Schlosser from getting proper health care "when she needed it and when she wanted it."
Through his attorney, Schlosser denied keeping his wife from care but said that, in retrospect, he should have done things differently.
George Elwell, president of the Collin County chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said the Schlossers appeared to have been brainwashed by the church.
"I think he's the one who should be on trial - him (John Schlosser) and the church. Not her," Elwell said.
John Dornheim, a community liaison for Green Oaks Hospital, said more awareness of mental illness is needed so friends and family members can understand the warning signs.
"She made cries for help, but nobody interpreted them correctly," he said. "Most people in a severe case like that are giving out signs. It's a matter of can you interpret them or not. It sounds like her circle of friends would not."
Schlosser was first diagnosed as having postpartum psychosis after she ran away from her home just after Maggie's birth.
She was taken to Medical Center of Plano, and Child Protective Services was called because she left Maggie alone.
CPS said they considered the case high risk. Schlosser was to have no unsupervised contact with her children. Her mother-in-law came to stay with the family for a month. Then CPS decided that Schlosser could again be alone with her children, but caseworkers continued to check in every weekday.
By the time Maggie was two months old, the agency was visiting twice a week.
Neither Schlosser nor her husband told CPS about another psychotic break when Maggie was four months old. This time,
Schlosser wandered in to the nearby Medical Center in the middle of the night and was found on a bathroom floor. Yet CPS closed its case three months later after a psychiatrist deemed that Schlosser's mental health had improved. There was no further interaction with the agency until the day Maggie died.
Throughout the time CPS was involved, caseworkers wanted Schlosser to attend individual counseling, but she and her husband refused. The agency could have asked a court to order counseling, but it did not. The agency offers counseling to most clients, said spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales. She declined to discuss the Schlosser case because of privacy laws.
The clinical program director for Dallas' Child Abuse Prevention Center said CPS has a difficult job in determining whether children are at risk, especially given high turnover and understaffing at the agency.
"When you're looking at risk, you're always doing an educated guess," said Carol Duncan, who worked for CPS for 25 years.
At the same time that CPS was brought in, Schlosser was referred to LifePath Systems, the area's public mental-health system for low-income residents. The family did not have medical insurance.
Doctors sent Schlosser to Green Oaks Hospital in Dallas after her initial diagnosis at Medical Center of Plano just days after Maggie's birth. There, she stayed in the psychiatric hospital's 23-hour crisis stabilization unit, where patients are monitored to determine whether they can be released for outpatient treatment.
After her discharge, Schlosser was sent for follow-up treatment through LifePath.
From February to June 2004, Schlosser met with LifePath psychiatrist Nasir Zaki for 15 minutes a month after an initial 45-minute meeting. Zaki testified that LifePath's financial limitations prohibit longer or more frequent sessions.
"I think all of our doctors would like to have time to see clients on a more regular basis," said Randy Routon, LifePath's chief executive officer.
"We cannot do nearly as much following up as we'd like to." He also said few patients in the system receive psychotherapy because of tight funding.
There is no standard length for appointments, and the treating psychiatrist determines the time, said Tom Warburton, spokesman for ValueOptions, the managed-care company that the state contracts with to run its mental-health program.
Zaki stopped prescribing the antipsychotic drug Haldol each time Schlosser told him she did not want to take it. He said he did not pressure her to continue the medication because he could not force her to take it.
In May, the psychiatrist wrote a letter to CPS saying Schlosser was doing better. Later that month, she was found on the bathroom floor at the Plano hospital.
Doctors again diagnosed her as psychotic. But instead of going to Green Oaks, John Schlosser talked doctors into releasing her into Zaki's care. After that incident, Zaki started Schlosser on Haldol again. He said he did not know the full details of the bathroom episode, but he did not contact CPS.
Schlosser stopped going to LifePath after a July appointment in which she was incorrectly told that she would have to start paying $50 per appointment. Schlosser was never called to correct the error, a LifePath Systems employee testified.
Routon said he could not speak about Schlosser's case, citing privacy reasons. But he said some patients might be required to pay $50 for appointments if they have been deemed ineligible for treatment. Other patients may owe smaller co-payments on a sliding scale, depending on their income.
Elwell, president of the Collin County chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, says more funding for mental health treatment might have saved Maggie's life.
He said patients in the public mental health system are released from hospitals too soon and without adequate follow-up care.
LifePath's Routon said the funds must be spread among too many patients.
"Obviously, this is one of the saddest cases we've ever seen in our community," Routon said. "I think the public is not always aware that Texas is almost last in funding for mental health services in the nation. That affects our court system, how many people are in jails, how many people are having disturbances in the street and how many lives are unproductive. It shows up in a lot of ways."
The day Davidson testified in Schlosser's trial, he thanked the court in his gravelly voice for the opportunity to spread God's word.
Throughout his testimony, he answered attorneys' questions by quoting Scripture and giving his interpretation of the Bible, which other clergy members have described as out of the mainstream.
In addition to believing that demons cause mental illness, he preaches that women are possessed by a Jezebel spirit and must submit to their husbands.
"All mental problems, I'm convinced, is caused by demons," he testified. "I do not believe that any mental illness exists that is not manifestation of demonic activity."
Davidson was the only person Schlosser immediately put on her jail visitation list besides her husband. The minister was also the first person John Schlosser called after his wife told him she had cut off Maggie's arms.
Schlosser was obsessed with Davidson. She constantly spoke of him to her family and sent them tapes of his sermons. She told a psychiatrist that she began to believe that God told her that Maggie was to marry Davidson.
The day before Maggie died, the Schlossers argued in the church parking lot because Schlosser wanted to give Maggie "to God" or "to Doyle." They continued arguing at home where, according to a psychiatric report of John Schlosser, he spanked his wife with a wooden spoon.
The role that Davidson played in Schlosser's life concerns some in the mental health field.
"Somebody has to start saying something about evangelical religion's role in these tragedies we've had in Texas," said Dallas psychologist Ann Dunnewold. She refers to Ms. Schlosser and another Texas mother, Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in 2001 because, she said, she thought Satan threatened them.
"I don't think we know how to begin to address it, but I think it's complicating things."
Like the Schlossers, the Yates family was deeply religious and corresponded with a minister whom Andrea Yates' husband, Randy Yates, met while in college at Auburn University.
The preacher, who disparaged Andrea Yates' Catholicism, taught that since Adam and Eve, women are a source of evil and inferior to men. Andrea Yates felt that she was a bad mother and that drowning her children would save them. And like Dena Schlosser, Andrea Yates, who home-schooled the children, was relatively isolated.
Andrea Yates' capital murder retrial was scheduled to begin Monday, but a judge postponed it because of a scheduling conflict. A jury in 2002 rejected her claim of insanity but an appeals court later overturned the conviction.
Schlosser at times was well enough to care for herself. Medication helped, and she was judged by many around her as capable of making sound decisions.
But she and her husband repeatedly asked her psychiatrist to stop the Haldol. By all accounts, the drug was helping her.
She also refused counseling and was not forthcoming about her delusions and hallucinations when she was medicated.
She believed that a little boy who asked her for a glass of water in the summer of 2004 was Jesus. She believed that bloody streets turned into apostles heralding the Apocalypse. She believed that God told her to cut off Maggie's arms, as well as her own arms, head and legs.
Routon of LifePath said that because there is no physical test for mental illness, doctors determine how someone is doing partly based on how they - and their families - say they're doing.
"There's not a litmus test you can give: `Are they doing great or not?'" Routon said. "A lot of the practice of psychiatry involves self-report."
Many patients quit taking medications because they have started to feel better or because of what can be severe side effects.
Additionally, many women become adept at keeping quiet about postpartum depression, Dunnewold said.
"We have such taboos about mental health issues, but we have even bigger taboos about mothers being unhappy with motherhood," she said. "Women are able to keep it sort of under wraps, and then it can flare up. You want to believe it's coming together. Families want to believe it's all coming together."
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NOTE: Last week, prosecutors sought a second capital murder trial for Dena Schlosser, accused of killing her 10-month-old daughter. The first trial ended in a mistrial on Feb. 25 after jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision on whether the Plano mother was not guilty by reason of insanity. The following story is culled from facts and descriptions from interviews and the testimony of various sources during the first trial.
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DEPRESSION AFTER CHILDBIRTH
Postpartum depression can be caused by hormonal changes that can affect brain chemicals after giving birth. About 10 percent of new mothers experience some degree of postpartum depression. Treatment can include medication and psychotherapy.
Symptoms include:
Sluggishness, fatigue, exhaustion
Feelings of hopelessness or depression
Disturbances with appetite or sleep
Confusion
Uncontrollable crying
Lack of interest in the baby
Fear of harming the baby or oneself
Mood swings
Postpartum psychosis is more severe and less common, occurring in one to two of every 1,000 new mothers. Of those, an estimated 5 percent commit suicide, and 4 percent kill their babies. Risk factors include a family history of psychosis, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Postpartum depression can evolve into psychosis after a dramatic or traumatic event.
Symptoms, which usually arise within three days of delivery, can include:
Hallucinations
Delusions, for example, about a need to kill the baby, that the baby is possessed or a denial of the birth
Delirium, mania and frantic energy
Extreme confusion, memory loss or incoherence
Paranoia, irrational statements, preoccupation with trivial things
Refusal to eat
A woman who is diagnosed as having postpartum psychosis should be hospitalized until she is in stable condition, according to the National Mental Health Association. Doctors may prescribe a mood stabilizer, antipsychotic or antidepressant to treat the psychosis.
Sources: American Psychiatric Association; National Mental Health Association; Postpartum Support International
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WHAT'S NEXT?
The state will prosecute Dena Schlosser again. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
A judge or jury could decide the verdict in a second trial.
A recent change to state law would allow the defense and prosecutors to agree that Schlosser was insane when she killed daughter Maggie. The outcome would be the same as a jury deciding that she was not guilty by reason of insanity: Schlosser would go to North Texas State Hospital in Vernon until state District Judge Chris Oldner decides that she should be released.
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GETTING HELP
Postpartum Support International provides information for new parents, an online list of support groups, chats, discussion boards and a postpartum self-assessment test at
http://www.postpartum.netDepression After Delivery Inc. provides information, support and links to information at
http://www.charityadvantage.com/depress ... chosis.asp