Accused woman says police pressured her Suspect in girl’s death offers pretrial testimony

AUGUSTA – Sally Schofield, the Chelsea woman accused of murdering a foster child in her care, testified Thursday that police pressured her into answering questions on the night 5-year-old Logan Marr died.

The pretrial testimony in Kennebec County Superior Court marked Schofield’s first public comments about the girl’s death. Schofield’s lawyer is asking a judge to throw out the statements his client made to police immediately after Logan died, the Kennebec Journal reported.

An unconscious Logan was rushed to an Augusta hospital on Jan. 31, 2001. Police later found that the girl had been bound into a high chair with duct tape covering her face. An autopsy showed she suffocated.

Schofield, 40, said that after learning Logan had died, “I was in shock. I felt numb, drained.”

But an employee with the state Department of Human Services who interviewed Schofield at the hospital recalled that the foster mother was not visibly distraught.

“She was not particularly emotional. We had a normal conversation,” said Jane Drake. “There were no tears.”

Drake said that in their interview Schofield admitted wrapping duct tape around the girl’s chest and arms, binding her to a chair.

Police also interviewed Schofield at MaineGeneral Hospital. Later the same night, and again over the next two days, they also asked questions at her home.

Jed Davis, Schofield’s lawyer, said police detective William Harwood did not inform Schofield of her rights. As a result, he told Justice Thomas E. Delahanty II that police tapes of the interviews are inadmissible as evidence.

“There’s no reason Harwood should not have given her the Miranda warning except that he didn’t want her to stop talking,” Davis said.

Schofield testified that Harwood repeated questions, sometimes a dozen times.

“He asked me, ‘You hit her, didn’t you? You pushed her, didn’t you? You shoved her over, didn’t you?'” she said. “He said that’s what he believed and he was going to prove it.”

William Stokes, chief of the state attorney general’s criminal division, testified that Schofield was not under arrest during the interviews. She was free to leave at any time, he said.

The judge said he would listen to police tapes and transcripts of the interviews before issuing a decision.

Schofield is free on bail awaiting a trial that may be months away. She has pleaded innocent to “depraved indifference” murder.

A civil case related to the child’s death is also under way. The suit of Christy Marr, the girl’s biological mother, seeks unspecified damages from the state.