Mother Whose 2 Infants Died in Hot Auto Starts New Life

Beverly Jean Ernst, whose twin infants died when she left them in a car for at least four hours on a hot summer day, was released on parole this week after serving less than half of her four-year prison term.

“It wasn’t murder; she deserves to be left alone,” her mother, Mildred Ernst of Anaheim, said. “She deserves a chance at a fresh start.”

Ernst and her mother have refused to discuss her prison sentence, where she is staying or her plans. But a spokeswoman for Mothers Against Child Abuse has offered to help Ernst, if she wants it. And Ernst’s appellate lawyer, John L. King of Bakersfield, said she was “upbeat” in her letters to him.

“At first she was very frustrated at her situation, but I think she gradually adjusted to the fact that this was the way things were and she’d have to get on with life,” he said.

Ernst, now 29, was convicted of child negligence in the deaths of 3-month-old Adam Ray and Ashley Rachelle on July 20, 1986.

Ernst, who was homeless, had left the twins in her car when she went inside a janitorial supply shop in Garden Grove where her boyfriend lived in a back room. At about 3 a.m., another friend drove up and invited them to go have coffee. He testified that the infants, strapped into their seats in the back of the car, appeared to be asleep.

The couple returned from the coffee shop shortly after 7 a.m., and again left the twins in the car, with the windows rolled up, while they went inside. Ernst, who had been up all night, told the jurors she had only intended to close her eyes for a moment but inadvertently fell asleep. The boyfriend said he fell asleep, too. They slept until past noon.

Medical testimony showed that the infants probably were dead by 10 a.m., when temperatures inside the closed car soared past 100 degrees.

Ernst’s attorney tried to convince the jury that the boyfriend was responsible because he had agreed to watch out for the children while she took a nap. But Ernst hurt her argument with her testimony; she blamed herself for their deaths.

Testimony about Ernst’s cavalier attitude toward her babies’ care shocked most courtroom observers, but several, including some jurors, sympathized with Ernst’s homeless plight.

Jurors could not agree on a separate charge of involuntary manslaughter--which was actually less serious than the child-endangerment counts--and prosecutors did not pursue it after the trial.

Several jurors wrote to the judge before the sentencing asking for leniency for Ernst. Another who also sought leniency for her now wants to help Ernst. Sally Nava Kanarek of Mothers Against Child Abuse and an associate group, Parents Help Center, said she hopes Ernst will contact her if she needs someone.

“Women who have suffered a loss like Beverly’s can come out of prison feeling very lonely, and under a lot of stress,” Kanarek said. “We would be glad to help her. Sometimes women in her situation need someone to help them recognize what their obstacles are.”

Ernst has two other children, now 9 and 7, in the custody of her ex-husband, Kenneth Holt of Illinois.

Two years ago he wrote to the court, saying: “A jail sentence would in all probability destroy her life.”

Court records show that Holt also wrote to Ernst, just before she left for prison, urging her to keep in touch with the older children while she served her sentence. “You are still their mother,” he told her.

Ernst attorney Dennis P. O’Connell said he has received some letters from her from prison.

“She was OK, but she seemed to be just treading water,” said O’Connell, who remains worried about her. O’Connell had vehemently argued to the court that Ernst was in desperate need of counseling because of her fragile emotional state.

Ernst spent almost all of her sentence at the Rainbow Conservation Camp for women in north San Diego County, which houses 60 to 85 inmates, Lt. Larry Cotton said. Camps such as Rainbow, spread throughout the state, are minimum-security facilities with few fences.

They are called fire camps because the inmates are trained to help county firefighters in case of emergencies in remote areas. The inmates also are assigned duties for other government agencies in the area.

Cotton said that counseling is available to all the inmates, but state policy prohibits release of information about whether Ernst participated.

Ernst, adopted as an infant, had a tumultuous relationship with Mildred Ernst. She ran away from home when she was 16. One psychiatrist wrote at the time that Ernst showed a “beginning tendency toward a self-defeating pattern of seeking out attention from just about any male.”

She was divorced from Holt a year before the twins were born, and their father has never been identified. A few months before their birth, the police were called to the Ernst home after Beverly Ernst became upset with her mother, and she was placed on one year of probation.

Court records show that Ernst’s mother told her that she could stay with her until after the twins were born, but that she would have to find a home for herself after that.

Shortly after their birth, Ernst moved in with her best friend, Judy Fraser of Anaheim. But a few days before the deaths, Fraser’s landlord told them that Ernst and the children would have to leave. Ernst was without a home or means of support when the twins died.

While she waited for her trial, Ernst wrote long poems to her dead infants.

A sentencing counselor hired by the defense, Norman M. Morein, wrote to the court at the time: “She is a chronically troubled person who has accepted responsibility for having committed a grave offense . . . . She is tormented by the burden of that knowledge, and her inability to find an effective means of coming to terms with it.”

Ernst’s release Tuesday after two years of a four-year sentence is typical for an inmate with a good prison record.

Despite her release, her appeal continues. It already has been argued before the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego, and a decision is due soon. Her lawyer, King, said the appeal is not moot, because it could clear her record if she wins. It could also mean an end to her parole.

Ernst is scheduled to remain on supervised parole until the end of her four-year sentence in November, 1991.