Friday, December 04, 2009
Joe Moszczynski
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
The money ran out first. Then the food.
Over three months in 2006, as her five children grew more emaciated and listless by the day, Estelle Walker made no move to find a job, no effort to scrounge up a meal, her kids told a jury yesterday.
"We were supposed to wait for God to provide," said Walker's oldest daughter, now 21. "And that's what we did."
At one point, the daughter said, she and her siblings went 11 days without food. When police were at last summoned to the Sussex County cabin by neighbors, investigators found the children so malnourished they had difficulty talking.
More than three years later, three of the siblings took the stand in a Newton courtroom, describing how their mother watched them nearly starve
.
Walker, 50, of Brooklyn, is charged with four counts of second-degree child endangerment. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison on each count. Walker was not charged in connection with her oldest child because she was a legal adult at the time.
The young woman and her two siblings -- a 16-year-old sister and a 15-year-old brother, betrayed no resentment toward their mother, speaking in soft, even tones.
Under questioning by Sussex County Assistant Prosecutor Frances Koch, they said Walker never tried to get any assistance for her family, either from her estranged husband or from other relatives. She likewise avoided seeking help from two churches near the Hopatcong cabin where they had been staying, the children said.
Though she had previously worked as a teacher, Walker made no effort to earn money, her children said.
"She never tried to get money or food or get a job," the 16-year-old daughter said.
All five children, now in good health, live with their father in Somerset.
In 2005, Walker and the children -- then ages 8, 9, 11, 13 and 18 -- had been placed in the cabin by their church, Times Square Church of Manhattan, to help them escape what Walker claimed was her husband's alcoholism. The cabin is owned by church members who open it for retreats.
Walker was due to leave the cabin in May 2006 but refused, saying God had told her to stay, church members have said. The church then cut off her support and began eviction proceedings.
The invocation of God has been a theme throughout the trial's first three days. Before the jury entered the courtroom yesterday, public defender Ronald Nicola told Judge N. Peter Conforti that Walker had been refusing to take an active role in her defense.
"She says, "God is my defense,' Nicola told the judge.
Nicola asked that Walker be permitted to undergo psychiatric testing.
Asked by Conforti why she is not participating in her trial, Walker told him she saw no point in it.
"I don't feel the need to continue to go over the documents that we've been going over for three years," she said. "God will defend me."
Conforti, noting that Walker was deemed competent to stand trial in 2007 after mental health evaluations, denied Nicola's request for further testing.
Last year, Walker rejected a plea-bargain offer that would have required no additional incarceration other than the one year she already served in the county jail, if she agreed to undergo additional psychiatric testing.
The trial is scheduled to resume Tuesday.
