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A final step to prison
By CARY DAVIS © St. Petersburg Times, published March 24, 2001 NEW PORT RICHEY -- The deal had been accepted by a judge a week earlier: Jim Curtis would spend nearly 14 years in prison for killing the Connecticut foster child he once planned to adopt. Only one thing remained to be done in the case: Circuit Judge William Webb wanted to give 3-year-old Alex Boucher's former foster mother, Michelle Harmon, a chance to address the court. But when Webb called Curtis' case Friday morning, Harmon was 1,500 miles away in her home in Orrington, Maine. Five minutes later, after being fingerprinted by a bailiff, Curtis was led in handcuffs from a New Port Richey courtroom, on his way to begin serving his 13.8-year prison sentence. Harmon said later Friday that she was unable to attend the hearing because she had spent her money instead on a trip this week to Connecticut, where she addressed reporters about how that state's child welfare agency had failed Alex by handing the boy over to Jim and Jennifer Curtis. When it came down to it, Harmon said, "I thought it was more important to keep the focus on Alex and not Jim Curtis." Curtis, 26, of New Port Richey pleaded guilty last Friday to a reduced charge of manslaughter, admitting that he wrapped Alex so tightly in a blanket on Sept. 25 that the boy died of asphyxiation. Curtis originally was charged with first-degree murder and faced a possible death sentence before he struck a deal with prosecutors. Harmon, who was Alex's foster mother for most of his short life, said she had planned to address Curtis in court. "I wanted to tell him that when he first gets to his cell, to listen for the silence, because that's what we hear now," she said. "To know that (Alex) was killed 14 days after leaving my hands is the worst feeling in the world," she said. "When I let Alex go, I told him he was going somewhere he'd be really happy." On Wednesday, a scathing report by a Connecticut regulatory panel blamed that state's Department of Children and Families for Alex's death. The report said Connecticut DCF did not properly document Alex's case and failed to conduct the required background checks and home studies before allowing the Curtises to bring the physically and mentally disabled boy to Florida. Connecticut DCF "treated (Alex) like a case to be processed and not a child to be nurtured," said Jeanne Milstein, a Connecticut child advocate. - Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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From today's Pasco Times |
