BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND THE WAY THE REAL STORY READS--
OR SHOULD
This is about Elsa Newman, a graduate with highest honors of Goucher College and the University of Maryland School of Law, with an impressive C.V. including a listing in Who’s Who in American Law. She allegedly concocted allegations of sexual abuse and then allegedly tried to murder the man, her ex and father of her children.
These are two open, joyous, brilliant, good children with the confidence of kittens. The children went to Elsa to confide about their father’s abuse. They had no expectation of being hurt or that their mother would be horribly punished because she spoke out for them. Although Elsa had successive protective orders, the children had to visit this abusive father during their divorce.
A family friend named Margery Landry broke into the father’s home. She was charged and found guilty of assault and is serving a 20 year sentence. Repeatedly she’s written, testified and refused the prosecutor’s offer of a sentence reduction. She says Elsa didn’t know of her plans and warned her to stay away from the ex. Elsa was at her niece’s wedding when this happened. Landry found Arlen Slobodow in bed nude with his younger child. She pulled them apart. He beat her and bit her finger. The gun she brought to protect herself discharged into his leg at such close range, the bullet went through his leg. Strangely, although there were two wounds--entrance and exit--there were no holes in his pajama bottoms, although the garment was covered with blood. It does seem like that should have told somebody something.
Landry fled, and Slobodow managed to reach a phone and call 9-1-1. I find the call quite interesting. One of the first things he said was, "Don't let my wife have my kids." Well, of course he didn't want her to have the kids. He knew what he'd been doing to them. And he knew that Elsa would take them to a physician for examination.
In another part of the call, Slobodow said, "My wife sent someone to try to kill me." O-o-o-K! But even if Elsa had done just that, there was no way he could have known it.
Despite the lack of evidence, despite the fact that the only two witnesses for the prosecution were Stephen Friedman, Elsa's former divorce attorney [what happened to attorney-client privilege?] and Arlen Slobodow, who clearly had a vested interest in sending his wife to prison and gaining physical custoy of the children, Elsa was arrested, tried and convicted of conspiracy for attempted murder and other charges.
Elsa’s conviction was vacated after Maryland’s highest court found no evidence connecting her to any criminal activity. Despite the absence of evidence—no DNA, no emails, no letters, no calls, no manuals, no nothing, no circumstantial evidence in any of the file cabinets, boxes of documents or computer--the prosecutors, Doug Gansler, State’s Attorney who was running for Attorney General of the State of Maryland, and Katherine Winfree, his deputy, pursued Elsa.
Gansler was quoted by the press after the conviction was vacated as saying that the state court had just releasted the woman who wanted to kill her kids. This, like the rest, came out of thin air. After her release, the prosecutors continued to retry her and added a death penalty to punish her for winning an appeal. There was no evidence, nothing new. Elsa’s ex was again the chief prosecution witness. He connected Elsa to Margery Landry by spinning a “twisted sisters” link. Elsa’s divorce attorney’s secretary was called to testify that Elsa had threatened to kill Arlen Slobodow, a blatant falsehood.
Every single expert, and the best professionals were involved, opined over and over that the kids were molested and their mother was not coaching them to say it. Their father, a pedophile, needed to be investigated thoroughly and supervised (see, e.g. Dr. Michael Lamb’s (NIH) report of Nov. 20, 2001, Dr. Leon Rosenberg’s (John’s Hopkins University) report of Sept. 20, 2000, Russell Brown’s (LCSW, D.C. Children’s Hospital) report of June 2000, Dr. Jill Scharff’s reports of 2000, 2001, and 2002). There were documented behavioral and physical manifestations of child sexual abuse (bruises, bloodied rings around the anus and symmetrical lesions, severe sexually transmitted rashes on penis and buttocks, bite marks) reported by teachers, court personnel and doctors not to mention 3 years of disclosures by the children (during the period of the prosecutor’s Montgomery County Maryland’s involvement). Dr. Newberger in 2006 wrote an extensive report establishing that the children suffered severe sadistic abuse throughout the term of Elsa’s prosecution, and before, and that their father, Arlen Slobodow, can be clearly expected to continue to abuse the kids. Dr. Newberger called Maryland’s investigation well below the national standard.
Elsa’s prosecutors were responsible for the below standard child abuse investigation. At the trials, they touted their closed investigations as proof Elsa supposedly accused her ex of sexually abusing their children in a deliberate attempt to “get him”. Because they closed the so-called investigation, Elsa was now conspiring to murder her ex. The jury deliberated over 2 days, and it was, unfortunately, Elsa’s lawyer who asked to press them to a verdict. They convicted just before a long holiday weekend.
Elsa was convicted long before either trial, however. All along her prosecutors fed the media distorted facts to make her look guilty. Elsa was tried as a “twisted sister” to Landry. Articles were on the front pages of newspapers coast to coast where they remain via the internet.
Jurors decided Elsa was guilty before the trial started. A deputy sheriff and a prospective juror notified the judge of these illegal conversations. The judge did not excuse the panel. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury foreman proudly boasted to Channel 9 news reporter Bruce LeShan that he knew Elsa was guilty from the start.
The jury never knew the ex sadistically abused the children but when a legal secretary testified that she clearly remembered a conversation nearly four years earlier in which Elsa had threatened to kill Slobodow, that was viciously and crudely exploited and distorted to stick Elsa with a crime.
Doug Gansler and Katherine Winfree are now the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of the State of Maryland, respectively. In 2002 they silenced Elsa’s children. Now they silenced Elsa.