UPDATE: Lynn Paddock Murder Trial/ Suffocation of 4 Yr. Old *Adopted* Sean Paddock

New thread:
Paddock jury won't hear call from daughter
Mandy Locke, Staff Writer
SMITHFIELD - Tami Paddock testified that she needed to know why her little
brother was dead.
It was February. Two days before the second anniversary of Sean's death.
Tami Paddock, 21, was pregnant and scared. She had been drinking and said
she wasn't sure she wanted to live any longer.

She phoned the Johnston County jail and asked to speak to Lynn Paddock, who
had adopted Tami at age 10. Lynn Paddock was locked up, charged in the death
of 4-year-old Sean. The mother and daughter hadn't spoken since the day he
died.

The phone call, recorded like all calls to and from the jail, crackled
across a prosecutor's speakers in a Johnston County courtroom Friday as Lynn
Paddock's first-degree murder trial continued. A judge ruled that the jury
cannot hear the phone call.

The exchange is raw and vulnerable. Lynn Paddock is soft-spoken and says
she's grateful to hear from her estranged daughter. Tami Paddock sounds hurt
and lashes out. She demands answers that her mother is reluctant to give
over a recorded line. Lynn Paddock offers only that she has felt tired and
overwhelmed.

Tami Paddock scolds her mother, telling her that she treated the children
badly.

"Did you love any of us?" she asks.

"Of course. Maybe I didn't know a few things, but I loved you, and still
love you," Lynn Paddock says.

"I never did anything that wrong. Yeah, I acted like a kid," Tami Paddock
says. "It's just because we were adopted, we were scum beneath everyone's
feet."

"I didn't feel that way," her mother answers.

Lynn Paddock asks if she can write her daughter a letter. She says she fears
her lawyers will be upset that she talked to her daughter about Sean.

Tami Paddock presses on.

"Sean's death is coming up. He could have been 6 years old now. He had a
life," she says. "I wish I was dead. ... I just can't take it anymore. Do
you understand?"

"I understand," Lynn Paddock says. "I feel exactly the same way. Yeah, I'd
rather be dead than have him dead."

Tami Paddock spent nearly four hours testifying Friday. Her face was blank,
her answers slow. She told the jury she had suffered a mental breakdown last
week after offering her testimony as part of motions a judge heard before a
jury was picked. Since Sean's death, she said, she has been to a mental
hospital and drug rehabilitation. She has experimented with drugs and tried
to kill herself, she told jurors.

A defense attorney grilled her about how much her father, Johnny Paddock,
knew about Lynn Paddock's discipline.

"You said Lynn was making Hannah do jumping jacks on Sunday morning? Your
dad would have been there also?" asked Michael Reece, the lawyer.

"Yeah, somewhere," she answered.

"This is the time you said [Hannah] got hit like 30 or 40 times and got
bruised up immediately. So, your dad would have been aware of that?" Reece
continued.

"Yeah, somewhat," Tami Paddock said. "He knew she'd gotten in trouble."

Reece continued: "So he was aware of the discipline going on in the home,
wasn't he?"

She stumbled: "He was ... not ... somewhat to the fullest extent."

Johnny Paddock has not been charged in Sean's death or in the abuse of the
other children. All of the children have denied this week that Johnny
Paddock ever harmed them.

http://www.newsobserver.com/1167/story/1091255.html



ALSO FRIDAY

Lynn Paddock's stepdaughter Jessy took the stand late Friday afternoon and
will continue her testimony Monday. She told jurors she spent her childhood
terrified of the woman that her father married when she was a toddler.

Jessy told jurors that Lynn Paddock had such absolute control of her that
she, too, began administering some of the discipline against the younger
children.

"I never questioned what she said," Jessy said. "She was all I ever knew. I
was eager to please her. That was my goal in life, to please her."

A judge told jurors Friday that Tami and Jessy Paddock have been granted
immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. An attorney
negotiated that deal for them soon after Sean's death because both were
legal adults at the time and feared they could be held responsible for the
abuse of the minor children.







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