An 8-month-old infant's mother allowed her boyfriend to beat and torture the child as a way of bartering for her lover's intimacies, according to excerpts of the couple's letters read yesterday in Municipal Court.
According to testimony, the boyfriend, Will Whitehead, 19, told police he punched and smacked the infant, Raymond Guess. Police said he also told them he rammed the child's head into a wall in a "battering-ram position" July 25, because he was "mad" at the child's mother.
After a two-hour preliminary hearing, Whitehead, who is not the baby's father, and the child's mother, Tovarria Guess, 19, were ordered held for trial on murder and related charges by Judge Lydia Y. Kirkland.
Detective Joe Fischer testified that Raymond Guess died of multiple head injuries.
Excerpts from the couple's love letters were read in court. The letters portrayed a young mother so in need of Whitehead's approval that she permitted him to beat the baby in an effort to secure his love.
NOT HIS SON
Whitehead, for his part, said in the letters that he hated his girlfriend's son, apparently because the boy was not his, the prosecution said.
In a letter written July 14, about a week before the child was killed, Guess wrote to Whitehead: "Would you spend the weekend with me if I let you body-slam my son?"
Whitehead told police that he deliberately broke the baby's leg in June, an attack that was investigated by the city Department of Human Services, said the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Hugh Colihan.
Doctors at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where the child was treated for the broken leg, contacted DHS after the mother told them the baby's leg was broken as the result of a fall.
"That explanation was inconsistent with the nature of the injury," Colihan said. "DHS did get involved; they went back and talked to the mother. She misled them."
In her letters to Whitehead, Tovarria Guess said she would continue to cover up for her boyfriend's beatings of her son.
"I've been thinking, since my son was in the hospital, I just want to spend the rest of my life with you," she wrote. "I realize and understand you don't like my son. But I can forgive you."
'I HATE YOUR SON'
Whitehead wrote Guess July 14, "I don't like your son at all. You were saying you want us to get to know each other better. I am NOT the kid's father. I hate your son, Raymond."
Defense lawyer J. Michael Farrell argued that the evidence against the baby's mother amounted to no more than a charge of involuntary manslaughter, and not murder. "She failed to protect her son" but lacked "any malice," Farrell contended.
But Colihan said the mother was as guilty of murder as her boyfriend.
Bail was unchanged: Guess was held in lieu of $100,000 bail and Whitehead was held without bail.
