Parents on Trial : Prosecutors Say Couple’s Drug Lifestyle Killed Baby

Gilbert Delgado coaches Little League now. Debbie, his wife, is a devoted mother whose world revolves around her two young children.

But here in their lawyer’s office, the attractive, well-dressed Santa Ana couple are sobbing and literally clinging to each other as they relive a time five years ago when life was different and a lot of mistakes were made.

Their tale is a staggering saga of illegal drugs, the death of their firstborn child, and an abysmal journey into the judicial system that could dump them in prison for the rest of their lives.

The Delgados are the only parents in Orange County ever to be charged with murder in a drug overdose death of a child, and the unusual case has become a fiery battleground of emotions and outrage.

After years of legal wrangling and delays, their case is finally expected to go to trial later this month.

The Delgados believe they are victims of a double tragedy.

“The death of a baby has got to be one of the most tragic things that a parent could ever go through,” Debbie says. “And then to be prosecuted for it. I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to have to go through anything like this.”

But to Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard King, the Delgados should pay for what happened to their baby daughter. What they did as parents, says King, is analogous to a “couple leaving a child in the fast lane on the freeway. It was just a question of when the child would die.”

Eight-week-old Stephanie Delgado died with cocaine in her system; the coroner ruled her death an overdose. Her parents, King alleges, were drug users and sellers. How the cocaine got into the baby’s body remains a mystery to both the prosecutor and defense attorneys. But as King once pointed out to a judge:

“A 2-month-old child cannot free-base. A 2-month-old child cannot inject, cannot snort. . . . So it had to have been fed or given intentionally to the child.”

Defense attorney Ronald Brower, who represents Debbie, says charging the couple is “just absolutely barbaric. It just defies common sense--and what the public or what any citizen thinks about what (constitutes) a murder charge.”

Counters King: “We’re not on any kind of mission or crusade to create new law on this case. We are very conservative in our filing on baby-killing cases.”

The evidence will show, insists King, that the defendants chose to raise “their child in a cocaine-infested environment that would eventually cause death.”

Debbie Marie Chavez and Gilbert Anthony Delgado were sweethearts back when they attended Saddleback High School in Santa Ana.

“I was a homecoming princess,” says Debbie, who kept a framed photo of herself in her princess gown on her apartment wall. The popular high school student also served on the drill team and kept busy with other school activities.

Debbie, according to an Orange County Social Service Agency report filed in the case, was the youngest of three children and had a “good childhood and adolescence.”

Gilbert was the third of four children. He was raised by both parents until he was 11, when his parents divorced.

The couple began living together right after graduation. Debbie had been kicked out of the house at 17 because she would not comply with her curfew, according to the Social Service Agency report.

Gilbert says he worked in construction and Debbie worked part time as a secretary. The couple married in 1985, framing their certificate and mounting it on the wall next to the homecoming picture.

In the summer of 1986, Debbie gave birth to their first child, a daughter they named Stephanie.

Eight weeks later, at 11:24 a.m. on Sept. 11, 1986, Santa Ana Police Officer Oliver Grant arrived at the couple’s apartment, responding to an emergency call from Gilbert.

Lying on the couch, clothed only in a disposable diaper, was Stephanie’s lifeless body, which had already begun to turn blue. Efforts to revive the baby failed.

“When (Grant) came in, I was trying to bring the baby back (with CPR),” recalls Gilbert. Grant took over and “told us to go back in another room. He told us to stay out of here. But I wanted to see what was happening.”

“We were screaming, yelling and crying,” remembers Debbie, now 27. “We were so hysterical. I think they thought we might do something stupid.”

In fact, Gilbert, now 29, became so frantic and distressed that he punched a hole in the wall above where the baby lay. “My hand was all bloody,” he says.

Later, Delgado asked the officer “if we could get a beer, at least . . . something to calm us down.”

Grant would later testify during a preliminary hearing that Gilbert was so “distraught” that he was concerned that the baby’s father might harm himself.

For two hours, Grant stayed at the Delgado apartment on Sunflower Avenue. During that time, he searched the home and found a shotgun in a closet, but found no drugs or drug paraphernalia, nothing to suspect foul play.

When the deputy coroner arrived on the scene, she reported no signs of trauma on the baby. “She told us the baby just died of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome),” Gilbert insists. “She talked to us for a while and said there was nothing wrong with the baby--she just went to sleep and died peacefully.”

An autopsy found the cause of death was sudden infant death syndrome. But three months later when the toxicology reports came in, the results showed there was cocaine in the infant’s stomach, as well as her brain and liver.

The medical evidence at the time concluded that Stephanie had ingested 4 to 5 milligrams of the drug. Deputy Dist. Atty. Marv Stern would later describe the amount as “about 1/10th of a normal recreational dose of cocaine for an adult. When you only weigh 12 pounds, that’s quite a bit.”

Armed with this new evidence, Santa Ana police returned to the Delgados’ apartment. But the couple had moved.

Although the prosecution contends the Delgados evaded the police for months, they deny it. They insist they still believed their baby had died of SIDS.

Says Gilbert, “We weren’t hiding out.”

On Oct. 28, 1987, Santa Ana narcotics and child abuse investigators arrested the Delgados during an early morning raid at their Buckingham Drive apartment in Costa Mesa. Also arrested at the home were Debbie’s brother, Bruce Chavez, and his girlfriend, Lucinda Hatch, who were later granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony against the Delgados.

When officers swept through the two-story apartment, they discovered a shotgun in a closet, a basket of ammunition, a loaded .380-caliber Beretta handgun and black nunchakus in the master bedroom.

Investigators also found half a kilogram of cocaine worth $50,000 if diluted and sold on the street, nearly $900 in cash, two 5-gallon buckets of marijuana, a marijuana pipe, a beeper and, on the kitchen counter, a mirror encrusted with cocaine residue.

But the most surprising discovery was in Debbie Delgado’s arms: a 5-month-old baby boy whom Gilbert had delivered in their bathroom.

The Delgados say that it was during their arrest that they were first told their daughter died of a drug overdose and they were considered suspects.

Debbie tearfully recalls how police took Gilbert Jr. from her when they locked her in the jail cell. “It was like they were taking a piece of my heart. But I had to be strong because otherwise Gilby would sense that something was wrong.”

Because of the charges against them and the fact that the infant was found living in a home where drugs were allegedly being sold and used, they temporarily lost custody. He became a ward of the court and was placed in the care of his grandmother.

Social worker Nita Thicksten concluded that the child “was also in danger of accidental exposure to drugs.”

“The parents,” said Thicksten, “have failed to take steps to prevent a similar tragedy . . . from happening to the minor, Gilbert Jr.”

Gilbert Jr. is now back with his parents. Social Service workers later concluded that the Delgados successfully completed counseling and are now drug-free and have proven to be loving, caring parents.

After their arrest, the Delgados were charged with endangering Gilbert Jr. and Stephanie. They were also charged with possession and sale of cocaine.

Later, the charges were upgraded to include murder after prosecutors obtained damaging allegations from Debbie’s brother, Bruce Chavez. Gilbert and Debbie remain free on $100,000 and $50,000 bail, respectively.

Chavez’s statements against his sister and brother-in-law did not come easy for authorities. Chavez eluded police for several months, living in his car and even missing Christmas with his family to avoid the police, he later admitted.

Chavez had been in custody for nearly six months when he agreed to testify in a second preliminary hearing, held to determine whether the couple should stand trial for murder.

His testimony is key for the prosecution to prove an implied-malice theory of second-degree murder--to show that the Delgados had created a dangerous cocaine environment at the home that eventually led to the baby’s death.

Chavez told authorities that he had been at the Delgado house when he saw cocaine being snorted or chopped near where the baby bottles were prepared and kept on the kitchen counter.

He also told authorities that Delgado sold drugs from the apartment and that the couple hosted drug parties. But he also testified that the couple--especially Debbie--prohibited guests from using drugs near the baby.

Debbie, Chavez testified, didn’t like his drug dealing, once chastised her husband for handling the baby when he was high or “schizoid out.” Debbie wanted him to stop, but according to Chavez, Gilbert said the money was too good.

Nonetheless, there was a party at the Delgado home the night before Stephanie’s death. And inches from where the baby’s bottles were prepared, Chavez testified, was the infamous “party drawer,” where a large mirror, razor blade, straw and scrapings of cocaine were kept.

The “party drawer,” was used on “special occasions,” Chavez testified. “TV specials, fights, parties.”

Prosecutors believe the couple cleared out the drugs from their home after the child’s death, waiting 3 1/2 hours before notifying authorities, based on a Social Services report.

Defense attorneys hammered away at Chavez during the preliminary hearing, attacking his credibility and chiseling away at his story. “On the witness stand,” recalls attorney Brower, “he had all the appearances of a burned-out drug addict.” Chavez often wept, appeared confused and contradicted himself, says Brower.

Debbie insists that the only reason he agreed to testify against her was because “the D.A. was putting pressure on him and told him the only reason he could get out is if he said what he wanted him to say. My brother wanted anything to get out so he could start using (drugs) again,” she says.

Despite Chavez’s testimony at the 1988 preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge James P. Gray, the judge dismissed second-degree murder charges against the Delgados.

“It seems to me,” said the judge, “just as likely . . . that someone else had given some form of cocaine to Stephanie that evening . . . that some person who was present in the apartment that night could have spiked the kid’s bottle in order to--for some perverse sense--to sedate the child when she was crying or just to get the kid high.”

Gray ordered the couple to stand trial for child endangerment and narcotics possession.

The district attorney’s office appealed the dismissal of the murder charges on grounds that the judge had erred in his ruling. Three months later, Orange County Superior Court Judge Jean H. Rheinheimer reinstated the murder charges. The trial is now set to begin June 24.

The legal arguments over whether the evidence supports the prosecution’s decision to charge the Delgados with murder have been endless.

“The cocaine in the house by itself is no more dangerous than keeping Drano . . . than keeping electricity in your house,” their then-attorney, Franz Miller, argued early on in the case.

“It’s when the kid comes into contact with the cocaine or the Drano or the other poison substances, or sticks his finger in the light socket that you have the problem,” he argued. “You would never prosecute somebody for second-degree murder on an implied malice theory that electricity from the socket is deadly to a kid just sitting there.”

Brower also cites the prosecution’s own expert witness, Dr. Richard Fukumoto, who couldn’t say how much cocaine would be toxic enough to kill a baby.

In addition, Fukumoto testified that the child had a congenital heart defect--open foramen ovale--a hole in the heart. Brower notes that while Fukumoto said cocaine killed the child, another qualified expert might reasonably find that the baby died of a congenital heart defect.

“This is the kind of case that no defense attorney wants,” says Brower, “because it is an absolute defense lawyer’s nightmare to represent somebody that is truly innocent on a serious case. And that is because the system is not perfect.”

King remains convinced that the parents are guilty of murder. “These people were dealing and distributing poison that could kill. It was a cocaine-infested environment, and they had their child right smack in the middle of it,” he says.

Dennis O’Connell, Gilbert’s attorney, says the couple have been filled with “tremendous feelings of guilt, sorrow and loss. Every day of their lives, there has to be thoughts about how this child would have grown and progressed.”

The Delgados say they are terrified of what will happen next. “I’m scared I’m going to lose my family, my kids, my wife,” says Delgado.

And now, the Delgados have a new baby to worry about. Less than two months ago, Debbie gave birth to another girl, Selena.

Having Selena “eases some of the pain (over losing Stephanie),” says Debbie. “But it will never take it away. I’ll never get over that. I put (Stephanie) in a special category in my heart, and I keep her there.”