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Friend testifies Christines showed little affection for their kids
Ruth and Brian Christine nicknamed their youngest daughter Spam, showed
little affection to their children, and appeared unconcerned about the state
putting the girls into foster care, a friend testified Friday.
Eric Reppert of Grants Pass said he met the Christines in the summer of 2000,
when they needed help repairing the old city bus they had converted into a motor
home, and he let them park it on his property in the shade of a walnut tree.
Reppert said he was struck by the fact that the couple referred to their
youngest daughter, Miriam, as Spam.
"Spam like the canned meat?" asked prosecutor Rick Wesenberg.
"Some junk mail you get on the computer," Reppert replied. "I
remember asking my wife after I heard it. I recall her saying it was the
youngest girl. I recall thinking, `That's not very nice."'
Under cross examination, defense attorney Edgar Steele suggested the nickname
was based on the fact it rhymes with Miriam.
The Christines, both 29, face charges of kidnapping, robbery, custodial
interference and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
In opening statements, Wesenberg told the jury of nine women and three men
that he would show that on Aug. 1, after a supervised family visit to celebrate
his eldest daughter's sixth birthday, Brian Christine followed the state van
carrying his three daughters back to a foster home.
At a rest stop on Interstate 5, Christine yanked open the door of the van,
leveled a .357-Magnum revolver at the chest of the driver, and ordered him out,
Wesenberg said. Then Christine politely ordered the woman in the passenger seat
out of the van and drove off with the girls, meeting up with his wife and a
friend at a nearby lumber mill.
They all drove off in a white SUV for Montana, where they were found days
later after Brian Christine was pulled over for speeding. Tracing the rental
car, police found the friend who rented it, and later, at another house, Ruth
Christine and the girls, Wesenberg said.
Authorities took the three girls, Bethany, then 5, Lydia, 3, and Miriam, 2,
from the Christines on July 31, 2000 after authorities decided the girls were
malnourished and one of them, Lydia, had been hit by her father so that she fell
down stairs.
Defense attorney Edgar Steele acknowledged that the jury would see ample
evidence the Christines took the girls, but urged them to acquit the couple of
the most serious charges of robbery and kidnapping, in favor of the lesser ones.
Steele appeared to abandon his earlier strategy of characterizing the
Christines as desperate parents rescuing their children from a rogue state
agency.
"This is a case about just folks," Steele told the jury.
"There was a time I thought I'd put (the Department of Human Services) on
trial, and I'm tempted to do that. Really, that's not fair. Because really, they
are just folks."
Steele added, however, that the department violated the Christines'
fundamentalist Christian beliefs by vaccinating their children, stripping them
naked for a hospital examination and taking pictures.
"You'll hear how much they love their little girls, how much all they
can think of is, `What can we do?" Steele said. "This is the frame of
mind they possessed."
Called as a prosecution witness, Reppert identified the .357-Magnum entered
into evidence as one he had traded to Brian Christine, along with an Army
surplus rifle and an old Datsun car in return for the Christines' bus.
Reppert testified that in the time the Christines lived on his property, they
did not show much affection for the children, and after the state took custody
of the girls, never appeared very concerned, though Ruth Christine was upset
when the girls were first taken into foster care.
"I've observed it many times that parents don't appear to like their
children," Reppert said. "If I had to put them in a category of
seeming to like their children a lot or a little, I think I'd put them in the
little category."
Reppert acknowledged that he may have inspired Brian Christine to take his
children at gunpoint by saying that many people would be killed before the state
ever took his children away.
Reppert added that he tried to dissuade the couple when he spotted a yellow
sheet of paper with a list including, "Get the girls. Go to the
woods."
"I made a joke of it," Reppert said. "This is a plan you have
here?"
Sue Whitmore of Bandon, who drove the girls from their foster home to Grants
Pass three times in the summer of 2001 for supervised visits with their parents,
said the girls would become upset. Lydia would get stomach aches and Bethany
made up a song about not wanting to see her father and being afraid.
"In fact, didn't they express displeasure (after the visits) at having
to be separated from their parents?" Steele asked during cross examination.
"No. Never," Whitmore replied.
Department of Human Services social worker Rina Diamond testified that the
Christines were uncooperative with social workers developing a plan to reunite
the family.
(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
ROSEBURG,
ORE. - By JEFF BARNARD
Associated Press Writer