Mother recounts injured 2-year-old’s last hours
Julie Johnson Marinelli fought back tears Tuesday as she related to Fayette County jurors what Franklin Weimer, her former beau and the man accused of killing her son, told her after the child died. “He told me now it could be just me and him,” said Johnson Marinelli.
At the time, she was rocking her son, Zachary Johnson, in a chair at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. The 2-year-old had died at the hospital after sustaining what prosecutors claim were intentionally inflicted blows to the head at Weimer’s hands, possibly using a shower brush.
He is on retrial for the child’s death after the state Superior Court overturned his third-degree murder and child endangering convictions. Prosecutors are seeking the same convictions, while 33-year-old Weimer’s attorney, George Matangos, is seeking an acquittal on the basis that Johnson’s death was an accident.
Assistant District Attorneys Jack R. Heneks Jr. and Mark Mehalov are prosecuting the case.
Johnson Marinelli, who was living with Weimer in Hopwood at the time of her son’s death, testified she left for work shortly after 11 p.m. on Jan. 24, 1998. There only a few minutes, she testified Weimer called her and told her that her son fell down three steps.
She told him to call 911, and headed home.
There, Johnson Marinelli found her son unconscious on a living room couch. She wiped the vomit from his mouth and tried to rouse the toddler, her son with Mark Rambo Jr.
“He was seizing, posturing,” said Johnson Marinelli, a nurse. “He was dying in front of my eyes and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
When she first saw her son at home, Johnson Marinelli testified he had a “huge bruise” on his forehead and was breathing shallowly.
While she and Weimer waited for an ambulance to arrive, Johnson Marinelli testified that he repeated to her over and over, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”
Paramedics who arrived on scene around midnight worked on Johnson briefly and then took him to the helicopter pad by the Uniontown Hospital, where he was flown to Children’s Hospital for care.
After a brain scan, Johnson Marinelli testified the hospital staff told her that Zachary would die from his injuries.
Doctors there found blood around the toddler’s brain, indicating that he had hemorrhaging. Dr. Holly Davis, a pediatric child abuse expert, testified that Johnson also had a ruptured left ear drum, suggesting the he may have been forcefully hit or kicked.
In all, Davis testified she thought Johnson was hit with great force at least five times, but possibly as many as eight. Johnson had multiple bruises and contusions on his head, she testified, as well as bleeding behind his eyes.
Some of the bruises could match up to the shower brush prosecutors allege Weimer used to hit the toddler. She called the injuries Johnson sustained “horrendous” and “catastrophic” at numerous times during her testimony and said that she felt the injuries were not accidental, as the defense is claiming.
Lancaster County Forensic Pathologist Dr. Wayne Ross is expected to testify as a defense expert later in the week. His report indicates that Johnson could have sustained the same injuries from one impact where his head struck two objects at once. That happened when Weimer was swinging the child around and lost his balance, the defense has contended. Matangos acknowledged that Weimer initially lied to police about what happened to Johnson.
Davis, however, refuted that.
“You can’t get bleeding on all four sides of the head … all in one blow,” she testified.
While Davis said that swinging Johnson in an arch and having his head collide with an object may have caused some of the injuries, she testified that she did not believe such an impact could cause all the injuries.
“A single blow, swinging in an arch, might have caused some problems, but nothing to the magnitude of this,” testified Davis. “The bottom line as far as I’m concerned is that there were multiple blows to Zachary’s head … in very violent form.”
Davis testified she felt there was only a “quite small” possibility that the injuries could have been inflicted as Weimer said, noting that she felt the evidence clearly pointed to intentional injuries.
Police looked in to Johnson’s death after officials at Children’s Hospital contacted them because the injuries were not consistent with Weimer’s story about the toddler falling down the steps.
Johnson Marinelli testified that Weimer seemed “uneasy” about her relationship with Zachary from the start of their relationship in September 1997.
“I had a wonderful relationship with my son. In return, Zachary was always at my side,” testified Johnson Marinelli.
She said that meant that when it came to tasks like tying his shoes or combing his hair, the toddler wanted her – not Weimer – to do things for him. While Weimer and her son played together, she testified that he often referred to Zachary as a “mama’s boy” because he was so close to his mother.
Under cross-examination by Matangos, Johnson Marinelli testified that Weimer never abused her and she never saw him abuse her son.
“Did Zachary ever verbalize that Frank Weimer hurt him?” asked Mantangos.
“He was 27-months-old. He didn’t have that kind of vocabulary, so no, he didn’t,” testified Johnson Marinelli, who said she saw bruises on the toddler’s face in the days before his death.
Weimer, she testified, said he fell out of his bed during the night.
She described Weimer’s relationship with the boy as “caring,” but said calling that relationship between the two “loving” was not an accurate portrayal.
Johnson Marinelli also described for jurors several pictures of the home she once shared with Weimer. In those pictures, she pointed out that the handle of a shower brush was lying in the hallway, a broken smoke detector and a cracked toilet seat. Those things were not broken before she went to work the evening of Jan. 24, 1998, she testified.
Prosecutors have alleged that Weimer used that shower brush to hit Zachary Johnson in the head that night.
The trial is expected to pick up this morning before Judge Gerald R. Solomon.