heartgoesout
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I often wonder if people really do get what they deserve in prison?
MA - Bella Bond, 2, found dead, Deer Island, Boston Harbor, June 2015 - #7
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heartgoesout
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How quickly would Bella become grey and swollen per RB's statement that she looked like that immediately ?
Bootsctr
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RB's description of Bella "gray and swollen" has always bothered me... I mean how long was it before she even looked at her? I think RB is trying to make it sound like it was too late to save Bella when she did see her, which is a big fat lie!
It has bothered me since the arrests that RB is only being charged as accessory after the fact. What does her word mean? Nothing. So, if she said a stranger came in and hurt Bella, then would MM even be charged? I just don't understand how the word of a manipulative conniver counts as anything.
LoyalSleuth
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hmmm, this is correct, I forgot about that... I am interested to hear how MM's attorney addresses this piece of evidence.
LoyalSleuth
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For the first time today, this case made me think of the Holmoka / Bernardo case.
Different circumstances completely, but the whole "I was a victim, He did it all, I was trapped, I had to go along with it, He would kill me if I didn't" crap is the same.
Look how it all came out AFTER sentencing, about who was an equal contributor...
I pray this does not happen in Bella's case.
Different circumstances completely, but the whole "I was a victim, He did it all, I was trapped, I had to go along with it, He would kill me if I didn't" crap is the same.
Look how it all came out AFTER sentencing, about who was an equal contributor...
I pray this does not happen in Bella's case.
When murder cases involve two people, it can become a "he said, she said" trial if there is little to no evidence proving otherwise, which we still don't know if they have any evidence at all in this case.
Both these attorneys are well versed in playing the media in high profile cases, so they will "spin" to their advantage.
RB's attorney is also the attorney who represented SJ, AH's fiancé.
MM's attorney is also the attorney who represented the Boston Bomber's friend.
*************
McGovern: Blame game appears as defendants' strategy in Bella Bond trial
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/co..._game_appears_as_defendants_strategy_in_bella
**************
IMO, it would be a horrible injustice to little Bella if RB was to receive some sort of plea of an even more reduced sentence than she is currently charged for in return for testimony against MM in order to obtain a murder conviction, although I was fearful of this being a possibility way back. I surely hope it doesn't turn out this way. IMO she is the one deserving of the murder charge...maybe along with MM. I cannot see one bit of truth in the story RB told, none of it makes any sense down to the point of her calling herself "an accessory after the fact" when LE finally picked her up...she was well coached and had plenty of time to elaborate her story as her dead daughter was left unclaimed for months after being thrown out like garbage.
I had also read that the other story-teller JA was in court yesterday, but surprisingly he had no comments for reporters...first time for that.
Both these attorneys are well versed in playing the media in high profile cases, so they will "spin" to their advantage.
RB's attorney is also the attorney who represented SJ, AH's fiancé.
MM's attorney is also the attorney who represented the Boston Bomber's friend.
*************
McGovern: Blame game appears as defendants' strategy in Bella Bond trial
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/co..._game_appears_as_defendants_strategy_in_bella
**************
IMO, it would be a horrible injustice to little Bella if RB was to receive some sort of plea of an even more reduced sentence than she is currently charged for in return for testimony against MM in order to obtain a murder conviction, although I was fearful of this being a possibility way back. I surely hope it doesn't turn out this way. IMO she is the one deserving of the murder charge...maybe along with MM. I cannot see one bit of truth in the story RB told, none of it makes any sense down to the point of her calling herself "an accessory after the fact" when LE finally picked her up...she was well coached and had plenty of time to elaborate her story as her dead daughter was left unclaimed for months after being thrown out like garbage.
I had also read that the other story-teller JA was in court yesterday, but surprisingly he had no comments for reporters...first time for that.
heartgoesout
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Do we know what kind of weights we are talking about here? Originally I visualized some sort of plumbing weights (duh does that even exist) and that they stopped at the plumbing store to get them on the way to the seaport. I've reread and am just seeing weights. So if they are in fact weights men use to exercise with that match the ones (a set) in his fathers plumbing business, then it is entirely possible RB did that all by herself.
I really wish McCarthy's camp would give more info.
I really wish McCarthy's camp would give more info.
This (very long) article discusses Bella and many other unfortunate sad cases, and the child welfare system. I pulled out some quotes below pertaining to RB and her attorney...
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/baby-doe
Bond’s attorney is Janice Bassil, who has been involved in many of Boston’s most high-profile trials. She helped defend John Salvi, who, in 1994, killed two women at a Planned Parenthood clinic. In September, she got a call from the state asking her if she’d be willing to represent either McCarthy or Bond. “They said, ‘Who do you want?’ And I said, ‘I’ll take the woman,’ ” Bassil said.
A few years ago, Bassil successfully defended a woman who had murdered her two children. She used an insanity defense, which very seldom works. “My goal was to tell her whole life story so the jury would have some empathy,” Bassil told me. Her approach to Bond’s defense is likely to be both the same and different. She’ll tell her whole life story, emphasizing the eight years she spent living on the streets. “She lived under a bridge,” Bassil told me. “You live under a bridge and tell me how well you’d cope.” Under the circumstances, she’ll probably say, Bond was the best mother she could have been. Bassil might talk, too, about the history of the provision of services to poor mothers and poor children.
......
I asked Bassil if the public’s embrace of Bella Bond would make defending her client more difficult. Bassil shook her head. “The reason there are those pictures and videos,” she said, her voice steadily rising, as if she were addressing the jury, “is because her mother took them because her mother loved her.”
......
....(RB) ....She hid her face with her hair. (In prison, inmates shout “Baby killer!” whenever she leaves her cell.)...
........
Both Bond and McCarthy are pleading not guilty. Pretrial hearings begin later this month. During the grand-jury proceedings, prosecutors entered as evidence a letter Bond received from the Boston Globe Santa Holiday Fund. Baby killer steals from Claus? More and worse details will come out. But Bond might not face trial; it’s likely that she’ll testify against McCarthy, possibly in exchange for a reduced sentence. For child welfare, there will be no mercy.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/baby-doe
Bond’s attorney is Janice Bassil, who has been involved in many of Boston’s most high-profile trials. She helped defend John Salvi, who, in 1994, killed two women at a Planned Parenthood clinic. In September, she got a call from the state asking her if she’d be willing to represent either McCarthy or Bond. “They said, ‘Who do you want?’ And I said, ‘I’ll take the woman,’ ” Bassil said.
A few years ago, Bassil successfully defended a woman who had murdered her two children. She used an insanity defense, which very seldom works. “My goal was to tell her whole life story so the jury would have some empathy,” Bassil told me. Her approach to Bond’s defense is likely to be both the same and different. She’ll tell her whole life story, emphasizing the eight years she spent living on the streets. “She lived under a bridge,” Bassil told me. “You live under a bridge and tell me how well you’d cope.” Under the circumstances, she’ll probably say, Bond was the best mother she could have been. Bassil might talk, too, about the history of the provision of services to poor mothers and poor children.
......
I asked Bassil if the public’s embrace of Bella Bond would make defending her client more difficult. Bassil shook her head. “The reason there are those pictures and videos,” she said, her voice steadily rising, as if she were addressing the jury, “is because her mother took them because her mother loved her.”
......
....(RB) ....She hid her face with her hair. (In prison, inmates shout “Baby killer!” whenever she leaves her cell.)...
........
Both Bond and McCarthy are pleading not guilty. Pretrial hearings begin later this month. During the grand-jury proceedings, prosecutors entered as evidence a letter Bond received from the Boston Globe Santa Holiday Fund. Baby killer steals from Claus? More and worse details will come out. But Bond might not face trial; it’s likely that she’ll testify against McCarthy, possibly in exchange for a reduced sentence. For child welfare, there will be no mercy.
Bootsctr
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Snipped from BUF's link:
"Tanika Simpson is Minding the Babys clinical social worker. We are practicing this model in a way thats different from how weve been trained, she told me. She sometimes works with Connecticuts D.C.F. From a policy perspective, people want something thats quick and clean, to assess risk. But this is messy. And its never going to be quick and clean. Ive worked with D.C.F. workers. They want to work differently. Im not sure that their infrastructure supports them to work differently.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/baby-doe
I completely agree with Ms. Simpson, there is never going to be a quick and clean solution to child abuse. It's a dirty, ugly in-your-face reality. Too much finger-pointing beginning with the perpetrators and on up the ladder. Still, 8 years of living under a bridge, doesn't make Rachel Bond a more sympathetic figure to me. Nor does the fact that she is bipolar make it any easier to find an ounce of empathy for her. A dead child... is a dead child. She is the mother, and in my mind, the responsibility of Bella's well-being laid solely on RB's shoulders.
I have no answers, only opinions. As far as DCF closing the Bella's case without a new assessment, copying and pasting from a 2006 assessment, is reprehensible. The person in charge of that particular DCF office should have been fired immediately - not the caseworker - the head honcho should have been fired. Would that save even one more child's life? I don't know.
After reading the article, I am pondering many things including, but not limited to, battered child syndrome, battered woman syndrome to Minding the Baby and risk assessments of being a child batterer. Just an opinion, but being a battered woman doesn't make it okay to batter a child. Bond has never looked "distant and confused" to me. She seemed to be only a bitter woman who somehow projected through her snide looks towards McCarthy that in some way she was better than him.
As if choosing Bond was choosing the lesser of 2 evils, I believe Ms. Bassil is looking at Ms. Bond through rose-colored glasses. Oh, and, by the way, posting a few pictures and videos on Facebook does not mean squat! Facebook is not REAL life - especially the life of an infant or child unable to speak up for themselves.
:sigh: For all the cases of child and animal abuse that are brought to light, I always wonder how many more there are that we don't hear a peep.
Rest In Peace sweet Bella! You are gone but not forgotten!
"Tanika Simpson is Minding the Babys clinical social worker. We are practicing this model in a way thats different from how weve been trained, she told me. She sometimes works with Connecticuts D.C.F. From a policy perspective, people want something thats quick and clean, to assess risk. But this is messy. And its never going to be quick and clean. Ive worked with D.C.F. workers. They want to work differently. Im not sure that their infrastructure supports them to work differently.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/baby-doe
I completely agree with Ms. Simpson, there is never going to be a quick and clean solution to child abuse. It's a dirty, ugly in-your-face reality. Too much finger-pointing beginning with the perpetrators and on up the ladder. Still, 8 years of living under a bridge, doesn't make Rachel Bond a more sympathetic figure to me. Nor does the fact that she is bipolar make it any easier to find an ounce of empathy for her. A dead child... is a dead child. She is the mother, and in my mind, the responsibility of Bella's well-being laid solely on RB's shoulders.
I have no answers, only opinions. As far as DCF closing the Bella's case without a new assessment, copying and pasting from a 2006 assessment, is reprehensible. The person in charge of that particular DCF office should have been fired immediately - not the caseworker - the head honcho should have been fired. Would that save even one more child's life? I don't know.
After reading the article, I am pondering many things including, but not limited to, battered child syndrome, battered woman syndrome to Minding the Baby and risk assessments of being a child batterer. Just an opinion, but being a battered woman doesn't make it okay to batter a child. Bond has never looked "distant and confused" to me. She seemed to be only a bitter woman who somehow projected through her snide looks towards McCarthy that in some way she was better than him.
As if choosing Bond was choosing the lesser of 2 evils, I believe Ms. Bassil is looking at Ms. Bond through rose-colored glasses. Oh, and, by the way, posting a few pictures and videos on Facebook does not mean squat! Facebook is not REAL life - especially the life of an infant or child unable to speak up for themselves.
:sigh: For all the cases of child and animal abuse that are brought to light, I always wonder how many more there are that we don't hear a peep.
Rest In Peace sweet Bella! You are gone but not forgotten!
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I could find it far easier to believe that MM had nothing to do with the actual murder, and possibly even nothing to do with the disposal, than RB having nothing to do with the murder and then being forced to go along with the disposal by MM.
RB's attorney makes me sick. Sure I believe RB did try her hardest with Bella, for a time, but that seems to have all changed well before Bella's death. We could all see it in the birthday video how RB had a tendency to anger if Bella didn't behave as RB desired. A few photos showing Bella happy and smiling don't change that. I believe people should be defended against charges, but that defense should be based in reality, not a made-up story that their attorney uses to command high 'wages'?
I would imagine MM's father will be called to the stand to say when he last saw the weights in his basement....if they were gone weeks before then they could already have been in RB's apartment, which means either of them could have chosen them to weight down the body.
I think part of the problem is that we haven't observed MM as much. He looked like a zombie in the first hearing, but he also seemed to be genuinely trying to follow what was being said, and the shaking of the head 'no' seemed very genuine, and as he was clearly in withdrawal state I wouldn't think he'd have been able to put that on as an act. Yet we do have his own friends accusing him of being complicit in the shutting of Bella in a cupboard as punishment. But we also have the same people saying RB was doing the same thing. While that is an act of cruelty, it's not necessarily an act of violence? Was the death a violent death? Without major signs of violence on the body (along the lines of the accusation against baby Chance's father) then I would say RB is the more likely killer, and even if there were moderate signs of violence -- slapping or shoving injuries -- I would still say the same thing. If Bella had been thrown across a room, then I would suspect a male perp.
MM seems the most likely to go along with the quiet disposal of the body than RB. He might think in his drug-addled brain that he was just doing a favor for the woman who was giving him a place to say, he might feel sorry for her. A mother shouldn't feel that way, and we've seen and heard no evidence that RB is that docile to not fly at the man who murdered her baby and scream from the rooftops what he'd done and then keep quiet for months.
I could imagine RB setting up MM as the fall guy though, and planning it as a back-up for all those months, and only putting the plan into action when the natural 'father' started asking too many questions. After Bella's death there are accounts that RB was quite lovey-dovey with MM, but was she like that with him before Bella's death?
But I'm terrified that both of them will get off. I want the right person jailed for the right part in it, but I know at least one of them is culpable and I don't want that person to walk away with no punishment whatsoever.
RB's attorney makes me sick. Sure I believe RB did try her hardest with Bella, for a time, but that seems to have all changed well before Bella's death. We could all see it in the birthday video how RB had a tendency to anger if Bella didn't behave as RB desired. A few photos showing Bella happy and smiling don't change that. I believe people should be defended against charges, but that defense should be based in reality, not a made-up story that their attorney uses to command high 'wages'?
I would imagine MM's father will be called to the stand to say when he last saw the weights in his basement....if they were gone weeks before then they could already have been in RB's apartment, which means either of them could have chosen them to weight down the body.
I think part of the problem is that we haven't observed MM as much. He looked like a zombie in the first hearing, but he also seemed to be genuinely trying to follow what was being said, and the shaking of the head 'no' seemed very genuine, and as he was clearly in withdrawal state I wouldn't think he'd have been able to put that on as an act. Yet we do have his own friends accusing him of being complicit in the shutting of Bella in a cupboard as punishment. But we also have the same people saying RB was doing the same thing. While that is an act of cruelty, it's not necessarily an act of violence? Was the death a violent death? Without major signs of violence on the body (along the lines of the accusation against baby Chance's father) then I would say RB is the more likely killer, and even if there were moderate signs of violence -- slapping or shoving injuries -- I would still say the same thing. If Bella had been thrown across a room, then I would suspect a male perp.
MM seems the most likely to go along with the quiet disposal of the body than RB. He might think in his drug-addled brain that he was just doing a favor for the woman who was giving him a place to say, he might feel sorry for her. A mother shouldn't feel that way, and we've seen and heard no evidence that RB is that docile to not fly at the man who murdered her baby and scream from the rooftops what he'd done and then keep quiet for months.
I could imagine RB setting up MM as the fall guy though, and planning it as a back-up for all those months, and only putting the plan into action when the natural 'father' started asking too many questions. After Bella's death there are accounts that RB was quite lovey-dovey with MM, but was she like that with him before Bella's death?
But I'm terrified that both of them will get off. I want the right person jailed for the right part in it, but I know at least one of them is culpable and I don't want that person to walk away with no punishment whatsoever.
heartgoesout
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Agreed. Most mothers would die fighting if something happened to their baby.
I dont believe a word of her story. I've erased her words from my mind.
I mean is she really going to say, I punched her in the stomach as hard as I could and then sat on her to shut her up. Nope.
I dont believe a word of her story. I've erased her words from my mind.
I mean is she really going to say, I punched her in the stomach as hard as I could and then sat on her to shut her up. Nope.
Gourami Watcher
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This is off-topic to the case itself, but the Wikipedia article on Bella's case was just promoted to "Good Article" status, making it one of the top 0.4% best articles on the site.
MM was supposed to have a pre trial hearing yesterday (2/16/16). I haven't been able to find anything on it. Wonder if it was re-scheduled, court closed due to snow, or we just won't hear anything more.
Has anyone heard anything?
Has anyone heard anything?
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I was googling that too..... and found nothing
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Yep, that is a good article. A couple of things in there I didn't know (or had forgotten)
heartgoesout
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Next hearings?
RB has a pre-trial hearing scheduled for Thursday. I think I remember her attny saying RB wanted to not appear. Don't know if it was discussed more or if maybe they postponed this next one too. We'll see...
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