PAUL HARPER Jr - 22 months -(2009) Sacramento CA

The mother of a Sacramento baby who police said was beaten
to death by his father was arrested late Friday and faces murder
charges in her child's death, according to a Sacramento police
spokesman.

Theresa Harper, 24, was arrested Friday evening and will
also be charged with murder in connection with Thursday's death of her
son, 22-month-old Paul Harper Jr., Sacramento police Sgt. Norm Leong
said.

The baby's father Paul Harper, 28, was arrested early
Friday, just hours after the child was pronounced dead at the UC Davis
Medical Center Thursday evening.

Leong said UCD officials notified police after the child
was brought in by ambulance with signs of blunt force trauma to the
baby's head.

Investigators believe Paul Harper beat the child and that
Theresa Harper had knowledge of abuse against the baby and did not
prevent or report the injuries, Leong said.

An autopsy would be conducted to determine the cause of
the infant's death. Child Protective Services did not have a record of
the family or past abuse against the child, Leong said.
A young girl who also lived in the family's house on the 1200 block of South Avenue was removed and placed in the care of CPS.

not finding any updates on these parents - just the initial arrest.

The confrontation grew heated, and it was time for Paul Harper
to take his stand. He'd been disrespected, humiliated – his very manhood
questioned. It was time to show his opponent who really was The Man.
"I told him to stop acting like you('re) running things," Harper said, in
his conversation afterward with Sacramento police. To emphasize his
point, Harper said he got mean, turned physical. "I popped him in the
side with my knuckles," he said.
On Monday, Harper pleaded no
contest to second-degree murder for the fatal Aug. 20, 2009, beating –
of his own 22-month-old son.
Harper, now 31, also pleaded no contest to killing Paul Harper Jr. in
the course of abusing him, which is the more serious offense under
California sentencing law. It is likely to result in a 25-to-life term
when Harper returns to Sacramento Superior Court for his July 20
sentencing in front of Judge Steve White.
The plea came right
after his wife, Theresa Harper, 27, admitted her guilt to second-degree
murder in the beating death of her son. She will be looking at a
15-to-life term when she comes back to court for her sentencing on the same date.
The co-defendants entered their pleas just before the
prosecution and defense attorneys were slated to present their opening
statements Monday to two juries impaneled for trial.
It was Theresa Harper, charged under a theory of failing to protect, who
first changed her mind about wanting to go to trial.
"She wanted to take responsibility, first and foremost," her attorney, Karol
Martin Repkow, said in an interview. "Secondly, she did not want to
risk a 25-to-life sentence after trial. Normally, I give them the option
to plead 'no contest.' She said, 'No, I want to plead guilty.' "
Theresa Harper's change of plea surprised her husband and co-defendant. Paul
Harper's attorney, Kenneth L. Rosenfeld, worried Theresa Harper might
testify against his client. After a consultation, Paul Harper also
changed his plea.
"We had no idea that was going to happen until this morning," Rosenfeld said.
"And that did change the tenor of the case."
Deputy District Attorney Chris Ore declined to comment. His trial brief
suggested the evidence against the two was fairly strong. It consisted
mostly of detailed statements the Harpers gave to police after their
son's death in the family's South Avenue apartment in Del Paso Heights.
Theresa Harper told detectives she and Paul Sr. had been married for six years.
She said they'd already had two children taken away from them for
domestic violence reasons. They told police Paul Sr. had broken Paul
Jr.'s arm once in Texas but that they were able to conceal the abuse
from Sacramento child protection officials.
A week before the boy
died, two developmental disability specialists visited the Harper
residence to discuss Paul Jr.'s delayed speech and feeding issues that
had come to their attention, the brief said.
A few days before the killing, Theresa Harper said her husband had grown even more
frustrated with the boy's refusal to eat. So he hauled off and slugged
his son in the ribs, she said.
The day the child was murdered,
Theresa Harper said she and her husband had been drinking homemade wine
in a neighborhood park. When they came home, she said her drunken
husband tried to feed the boy a bottle of milk blended with chicken and turkey lunch meat.
When the toddler rejected it, Paul Sr. made
him stand in the corner. The boy then lay down on the floor, the brief
said, and that's when his father lost it.
"As soon as I turned my back, he sat down," Harper told police, according to the brief. "I told
him that he is not the man in the house, I am."
Paul Sr. said he banged the boy in the ribs. His son then "grabbed the bottle and
start(ed) squirting the bottle everywhere, so I popped him on the other side."
Despite the boy's crying, Theresa Harper said she left her
husband and son alone while she went to the bathroom. When she came out,
she told detectives, her husband was performing CPR on the boy, whose
eyes had rolled back into his head and who was "flopping around."
An autopsy showed Paul Jr. died of blunt head injuries and "battered child
syndrome" that led to a fatal aspiration: His brain had become so
swollen from the beatings he lost his gag reflex, the trial brief said,
which caused him to inhale into his lungs the very food materials he had
been trying to reject, in the confrontation with his father.

http://www.modbee.com/2012/05/30/2220249/parents-make-pleas-in-beating.html

This poor baby died a tragic painful death. The POS monsters should be put away forever. They deserve death by torture.