Trial Opens for Man Accused of Child’s Murder : Courts: Ricky Lee Earp, charged with killing a Lancaster toddler, could face the death penalty.

The mother of a Palmdale man accused of sexually abusing and killing his 17-month-old goddaughter tearfully said Tuesday that she persuaded her son to surrender to authorities despite fears police might harm him.

Helene Perusse, mother of Ricky Lee Earp, also testified in San Fernando Superior Court that she assumed police eventually would clear her son. “I thought it would be all a mistake,” Perusse said. “I thought he was going to be let go.”

Her testimony was the most emotional moment during an otherwise routine beginning of Earp’s trial three years after the killing.

Earp, 29, faces one count of murder with a special circumstance that he also raped and sodomized the child. Earp, who is being held in Los Angeles County Central Jail isolated from other inmates, could face the death penalty because of the special circumstance.

In his opening remarks, defense attorney Louis H. Bernstein called the death of the toddler, Amanda Nicole Doshier, “senseless” and a “horrible tragedy.” But he told the jury that Earp is not a child molester and did not kill the child.

Bernstein would not elaborate in or out of the courtroom, except to quote Oscar Wilde: “The truth is rarely clear, and never simple.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz, in his opening statement, simply outlined his case without offering a motive for the killing.

According to court records, the child had been staying with Earp and his girlfriend, Virginia MacNair, at their Palmdale home for a few days prior to the incident on Aug. 25, 1988. The couple had watched the child for her mother, Cindy Doshier of Lancaster, on other occasions.

On the morning of Aug. 25, MacNair went to work and left Earp alone with the infant. That afternoon, Earp called an emergency operator and said that the child had fallen down some stairs and was unconscious.

She was taken to Palmdale Hospital Medical Center, then transferred to Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Los Angeles, where doctors determined that she had been sexually abused. The child was on life-support systems until she was pronounced dead on Aug. 27.

Earp, who was using the name Ricky Lee Bellice at the time, did not accompany the child to the hospital and fled the area.

On Tuesday, Perusse testified that her son had called her from Palmdale that day to pick him up. She brought him back to her home in the Sacramento area, where they were told the next day that the baby had died and that police were looking for Earp.

Perusse said her son stayed with her until the day after the baby died. She persuaded him to surrender to police, although Earp had heard rumors from friends that police would shoot him because of their anger over the sexual abuse.

Perusse said her son, on the advice of an attorney, even wore shorts when he surrendered to Sacramento police so they would not think he was carrying a weapon.

Earp had told authorities that his dog had knocked the girl down a flight of stairs, causing the fatal head injuries. However, coroner’s investigators testified at Earp’s preliminary hearing in January, 1989, that the toddler had died of massive head injuries inconsistent with a fall.

Earp maintains that he had fled the area not because of the girl’s injury, but because he feared police would arrest him for violating parole. The state Department of Corrections had been looking for Earp for two years for violating parole of a 1985 burglary conviction.

Judge Ronald S. Coen is presiding over the trial, which prosecuting and defense attorneys say may take eight weeks. The trial was moved from the Antelope Valley to San Fernando because Lancaster has only one Superior Court.