First murder trial begins in death of sect infant

FALL RIVER, Mass. – Jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of the leader of an Attleboro religious group charged with starving his son to death.

Authorities say Jacques Robidoux systematically kept solid food from his infant son Samuel based on a “prophecy” delivered by the baby’s aunt. The prophecy said the baby’s mother, Karen Robidoux, should drink only the liquid of boiled almonds and feed the baby breast milk.

Jacques Robidoux has pleaded innocent to the first-degree murder charge. After a jury is selected in Fall River Superior Court, the trial will begin in Taunton Superior Court.

Michelle Robidoux Mingo, the baby’s aunt, faces a later trial on charges of being an accessory to assault and battery on a child for allegedly coming up with the idea of keeping food from the 10-month-old child. Authorities say she did so because she believed Karen Robidoux was vain, and concocted the plot out of jealousy.

Karen Robidoux is charged with second-degree murder. Trial dates for her and Mingo have not yet been set.

Francis O’Boy, attorney for Jacques Robidoux, has said he will challenge the notion that Samuel starved to death, arguing that the child’s breast milk diet was unusual, but not unheard of, at his age.

He also planned to argue that the child could have died for any number of reasons, such as iron deficiency, scurvy or rickets. And even if the jury finds Robidoux responsible, they should consider if he is guilty of a lesser charge than first-degree murder. “We expect it to be a hotly contested trial, and the jurors will have a lot to think about. As usual, the facts may be considerably different from what the press has portrayed them to be so far,” he said.

Prosecutors say members of the religious sect that eschews modern law and medicine adhered to what they said were God’s instructions – even as Samuel cried for food, became comatose, and eventually died.

Gary L. Mello, spokesman for the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, has declined to comment.

The bizarre case of the sect, known as “The Body,” took investigators from Attleboro to Maine’s backwoods, where in 1999, members buried the bodies of Samuel Robidoux and his newborn cousin, Jeremiah Corneau, far from the society they rejected. Jeremiah’s parents, David and Rebecca Corneau, maintained he was stillborn and have not been charged in his death.

The bodies were later dug up based on information provided by David Corneau.

Police first came to the sect’s home about 30 miles south of Boston in 1999 after Dennis Mingo, Michelle’s husband and a dropout from the sect, found a journal describing Samuel Robidoux’s condition. He took it to police.

The journal indicated that Michelle Mingo had had a vision that God had told her that Karen Robidoux was to drink only almond extract, and feed Samuel only breast milk.

Prosecutors allege that Mingo fabricated the vision because she was jealous of Karen.

In November 2000, a grand jury indicted the Robidouxs and Mingo. District Attorney Paul Walsh said then it was a “clear case of murder.”