Leatrice Brewer

Case details

Leatrice Brewer killed her three children, Jewell Ward, Michael Demesyeux, and Innocent Demesyeux Jr., and later pleaded not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect.

Background

Leatrice Brewer was known to her family and neighbors as an uneven mother whose manner with her children toggled between extreme possessiveness and blithe neglect. She was described as a troubled woman.

Relatives and friends portrayed Brewer as having struggled with the painful legacy of abandonment in childhood by her mentally ill mother. Her life included independent living and frequently working two jobs. Relatives and friends also described her as capable of lavishing love and attention on her children despite bouts of depression, drug dependence, and mental illness.

Brewer’s family remembered that her grandmother, Maebell Mickens, struggled throughout her life with drug addiction and mental illness. During one of her mother’s absences, Leatrice and her brother, Robert, lived with their grandmother, Maebell Mickens. When her mother was released, she sometimes lived in the grandmother’s house off and on, but did not establish a household with her children again.

A relative, Daquann Redd, described Brewer as a teenager who was “determined to succeed at something,” and described her as somewhat scarred by “how messed up her mom’s life was.” Redd said Brewer had been his regular baby sitter for a couple of years, meeting him at the bus stop after school and looking after him until his mother, Sylvia Croker, returned from work. Redd described Brewer as a taskmaster, saying: “She was like, ‘Don’t play so much basketball. Do your homework. Read books,’ ” and “She wanted to be a nurse. I looked up to her because she had goals.”

Brewer was pictured in the 1999 Westbury High School yearbook as a senior, smiling and wearing a festive formal dress. Relatives remembered that for a couple of years she had an after-school job with the maintenance department at the high school. She was absent from the 1996 and 1998 yearbooks, and the 1997 yearbook picture showed her with a scowl. Police records showed she was twice fined $150 for disorderly conduct in 1997.

In later years Brewer held several jobs, including work as a filing clerk for a Hicksville law firm and a sales assistant at a Kohl’s department store. She sometimes worked at fast-food restaurants and sometimes worked as a housekeeper. A friend, Teoni Maddox, said Brewer often held two jobs at once and described her as moody: “Leatrice was moody, and she could be a little ‘off’ — one day friendly, the next day like she never knew you,” and added: “But I always thought it was because she was always so busy.”

In 2002, Brewer met and had her first baby with Ricky Ward, described as a man who grew up in the neighborhood near the white bungalow with a red roof where Brewer was raised by her grandmother. Relatives said their relationship did not last, and that after giving birth to Jewell, Brewer suffered a period of depression. Brewer’s cousin, Daquann Redd, recalled her saying: “ ‘I don’t know what to do,’ ” and “ ‘I wasn’t ready for this.’ ”

Police records confirmed that in the tough year following Jewell’s birth Brewer faced criminal legal matters including third-degree assault and second-degree criminal contempt, and she was sentenced to three years’ probation.

In 2003, Brewer’s mother, with whom she remained close despite separations, died of cancer. In Brewer’s final years, Pearly Mae Mickens was described as a familiar figure to police officers who patrolled Prospect Avenue in New Cassel, sometimes panhandling and sometimes asking officers to take her to the hospital because she was hearing voices.

In 2003 Brewer began a relationship with Innocent Demesyeux, which produced a second child, Michael. Brewer and Demesyeux lived together off and on. In between times, Brewer and her two children resided at her grandmother’s house until an arrangement that fell apart around 2006 after Brewer became pregnant by Demesyeux a second time and her grandmother asked her to leave. County child welfare caseworkers helped Brewer find an apartment at 819 Prospect Avenue, where her children died.

Brewer received rental assistance, food stamps, a stipend from the federal Women, Infants and Children program, and temporary help with day care. The assistance she received was described as insufficient to stop a downward spiral in which Brewer alternately supported her children and was absent from them.

After giving birth to Innocent in the summer of 2006, Brewer went back to work with the help of a baby sitter. Family members, including her grandmother, pleaded with her to let the children live with them instead of being cared for by a stranger. Daquann Redd said: “There was a big argument in the family,” and said Brewer wanted to prove she could manage: “But she wanted to prove to us that she could make it. Being that her mom had all that stuff in her life, she wanted to show that she was different.”

Brewer stopped working sometime in the last year before the killings; some accounts described her as fired from her last job. Her behavior became stranger. Calvin Cannon, described as a friend from the neighborhood, said: “You would ring the bell and the little girl would say, ‘No, my mommy’s not home, come back later,’ ”.

Neighbors noticed that Jewell handled more of her brothers’ care. Teoni Maddox said: “She would change the baby’s diapers, wipe Michael’s nose, take care of the house, make sure they didn’t play near the stove, all that kind of stuff,”.

At Christmas, Brewer permitted Jewell to spend the evening with her father, Ricky Ward, at a relative’s home in Westbury. The relative, Anthony Brooks, said Brewer telephoned the house several times an hour to check on Jewell and find out when Jewell would return home: “She just called and called and called,” and Brooks said: “She just called and called and called,” attributing the detail to his observation.

Two days before the children were killed, Innocent Demesyeux complained to Child Protective Services that while he was visiting Brewer’s home, Brewer was behaving bizarrely and threatening to harm her children. A caseworker was sent to investigate that day but found no one home. A second caseworker dispatched that night also could not get into the apartment. A night supervisor scheduled another visit for Sunday instead of ordering a follow-up visit for Saturday; the supervisor was suspended without pay pending a department investigation.

Two days after the children were killed, Maebell Mickens visited Brewer in the detention wing of the medical center where Brewer was being held under guard. Maebell Mickens later said Brewer alternately denied and acknowledged what she had done to the children, quoting Brewer: “The voices took control, and I had to do it.”

Brewer was 33 years old when she spoke about her children in an interview, and she said: “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about holding them in my arms and loving them,” and “I wish that I could take it back, but they will always be in my heart.” Brewer also said: “I was sick at the time. . . . I cope with it by praying and talking to God and asking him for forgiveness.” Brewer said she blames Innocent Demesyeux for playing a role in what led her to kill the children, saying she “assumed he put voodoo on me.” She described why she killed the children to psychiatrists as trying to break a voodoo curse.

Brewer said that while in state custody she got pregnant and gave birth four years ago to a baby boy who was in foster care, and she said the baby’s father was another patient.

Brewer said: “I just want to get out of the hospital and live a good life,” and she looked at a photo of Jewell, Michael, and Innocent Jr. every night before she slept. Those images were described as the most recent pictures she had of them.

The offence

On February 24, 2008, Brewer killed her three children. She called 911 to say that she had killed her sons and daughter.

Brewer stabbed her 6-year-old daughter, Jewell Ward, as the girl tried to fight back, and then drowned her daughter and her sons in a bathtub at their New Cassel apartment.

Brewer drowned her daughter and sons: Jewell Ward, age 6; Michael Demesyeux, age 5; and Innocent Demesyeux Jr., age 18 months. The police said the children had been drowned in the bathtub. The police also said Jewell’s throat had been slashed, and there were signs of possible poisoning.

Brewer told officers that around 4 a.m. that morning she woke up Jewell Ward, telling her it was “time to go” before getting a knife and slitting her throat. Brewer then placed the girl back on the bed and drew a bath. She then drowned Innocent Demesyeux Jr. in the bathtub and put him back in bed beside Jewell. When she noticed her daughter was still alive, she drowned Jewell in the tub. She then took Michael Demesyeux and drowned him as well.

After drowning the children, Brewer said she ingested a combination of bleach, Windex, OxiClean along with a bottle of aspirin and climbed into bed with her children, hoping she would die as well. When she woke the next morning and realized her suicide was unsuccessful, Brewer tried again by jumping out her second-story apartment window.

When this second attempt was unsuccessful, Brewer called 911 and confessed to the killings.

Brewer later told psychiatrists she killed the children to try to break a voodoo curse, and stated to police that she killed the children to “protect them from evil spirits.”

Brewer told police she had killed the children to “protect them from evil spirits.” Brewer told her grandmother in detention that “The voices took control, and I had to do it.”

Investigation

Police arrived at Brewer’s apartment after she called 911. She took officers to the bedroom, where the children, all in pajamas, lay slain on a bed.

Authorities said Jewell Nicole Ward was murdered by her mother, along with her half-brothers Michael Demesyeux and Innocent Demesyeux.

Brewer was described as calm when she called 911 and as spelling her name for the operator.

Arrest

Brewer was arraigned on murder charges and pleaded not guilty.

Trial

Brewer pleaded not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect on February 9, 2009.

Sentencing

Brewer was incarcerated indefinitely at Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center.

In accepting the plea, a judge accepted Brewer’s plea that she was insane during the killings.

Under Penal Law §40.10, the not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect defense required the defendant to prove by a “preponderance of the evidence” that, at the time of the murders, Brewer lacked substantial capacity to know or appreciate either the nature and consequences of such conduct or that such conduct was wrong.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Canty submitted to the court a detailed statement, saying that based on two independent psychiatric evaluations, the DA’s office believed the defense would prevail at trial using the not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect defense.

Appeals

No appeals were described in the provided text.

Outcome

A judge ruled Brewer could not collect from $350,000 in wrongful-death settlements.

On November, Surrogate’s Court Judge Edward McCarty III ruled that it would be “repugnant to decency” for Brewer to collect any of the money.

McCarty still had to decide whether the fathers qualified for the estate money, including whether an investigation found they abandoned the children to Brewer’s care, which would affect whether they would be entitled to the money.

The settlements followed separate claims by Demesyeux and Jewell’s father that social service caseworkers could have done more to save Brewer’s children in what had been a troubled household.

A state probe found county child protection workers did incomplete investigations and missed signs of abuse, and they visited the apartment two days before Brewer killed her children and after a complaint that Brewer threatened to harm them, but they left believing no one was home.

Brewer said in an interview that she and the children were there but she was hiding, saying: “I was home, but I was scared,” and she also said: “I was home, but I was scared,” in the interview.

Aftermath

A funeral took place at St. John’s Baptist Church in Westbury. The children lay in a single coffin of white, dressed in white. The oldest child, age 6, had her arms wrapped around the two younger ones, and with them in the small gold-trimmed coffin were two ceramic angel figurines.

Hundreds of people filed past the open coffin during a funeral for the children. Ushers passed out bottles of water, paper fans, and tissue boxes.

Maebell Mickens, the grandmother and great-grandmother of the children, was held and consoled by relatives before the coffin was closed. Maebell Mickens said: “To my angels, you are the most precious thing in my life,” and said: “Jewell, I would ask you about your mother and you would tell me what she did. And you know I would go after her. I tried to protect you all, even though you knew the thing wasn’t right.”

At 8:55 a.m. last Sunday, Brewer called 911 to say she had killed her sons and daughter. When police arrived at the apartment on Prospect Avenue, she took them to the bedroom where the children were slain on a bed.

At Brewer’s arraignment on Tuesday, she pleaded not guilty.

Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi announced that a supervisor had been suspended without pay, and Suozzi ordered a full investigation. Suozzi quoted from the 1963 eulogy the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave for children killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., saying: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Suozzi also said: “We need to know how, somehow, all of us failed to save these children,” and “People will be held accountable.” Sanford Pirotin later said the remark was offensive, saying: “It speaks for itself,” and “It was damage control.”

Anthony Brooks said: “Everybody knew she left the kids home sometimes,” but never would you think something like this would happen.

A statement from Innocent Demesyeux, father of Brewer’s two slain boys, was attributed to him “in a statement through his attorney.” Demesyeux said: “I don’t think that she’s sorry for killing the kids,” and said: “I don’t think that she’s sorry for killing the kids,”. He also said: “[Without a] trial, people will never know what really happened to my children and how the county government failed them. My children deserve their day in court.”

Demesyeux’s attorney, Sanford Pirotin, said it was a “tremendous disappointment” and quoted additional language about triple killers, saying: “Never has a triple killer - in this county, state or country - been allowed to plead not guilty.” Pirotin also said the DA would have wanted the case to go to trial and to be prosecuted, and asked: “Why?” Pirotin asserted neither he nor his client was ever contacted about the plea and that attempts for an adjournment and a request for the DA to step aside and have New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo appoint a special prosecutor fell on deaf ears.

Pirotin said he believed the DA’s decision to accept the plea was an eleventh hour attempt to avoid the results from a New York State Office of Children and Family Services Child Fatality Report, and he quoted about timing, saying: “This deal was cut and finished in less then two business days,” and “We believe that the DA refused to continue with the case and dropped the charges for the simple reason that [the county] wanted to cover up how they goofed up and did not want the information [contained in the report] brought up in trial.” Pirotin also said: “In a situation where the county executive has already stated that the system failed these children, transparency on the county's part is key to avoid the appearance of impropriety.”

A spokesperson, Eric Phillips, said the report and case history had nothing to do with the criminal case against Brewer and said: “Our investigation and prosecution are focused solely on the defendant's actions and how those actions are addressed by state criminal and mental health law.” Phillips also said: “In each evaluation, she is deemed one of three things: mentally ill and dangerous, mentally ill and not dangerous, or no longer mentally ill. Only if the determination falls under that last category, would the mental health officials for the state consider her release,” and said: “Given the nature of her crimes and the scope of her psychiatric diagnosis, it's not realistic to think she will be released anytime in the near future. It is more realistic to estimate that she will spend a long, long time, perhaps even the remainder of her life, in a secure psychiatric facility.” Phillips said: “The overall length of incarceration will depend entirely on her mental health progress and the doctors' determinations following each two-year evaluation.”

Ricky Ward, father of murdered 6-year-old Jewell, had a wrongful death suit against Nassau County, Child Protective Services, and the Department of Social Services. Ward charged that the county “negligently, carelessly and recklessly failed to protect Jewel Ward and are, therefore, responsible for the pain and suffering and wrongful death of his daughter.”

Demesyeux and Jewell’s father sought to collect settlements that Nassau County made after wrongful-death lawsuits. The text described that Demesyeux’s attorney said the case was still in court.

A state Office of Mental Health spokesman declined to answer questions concerning specific patients, citing privacy laws, and a department policy discouraged sexual activity among patients.

Any decision about whether Brewer would be freed was described as falling to doctors and the court, as she underwent evaluations every two years.

Brewer’s attorney, Peter Kelly, said in court that Brewer sought estate money only to block Demesyeux from collecting because she believed he had abandoned them.

Brewer was described as looking at photos of her children every night before she slept, and the photos were described as coming from a news story about their deaths.

In custody, Brewer became pregnant and gave birth to a fourth child while incarcerated at the secure upstate psychiatric hospital, Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center in New Hampton. Innocent Demesyeux said he was contacted by a lawyer trying to find an appropriate placement for the newborn and that it was unclear who the baby’s father was or under what circumstances Brewer became pregnant.

Thomas Foley, Demesyeux’s attorney, said Brewer’s claim that Demesyeux played any role in the children’s deaths showed she was “a very sick person.”

A church funeral included elected officials, relatives, and neighbors, and the children’s images were part of the circumstances described in Brewer’s statements.

Timeline

• February 24, 2008 — Brewer called 911 and confessed to killing Jewell Ward, Michael Demesyeux, and Innocent Demesyeux Jr.; police arrived at her apartment and found the children slain.
• February 9, 2009 — Brewer pleaded not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect.
• 2009 — Brewer was committed to Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center.
• November — Surrogate’s Court Judge Edward McCarty III ruled it would be “repugnant to decency” for Brewer to collect any of $350,000 in wrongful-death settlements.

Other details

Brewer’s 6-year-old daughter Jewell Ward was reported as Jewell Nicole Ward and was born June 10, 2001. Michael Demesyeux was born Feb. 10, 2003. Innocent Demesyeux was born Aug. 26, 2006, and he and his siblings were buried at Amityville Cemetery.

A packed Baptist church funeral described the oldest child age 6 with her arms wrapped around the two younger children and described ceramic angel figurines above the children’s heads in the coffin.

The funeral was held less than a half-mile from where the children died in their mother’s apartment in the Nassau County hamlet of New Cassel.

When police arrived at Brewer’s apartment on Prospect Avenue, she took them to the bedroom where the children were lying.

Brewer’s arraignment included her pleading not guilty.

A lawyer representing Brewer, Michelle Armstrong, said on Saturday that it had not been decided whether Brewer would undergo a psychiatric evaluation of her fitness to stand trial.

Armstrong said: “It’s not only a tragedy that it’s happened to these children,” and “but what happened to their mother as well.”

A friend, Calvin Cannon, described Brewer’s apartment situation in which Jewell said Brewer was not home and told visitors to “come back later.”

A deputy county executive for health and human services, Mary Curtis, said caseworkers investigated nine complaints against Brewer brought by neighbors or members of her own family alleging neglect, leaving children home unattended, or failing to send them to school. Curtis said charges were deemed unfounded in six instances and verified in three, and that Brewer had to attend a class to improve parenting skills. Curtis said Brewer’s custody of the children was never in jeopardy and said: “When we spoke to the kids, they were not bruised, they looked well cared for, the house was clean,” and “There did not seem to be a threat to the children.” Curtis said caseworkers were probably not qualified to recognize mental instability and said: “Being mentally ill is not automatically grounds for removing children from their mother.”

A quote from the Rev. Myrtle Smith said: “There is a thin line between sanity and insanity, and I want the elected officials to think of that when judging my granddaughter,” and she added: “When you judge, judge carefully.” She also said: “We can say she was doing drugs, but maybe she was medicating the pain.”

Satina Fenner said: “People can snap,” and she was described as having known Brewer since grammar school in New Cassel, and she was 26.

A cousin of Jewell’s father, Anthony Brooks, said: “Everybody knew she left the kids home sometimes,” and he said: “But never would you think that something like this would happen.”

A report described Brewer as 27 at the time of the March 2, 2008 funeral reporting and as 33 in later reporting.

A state report described by lawyers as a Child Fatality Report was released Feb. 4, with the plea deal first presented Feb. 6 and finalized Feb. 9, as described by Pirotin.

Brewer’s pledge that she killed the children to “protect them from evil spirits” was described in connection with police statements.

Brewer’s statement to her grandmother included: “The voices took control, and I had to do it.”